The truest mark of being born with great qualities is being born without envy.

Envy is a report on your own standing, not on the other person. Someone who is genuinely secure in what they can do finds another’s success interesting rather than threatening, because it does not subtract anything from them. The absence of envy is therefore hard to fake and tells you more than any accomplishment does. It shows what a person believes about themselves when nobody is grading.

When envy arrives, treat it as information rather than a character failure. Ask precisely what the other person has that you want, since the answer is often narrower than the feeling, and then decide whether you actually want to pay for it.