"Envy is like a fly that passes all the body's sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores"
About this Quote
Envy, in Chapman’s framing, isn’t a grand, tragic sin; it’s a pest with instincts. The simile does two clever things at once: it shrinks envy down to something small and contemptible, and it makes it feel inevitable, almost automatic. A fly doesn’t weigh evidence or seek truth. It drifts past the “sounder parts” because health is boring. Damage is where the scent is. That’s the subtext: envy isn’t just noticing someone else’s advantage; it’s a compulsive fixation on whatever looks infected in their life, because that’s where your own resentment can feed.
The bodily imagery is deliberately crude, even faintly embarrassing. Chapman pushes envy out of the realm of respectable opinion and into the realm of appetite. “Sores” implies both injury and shame, the kind of thing you’d rather keep covered. Envy becomes a form of moral unhygiene: it crowds around weakness, probes it, keeps it wet. And “dwells” is the twist of the knife. This isn’t a passing thought; it’s residency, a decision to live in somebody else’s worst moment.
Chapman wrote as a poet-journalist in an early 20th-century culture fluent in plainspoken moral lessons, when public character and private reputation carried high stakes in small towns and national newspapers alike. The line still lands because it describes a media logic before social media existed: attention skims past competence and steadiness, then camps out on the flaw. Envy doesn’t just dislike your success; it needs your sore to prove it was never really deserved.
The bodily imagery is deliberately crude, even faintly embarrassing. Chapman pushes envy out of the realm of respectable opinion and into the realm of appetite. “Sores” implies both injury and shame, the kind of thing you’d rather keep covered. Envy becomes a form of moral unhygiene: it crowds around weakness, probes it, keeps it wet. And “dwells” is the twist of the knife. This isn’t a passing thought; it’s residency, a decision to live in somebody else’s worst moment.
Chapman wrote as a poet-journalist in an early 20th-century culture fluent in plainspoken moral lessons, when public character and private reputation carried high stakes in small towns and national newspapers alike. The line still lands because it describes a media logic before social media existed: attention skims past competence and steadiness, then camps out on the flaw. Envy doesn’t just dislike your success; it needs your sore to prove it was never really deserved.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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