Adopted Quote by Luc de Clapiers

The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers. I, on…

— Luc de Clapiers

Philosophers are as jealous as woman; each wants a monopoly of praise.

— George Santayana

For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the…

— Thucydides

Envy feeds on the living, after death it rests, then the honor of a man protects him.

— Ovid

Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation of them in a greater or less degree.

— Samuel Smiles

“The only cure [for envy] in the case of ordinary men and women is happiness, and the difficulty is that envy is itself a…

— Bertrand Russell

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very…

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Taught by centuries of living, the republic of immortal men had achieved a perfection of tolerance, almost of disdain. They knew that over an…

— Jorge Luis Borges

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

— Thomas Hobbes

“All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity…

— George Eliot

“The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of…

— Henry David Thoreau

That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely…

— Ben Jonson