A system of morality that is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception that has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
SocratesRead
The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Envy can consume a person, leading to personal suffering while others prosper.
This quote from Socrates illustrates how envy adversely affects the person who harbors it. Instead of enjoying their own life and successes, an envious individual becomes tormented by the well-being of others, which ultimately harms their own happiness and fulfillment.
Themes
EnvySufferingHappinessProsperityPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
A motivational speaker could use this quote to demonstrate the importance of focusing on personal growth instead of comparing oneself to others.
More from Socrates
All quotes βThe poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
SocratesRead
I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
SocratesRead
The unexamined life is not worth living.
SocratesRead
When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery.
SocratesRead
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued." "It is not living that matters, but living rightly. The unexamined life is not worth living.
SocratesRead
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If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
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Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
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This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death.
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But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
Salman RushdieRead
Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.
Chris HadfieldRead