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Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did anybody ever seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since it's lodgement is in the heart and not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee against it.

Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.

Envy is an indicator that alerts you if you’re being honest with yourself. If you can look at someone who has things you don’t and say, “You know what. I really don’t want that,” you know you’re in a good place. If you say you don’t want something but don’t mean it, envy will eat away at you. What it’s telling you is that you really do want it but are afraid to work for it.

With the wise man, what he has does not cease to be enjoyable because some one else has something else. Envy, in fact, is one form of vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations

Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration which the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies. Where ten-penny Jack looks with contempt upon nine-penny Joe, the social injustice which makes the masses of the people hewers of wood and drawers of water for a privileged few, has the strongest bulwarks.

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