[...]... 6th century, Gregory the Great formulated the traditional seven The sins were ranked by increasing severity, and judged to be the greatest offenses to the soul and the root of all other sins As certain sins were subsumed into others and similar terms were used interchangeably according to theological review, the list evolved to include the seven as we know them: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Anger,... unduly prideful in making the claims I do for envy, my own charming little deadly sin Before passing on to envy itself, a word or two on the nature of the seven deadlies is perhaps in order In the 1950s, Ian Fleming, then a member of the Editorial Board of the London Sunday Times, proposed a collection of seven pieces on each of the deadly sins to the editors, who readily accepted the idea An all-star literary... Tchaikovsky And yet the original seven deadly sins continue to carry a certain weight and gravity They cannot be dispensed with They have a place, not only in the permanent moral categories of human beings, but in literature itself One has only to glimpse the rich tradition of aphorism and maxim writing to discover that, without the seven deadly sins, the French moralistes and other writers would be... The other deadly sins, though all have the disapproval of religion, do not so thoroughly, so deeply demean, diminish, and disqualify a person Not the least of its stigmata is the pettiness implicit in envy The Webster’s definition of the word won’t quite do: “(1) Obs malice; (2) painful or resentful awareness of the advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage.” The. .. the seven deadly sins, writes: Envy is the great leveler: if it cannot level things up, it will level them down At its best, Envy is a climber and a snob; at its worst it is a destroyer—rather than have anyone happier than itself, it will see us all miserable together.” A selfpoisoning of the mind, envy is usually less about what one lacks than about what other people have A strong element of the. .. punishments in hell for the deadly offenses Through history, the famous list has emerged in theological and philosophical tracts, psychology, politics, social criticism, popular culture, and art and literature Whether the deadly seven to you represent the most common human foibles or more serious spiritual shortcomings, they stir the imagination and evoke the inevitable question—what is your deadly sin? Our... business xviii PREFACE The origins of envy, like those of wisdom, are unknown, a mystery People confident of their religion might say envy is owing to original sin, part of the baggage checked through on the way out of the Garden of Eden The Bible is filled with stories of envy, some acted out, many subdued Of the essence of envy is its clandestinity, its surreptitiousness Envy is above all the hidden emotion—so... and the rest are fairly shaky and hence usually in dispute, which clears the ground for envy, resentment, and spite among fellow workers in the same vineyard Many of William Hazlitt’s aphorisms, collected under the title Characteristics, are about envy “Those who are most distrustful of themselves,” he writes, “are the most envious of others: as the most weak and cowardly are the most revengeful.” The. .. one deadly sin at a time Through both historical and contemporary explorations, each writer finds the conceptual and practical challenges that a deadly sin poses to spirituality, ethics, and everyday life The notion of the Seven Deadly Sins did not originate in the Bible Sources identify early lists of transgressions classified in the 4th century by Evagrius of Pontus and then by John of Cassius In the. .. love.” The notion of envy runs throughout Nietzsche’s various works Nietzsche thought the French and subsequent revolutions were fired by the impulse of envy He tended to assume that the spiritually small man envied the spiritually large The golden sheath of pity conceals the dagger of envy, ” he wrote He felt that “sometimes we owe a friend to the lucky circumstance that we give him no cause for envy. ” . Cassius. In the 6th century, Gregory the Great formulated the traditional seven. The sins were ranked by increasing severity, and judged to be the greatest offenses to the soul and the root of all other. Whether the deadly seven to you represent the most common human foibles or more serious spiritual shortcom- ings, they stir the imagination and evoke the inevitable ques- tion—what is your deadly. known envy, but permit me to doubt it. To err may be human, but to envy is undoubtedly so. Although I don’t wish to seem rivalrous, nonetheless among the seven deadly sins, envy, I feel, may be the