Timon, or the Misanthrope (14)

As a matter of fact, you used to say that they acted absurdly in that they loved you to excess, yet did not dare to enjoy ‘you when they might, and instead of giving free rein to their passion when it lay in their power to do so, they kept watch and ward, looking fixedly at the seal and the bolt; for they thought it enjoyment

enough, not that they were able to enjoy you themselves, but that they were shutting out everyone else from a share in the enjoyment, like the dog in the manger that neither ate the barley herself nor permitted the hungry horse to eat it. Moreover, you laughed them to scorn because they scrimped and saved and, what is strangest of all, were jealous of themselves, all unaware that a cursed valet or a shackle-burnishing steward would slip in by stealth and play havoc, leaving his luckless, unloved master to sit up over his interests beside a dim, narrownecked lamp with a thirsty wick. Why, then, is it not unjust in you, after having found fault with that sort of thing in the past, to charge Timon with the opposite now ?