Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Envy

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

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hate, Envy, Hatred

• The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Law, Keys

• Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Success, Men, Envy

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1850). “Truth and Poetry: from My Own Life; Or, The Autobiography of Goethe”, p.92

• Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Heart, Names, People

• What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Envy, He Man

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3574, Delphi Classics

• Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Vanity, Envy, Feelings

• The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Ill Will, Envy, World

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.80, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns to soon to hatred.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Envy, Hatred, Needs

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.78, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You May Also Like:

Friedrich Schiller

Heinrich Heine

Friedrich Nietzsche

Lord Byron

William Shakespeare

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Johann Gottfried Herder