525.
Envy is a vice that would pose a man to tell what it should be liked for. Other vices we assume for that we falsely suppose they bring us either pleasure, profit, or honour. But in envy who is it can find any of these? Instead of pleasure, we vex and gall ourselves. Like cankered brass, it only eats itself, nay, discolours and renders it noisome. When some one told Agis that those of his neighbour’s family did envy him, “Why, then,” says he, “they have a double vexation—one, with their own evil, the other, at my prosperity.”
Feltham.
526.
The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves. They fancy themselves superior to every one else, and, not being sure of making good their secret pretensions, decline entering the lists altogether. Thus they “lay the flattering unction to their souls” that they could have said better things than others, or that the conversation was beneath them.
Hazlitt.