Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one's own inferiority. It is a mental cancer.
Interpretation
Jealousy stems from personal insecurities and can be damaging to one's mental state.
This quote highlights how jealousy often arises from a person's own feelings of inadequacy or inferiority, suggesting that it is not the object of jealousy that is the problem, but rather the individual's perception of themselves. By referring to jealousy as a 'mental cancer', the quote emphasizes the toxic and destructive nature of these feelings, which can erode both personal happiness and relationships over time.
In practice
During a discussion about personal growth, one might quote this to illustrate how jealousy can hinder self-improvement.
How you start is important, very important, but in the end it is how you finish that counts. It is easier to be a self-starter than a self-finisher. The victor in the race is not the one who dashes off swiftest but the one who leads at the finish. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina. The sticker outlasts the sprinter in life's race. In America we breed many hares but not so many tortoises.
I have known not a few men who, after reaching the summits of business success, found themselves miserable on attaining retirement age. They were so exclusively engrossed in their day to day affairs that they had no time for friend making.
He is a wise man who seeks by every legitimate means to make all the money he can honestly, for money can do so many worthwhile things in this world, not merely for one's self but for others. But he is an unmitigated fool who imagines for a moment that it is more important to make the money than to make it honestly. One of the advantages of possessing money is that it facilitates one's independence and mental attitude. The man head over heels in debt is more slave than independent.
Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving.
Opportunity rarely knocks on your door. Knock rather on opportunity's door if you ardently wish to enter.
If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business.
All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
The Way is eternal. Until your last day, you are free from peril.
We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.
The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
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