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
Similar quotes
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
SophoclesRead
Direct action is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.
Emma GoldmanRead
Metaphysics abstracts the mind from the senses, and the poetic faculty must submerge the whole mind in the senses. Metaphysics soars up to universals, and the poetic faculty must plunge deep into particulars.
Giambattista VicoRead
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things. For if a man says that the lines which are drawn from the centre of the circle to the circumference are not equal, he understands by the circle, at all events for the time, something else than mathematicians understand by it.
Baruch SpinozaRead
Universality of the UN is a worthwhile thing in its own self because it means that every country belongs, feels it has a stake, and participates, rather than going away and finding other methods of conducting international relations.
Shashi TharoorRead
The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.
Thomas MoreRead