Better to receive than give?

It's a boost when a Big Name says something that resembles a thought or hunch you've harboured for some time. Of course, the way they express and work out that thought is usually clearer or sexier than the inchoate blob sitting in your brain -- nevertheless, it's still reassuring to know you're not alone.

The other day I came across the following:

John Steinbeck eulogizes his recently deceased friend, Ed Ricketts:

I have tried to isolate and inspect the great talent that was in Ed Ricketts, that made him so loved and needed and makes him so missed now that he is dead. Certainly he was an interesting and charming man, but there was some other quality that far exceeded these. I have thought that it might be his ability to receive, to receive anything from anyone, to receive gracefully and thankfully, and to make the gift seem very fine. Because of this everyone felt good in giving to Ed—a present, a thought, anything.

Perhaps the most overrated virtue in our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver...It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it is well-done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving, you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

It requires self-esteem to receive—not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

I don't go all the way with the second and third paragraphs, but I'm all for Steinbeck's general thrust that receiving is underrated and that giving can mask mixed motives.

By the way, I got this quote from delanceyplace, a service that provides a daily email extract from a non-fiction book. So far their material has been good.