Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.
Interpretation
Envy is a natural consequence of being distinguished or outstanding in some way.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that achieving distinction, whether through talent, intelligence, or success, inevitably attracts envy from others. Envy can be seen as a 'tax' that those who stand out must pay, indicating that recognition and achievement often come with negative feelings from others who feel inferior or lesser.
In practice
In a motivational speech about handling success, you might quote this to highlight the challenges that come with achievement.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
We had to learn...that it did not really matter what we expected from life but rather what life expected from us.
We're not that much smarter than we used to be, even though we have much more information - and that means the real skill now is learning how to pick out the useful information from all this noise.
To ward off alienation and gloom, it is only necessary to remember the unremembered heroes of the past, and to look around us for the unnoticed heroes of the present.
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
What we count the ills of life are often blessings in disguise, resulting in good to us in the end. Though for the present not joyous but grievous, yet, if received in a right spirit, they work out fruits of righteousness for us at last.
The best way to be original is to be yourself.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.