Quotes
Quotes about Envy
I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.
Do not envy a sinner; you don't know what disaster awaits him.
Our envy of others devours us most of all.
Envy is like a fly that passes all the body's sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores.
The truest mark of being born with great qualities, is being born without envy.
If we did but know how little some enjoy of the great things that they possess, there would not be much envy in the world.
The only person worth envying is he person who doesn't envy.
Envy is honors foe.
They that envy others are their inferiors.
Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.".
However human, envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as "the most anti-social and evil of all passions.
We envy those whose possessions or achievements are a reflection on our own. They are our neighbors and equals. It is they, above all who make plain the nature of our failure.
To be truly selfish one needs a degree of self-esteem. The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unattainable, envy takes the place of greed.
The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements.
Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.
The first art to be learned by a ruler is to endure envy. [Lat., Ars prima regni posse te invidiam pati.]
If the crow had been satisfied to eat his prey in silence, he would have had more meat and less quarreling and envy. [Lat., Sed tacitus pasci si posset corvus, haberet Plus dapis, et rixae multo minus invidiaeque.]
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.
It is the stain and disgrace of the age to envy virtue, and to be anxious to crush the very flower of dignity. [Lat., Est haec saeculi labes quaedam et macula virtuti invidere, velle ipsum florem dignitatis infringere.]
Where may the wearied eye repose, When gazing on the Great; Where neither guilty glory glows, Nor despicable state? Yes--one the first, the last, the best, The Cincinnatus of the West Whom envy dared not hate, Bequeathed the name of Washington To make man blush; there was but one.
Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.
