not keep home: Non est curiosus, quin idem sit malevolus.[1]
Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise. For the distance is altered; and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think themselves go back.
Deformed persons, and eunuchs, and old men, and bastards, are envious. For he that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's; except these defects light upon a very brave and heroical nature, which thinketh to make his natural wants part of his honour; in that it should be said, that an eunuch, or a lame man, did such great matters; affecting the honour of a miracle; as it was in Narses[2] the eunuch, and Agesilaus and Tamberlanes,[3] that were lame men.
The same is the case of men that rise after calamities and misfortunes. For they are as men fallen out with the times; and think other men's harms a redemption of their own sufferings.
They that desire to excel in too many matters, out of levity and vain glory, are ever envious. For they cannot want work;[4] it being impossible but many in some one of those things should surpass
- ↑ No one is curious without being also malevolent. The thought of the spite and malignity of idle curiosity is uppermost in Plutarch's essay, Of Curiosity, or on Over-Busy Inquisitiveness into Things Impertinent. Plutarch's Morals (Vol. II. pp. 424–445. Ed. W. W. Goodwin).
- ↑ Narses 478(?)-573(?) A.D., a general of the Byzantine empire, joint commander in Italy with Belisarius, 538–539.
- ↑ Timur, or Timour, or Timur Bey, also called Timur-Leng (Timur the Lame), corrupted into Tamerlane, 1333–1405. Tamerlane was a Tatar conqueror who overran the provinces of Asia from Delhi to Damascus, and from the Sea of Aral to the Persian Gulf.
- ↑ i.e. Matter for envy to work upon: ubique enim occurrunt objecta invidiæ. S.
