before envying others, ask whether you would accept an offer to pay what they did to get what they have. I find that most of the time we envy others for their wealth, honor, and privilege; but if someone were to say to us, “You can have the same amount that they have for the same price,” we would not want it. For in order to have these things that they do, we must flatter, we must endure insult and injury, we must give up our freedoms. du Vair, The Moral Philosophy of the Stoics (1585)
