The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

has something else. Envy, in fact, is one form of a
vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which
consists in seeing things never in themselves, but
only in their relations. I am earning, let us say, a
salary sufficient for my needs. I should be content,
but I hear that someone else whom I believe to be
in no way my superior is earning a salary twice as
great as mine. Instantly, if I am of an envious
disposition, the satisfactions to be derived from
what I have grow dim, and I begin to be eaten up
with a sense of injustice.
For all this the proper cure is mental discipline,
the habit of not thinking profitless thoughts. After
all, what is more enviable than happiness? And if I
can cure myself of envy I can acquire happiness
and become enviable. The man who has double my
salary is doubtless tortured by the thought that
someone else in turn has twice as much as he has,
and so it goes on. If you desire glory, you may envy
Napoleon. But Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar
envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay,
envied Hercules, who never existed. You cannot,