Quotes About Envy

What is envy? It is nothing but passive jealousy. Maybe jealousy is too strong a phenomenon; envy is a little passive. The difference may be of degrees, but it is not of quality, it is only of quantity. Envy can become jealousy at any moment; envy is just jealousy in progress. Mind has to drop all envies and jealousies.

The word "jealousy" is often used as if it were synonymous with envy; but I think the distinction worth preserving. Jealousy is predominantly concerned with the fear of loss of something one possesses, envy with the wish to own something another possesses. Othello suffers from the fear that he has lost Desdemona's love. Iago suffers from envy of the position held by Cassio, to which he feels entitled.

Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realize how widespread envy was.

Envy is more irreconcilable than hate. It is the most corroding of all political vices and also a great power in our land. The friends of freedom are content to be envied, but envy not.

I envy what I fear and hate what I envy.

I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods: I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfetter’d by the sense of crime, To whom a conscience never wakes; Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth; Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; ‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

You will be able to check envy if you rejoice with the man whom you envy whenever he rejoices, and grieve whenever he grieves.

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

No, I most certainly do not think advertising people are wonderful. I think they are horrible, and the worst menace to mankind, next to war; perhaps ahead of war. They stand for the material viewpoint, for the importance of possessions, of desire, of envy, of greed. And war comes from these things.

Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it; and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.

Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.

Yes, free markets tend to produce unequal incomes. We should not be ashamed of that. On the contrary, our system is the envy of the world and should be a source of pride.

In a way, I envy the freedom artists have. Artists can push themselves beyond their limits, in pursuit of their ideas and their vision, even if they are inhabited by demons that can also play tricks on them.

Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.

I envy people who can think, 'No, I'm not going to work today' when they have a huge pile of deadlines stacking up.

I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me.

To help us bring benefit to others through our words and actions, it is useful to cultivate an attitude of sympathetic joy in others’ achievements and good fortune. This attitude is a powerful antidote against envy, which is not only a source of unnecessary suffering on the individual level but also an obstacle to our ability to reach out and engage with others.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

Sometimes I envy painters, it is wonderful to remain in front of a bouquet of flowers a whole morning, or even longer. A photographer is like a cloud, pushed all around, always dependent on the exterior world. That's what I sometimes feel as a pain and an error.

On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.

There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of depsair

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

Do I envy Madonna’s body? Yes. Do I thank God that she has it? Yes! If you’re fifty-something and you look like Madonna, and you put a lifetime’s work in the way you look, then flash it to the world!

I've given parties that have made Indian rajahs green with envy. I've had prima donnas break $10,000 engagements to come to my smallest dinners. When you were still playing button back in Ohio, I entertained on a cruising trip that was so much fun that I had to sink my yacht to make my guests go home.

Envy like fire always makes for the highest points.

I don't really understand what a dictator is, but on the other hand I sometimes, in a nice way, envy myself," he said. "I am the last and only dictator in Europe and indeed there are none anywhere else in the world.

We envy people we love for being always in their own loved company.

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm.

Satan has parted fathers and mothers. Filling their hearts with his envy and hate. Aiding their pathway down to destruction, leaving their children like orphans to stray. The family who prays will never be parted.

There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.

Nothing can allay the rage of biting envy.

Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.

If there be a pleasure on earth which angels cannot enjoy, and which they might almost envy man the possession of, it is the power of relieving distress--if there be a pain which devils might pity man for enduring, it is the death-bed reflection that we have possessed the power of doing good, but that we have abused and perverted it to purposes of ill.

Anger is a violent act, envy a constant habit - no one can be always angry, but he may be always envious.

School is indeed a training for later life not because it teaches the 3 Rs (more or less), but because it instills the essential cultural nightmare fear of failure, envy of success, and absurdity.

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.

One hundred years ago, visionary political leaders from the Progressive Era established a system of national forests and parks in our country that are the envy of the world and today are the treasure of an entire nation. Why not a similar, global vision for our generation?

When a jealous person sees signs of other people's success and good fortune, his heart is pierced with envy. But someone who has learned to rejoice in the good fortune of others experiences only happiness. Seeing another person's beautiful house or attractive partner immediately makes him happy - the fact that they are not his own is irrelevant.

Christianity provided man for the first time with supernatural beings who, he knew, could neither envy nor ridicule him.

The only thing I envy in young people is their livers.

I almost envy people who say whatever they want.

Envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame that nobody ever had the confidence to own it.

The politics of envy is the politics of this commandment: "Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote." It is the politics of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

People who make the choice to study, work hard or do whatever they endeavor is to give it the max on themselves to reach to the top level. And you have the people who get envy and jealous, yet are not willing to put that work in, and they want to get the same praise.

If you're in a subordinate position of some sort and pretty much all of us are at some point in our lives, your general tendency is to try and impress the people above you or person above you so well that they will like you, keep you or maybe promote you. In the process of doing that you are not aware that that person above has insecurities and if you try so hard they may see that you are after their job or that you are better than they are or they might envy the fact you are younger.

If every man's internal care Were written on his brow, How many would our pity share Who raise our envy now?

The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.