<table> <tr><td><b>Vice</b></td><td><b>Virtue against which it sins</b></td><td><b>Brief description</b></td></tr> <tr><td>Pride (1) </td><td>Humility </td><td>Seeing ourselves as we are and not comparing ourselves to others is humility. Pride and vanity are competitive. If someone else's pride really bothers you, you have a lot of pride.</td></tr> <tr><td>Avarice/Greed (5) </td><td>Generosity </td><td>This is about more than money. Generosity means letting others get the credit or praise. It is giving without having expectations of the other person. Greed wants to get its "fair share" or a bit more.</td></tr> <tr><td>Envy (2) </td><td>Love </td><td>"Love is patient, love is kind…" Love actively seeks the good of others for their sake. Envy resents the good others receive or even might receive. Envy is almost indistinguishable from pride at times.</td></tr> <tr><td>Wrath/Anger (3) </td><td>Kindness </td><td>Kindness means taking the tender approach, with patience and compassion. Anger is often our first reaction to the problems of others. Impatience with the faults of others is related to this.</td></tr> <tr><td>Lust (7) </td><td>Self control </td><td>Self control and self mastery prevent pleasure from killing the soul by suffocation. Legitimate pleasures are controlled in the same way an athlete's muscles are: for maximum efficiency without damage. Lust is the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but they tend to go out of control.</td></tr> <tr><td>Gluttony (6) </td><td>Faith and Temperance </td><td>Temperance accepts the natural limits of pleasures and preserves this natural balance. This does not pertain only to food, but to entertainment and other legitimate goods, and even the company of others.</td></tr> <tr><td>Sloth (4) </td><td>Zeal </td><td>Zeal is the energetic response of the heart to God's commands. The other sins work together to deaden the spiritual senses so we first become slow to respond to God and then drift completely into the sleep of complacency.</td></tr> </table>

Meeting with John Kennedy's aide Ted Sorenson shortly after Kennedy's inaugural address, Richard Nixon remarked that there were things in the speech he would liked to have said. "Do you mean the part about 'Ask not what your country can do for you...?' said Sorenson. "No," replied Nixon, "the part beginning 'I do solemnly swear...'" <i>As recounted by Clifton Faidman</i>

Other passions have objects to flatter them, and which seem to content and satisfy them for a while. There is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.

The real distinction is that <i>one is jealous of what one has, envious of what other people have</i>.

Envy must also be distinguished from general yearning. One sees people at great social ease and wishes to be more like them; or feels keenly how good it would be once more to be young; or longs to be wealthier; or pines to be taller, thinner, more muscular, less awkward, more beautiful generally. All this is yearning. Envy is never general, but always very particular--at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.

To covet is to want somebody else's good so strongly ("inordinately," as the Christian tradition says) that one is tempted to steal it. To envy is to resent somebody else's good so much that one is tempted to destroy it. The coveter has empty hands and wants to fill them with somebody's goods. The envier has empty hands and therefore wants to empty the hands of the envied.... But failed covetousness is likely to curdle into envy: the envier is often a disgruntled coveter.

Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.

Anger is aroused when a person suffers a real or perceived injury. ... Envy, pride, and high material and status expectations make one particularly susceptible to anger since they lower the threshold for real or perceived injuries.