(seen at Caterina.net)

To give is to show one's superiority, to be more, to be higher in rank, magister. To accept without giving in return, or without giving more back is to become client and servant.

-- Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies

(and this was in the comments to that post...)

"A gift that has the power to change us awakens a part of the soul. But we cannot receive the gift until we can meet it as an equal."

--Lewis Hyde, The Gift