Faults We Bring on Ourselves

But we maintain that some faults grow up with no natural cause giving birth to them, simply from the free choice of a corrupt and evil will. Such are envy and this very sin of greed. They are caught, so to speak, from outside, and have no origin in us from natural instincts. Yet the more easily they are guarded against and avoided, the more wretched they make the mind they have taken hold of and seized, and they hardly let it reach the remedies that would cure it. This is either because those who are wounded by opponents they could have ignored, avoided, or easily overcome do not deserve to be healed by a quick cure, or else because, having laid their foundations badly, they are unworthy to raise a building of virtue and reach the summit of perfection.