The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.

Baltasar Gracián (1601–1658), a Spanish Jesuit and moralist of the Baroque era, is best known for his aphoristic reflections on character, prudence, and social life. The sentiment about envy fits squarely within the ethical-psychological observations that run through his maxims, where he dissects courtly rivalry, reputation, and the passions that corrode judgment. In Gracián’s world—shaped by Spain’s seventeenth-century culture of honor and public esteem—“applause” is a social currency, and envy is portrayed as a self-inflicted torment triggered repeatedly whenever another person’s merit is publicly recognized.

The line treats envy as a kind of recurring death: the envious person suffers anew each time the admired rival receives praise. Gracián’s point is less about the envied person than about the envious observer’s inner slavery to comparison and public opinion. Applause, which should be a neutral acknowledgment of excellence, becomes for the envious a repeated wound, turning others’ success into personal misery. The aphorism also implies a moral remedy: detach self-worth from rivalry and learn to take pleasure in merit—otherwise one lives in a cycle of resentment that multiplies suffering without changing reality.