Envy harms the envious, not the envied

One thing, at least, someone might even praise in this evil: the more violently it is stirred, the more grievous it becomes to the one who possesses it. For just as arrows shot with force, when they strike something hard and resistant, rebound upon the one who hurled them, so the movements of envy, causing no grief to the person envied, become blows upon the envious person himself. For who, by grieving, ever diminished his neighbor's good things? He only consumed himself, wasting away with sorrow. Indeed, those sick with envy are thought to be more destructive than venomous creatures themselves. For those creatures inject their poison through a wound, and little by little the corruption eats away what has been bitten. But some suppose that the envious inflict harm through their eyes alone, so that vigorous bodies, blooming in the full flower of their youthful prime, waste away under their envious gaze, and their whole bulk is suddenly destroyed, as if a deadly stream flowed from the envious eyes, defiling and destroying. I dismiss that account as a popular tale brought into the women's quarters by old wives. But this I do say: the hateful demons, when they find choices suited to themselves, use those choices in every way for their own purpose, so that they even employ the eyes of envious people in the service of their own will. Do you not shudder, then, at making yourself the servant of a deadly demon? Do you welcome an evil through which you will become an enemy of those who have done no wrong, and an enemy of God, who is good and ungrudging? Let us flee this unbearable evil. It is the serpent's teaching, the demons' invention, the enemy's sowing, a down payment of punishment, a hindrance to piety, a road to Gehenna, a loss of the kingdom. The envious are somehow recognizable even by their very face. Their eye is dry and dim, their cheek downcast, their brow contracted; their soul is thrown into confusion by the passion, and does not hold the standard of truth in judging matters. No action done according to virtue is praiseworthy among them, no power of speech adorned with dignity and grace, nothing else that is admired and esteemed. Just as vultures are drawn to foul smells, flying over many meadows and many pleasant, fragrant places, and flies pass by what is healthy and hurry to a wound, so the envious do not even look at the splendors of life or the greatness of noble achievements, but fasten on what is rotten. And if someone happens to stumble—as often happens in human affairs—they make it public, and from such things they want to identify the man. They are like wicked painters who mark the forms of their subjects by a crooked nose, or by some scar or mutilation, whether from nature or from some accident. They are skilled at twisting things for the worse, at spitting on what is praiseworthy, and at slandering virtue by means of a neighboring vice. For they call the courageous man reckless, and the self-controlled man unfeeling; the just man harsh, the prudent man a schemer. They slander the magnificent man as vulgar, and the generous man as a spendthrift; again, the thrifty man they call miserly. In short, every form of virtue does not lack among them a name borrowed from the opposite vice.