06 July 2011

What Is Envy?

Envy may be defined, a spirit of opposition to others' comparative happiness, or to the happiness of others considered as compared with their own. The thing to which envious persons are opposed is the comparative relation between that state of honor or happiness which others have, or may have, and their own state.
--Jonathan Edwards, sermon 5 in Charity and Its Fruits, in Works, Yale ed., 8:219

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Envy eats nothing but its own heart, right? If we tallied up all our own blessings we'd probably be too busy counting them to feel envy at all. As with most things though, easier said than done.