Daily Dose

From The Sickness Unto Death, by Soren Kierkegaard, translated by Alastair Hannay

ENVY

"Envy is concealed admiration. A man who admires something but feels he cannot be happy surrendering himself to it, that man chooses to be envious of what he admires. He then speaks another language. In this language of his the thing he admires is said to be nothing, something stupid and humiliating and peculiar and exaggerated. Admiration is happy self-surrender, envy is unhappy self-assertion."

From Part Two, Despair is Sin