Failure is not our only punishment for laziness: there is also the success of others.

Jules Renard (1864–1910), a French novelist and diarist, is especially known for the aphoristic observations recorded in his Journal. The line is commonly attributed to that diary tradition: brief, sharpened moral reflections on work, vanity, envy, and the quiet humiliations of everyday life. Renard wrote during the Third Republic, amid a literary culture that prized epigram and self-scrutiny; his Journal often turns personal habits into general truths. This remark fits his recurring theme that idleness is not merely self-defeating but socially revealing—because one’s inaction is measured against the visible achievements of peers.

Renard reframes “punishment” for laziness as more than private failure. Even if the lazy person avoids outright collapse, they still suffer the comparative sting of watching others advance—an external, ongoing consequence that can feel harsher than a single defeat. The aphorism highlights how ambition and self-worth are often relational: we judge ourselves not only by what we do, but by what others accomplish in the same time. It also implies a moral psychology of envy: laziness breeds resentment because it leaves one with fewer grounds for dignity when confronted with others’ success.