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In the affairs of this world, poverty alone is without envy.

— Giovanni Boccaccio The Decameron (1350)

Sola la miseria è senza invidia nelle cose presenti.

Original text (Italian)

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Notes from Wikiquote

As things are now, only absolute misery is free from envy. (tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)

Topics

Poverty

More quotes by Giovanni Boccaccio

A sweet little mouth with lips like rubies.

The Decameron (1350)

Nobility cannot descend to us as an inheritance, except as do virtue, knowledge, holiness, and such like things.

The ass gets back from the wall as good as he gives.

They boosted themselves with such nauseating self-praise as to make the stones jump out of the walls and flee.

Il Corbaccio (1355)

Every person born into this world has a natural right to sustain, preserve, and defend his own life to the best of his ability.

The Decameron (1350)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies.

Solomon

If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

Leo Tolstoy

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Giovanni Boccaccio (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.