Envied Quotes - Page 6

• She was thirty-nine. No, she did not envy her eighteen-year- old self at all. But she did envy, envied every day more bitterly, that young girl's genuine independence, largeness, scope, and courage.

  Doris Lessing

  Girl, Self, Years

  Doris Lessing (2010). “Stories”, p.494, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no beauty like that which was spoiled by an accident; no accomplishments and graces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudely hindered the development of.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Beauty, Accomplishment, Grace

  Charles Dudley Warner (1872). “Back-log studies and My summer in a garden”, p.35

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Success, Hate, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.216

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• All envy would be extinguished, if it were universally known that there are none to be envied.

  Samuel Johnson

  Envy, Humanity, Would Be

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson...”, p.73

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I. At Tea THE kettle descants in a cosy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then in her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And says there was never so sweet a room. And the happy young housewife does not know That the woman beside her was his first choice, Till the fates ordained it could not be so.... Betraying nothing in look or voice The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

  Thomas Hardy

  Sweet, Husband, Fate

  Thomas Hardy (1998). “Hardy: Selected Poems”, p.96, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her fathers head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.

  George R. R. Martin

  Girl, Dream, Song

  George R. R. Martin (2011). “A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle: A Song of Ice and Fire Series: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows”, p.1775, Bantam

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design." "You say this as if you envied him." "There are worse prisons than words.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Memories, Book, Past

  4 Copy quote

• In District 12, looking old is something of an achievement since so many people die early. You see an elderly person, you want to congratulate them on their longevity, ask the secret of survival. A plump person is envied because they aren't scraping by like the majority of us. But here is different. Wrinkles aren't desirable. A round belly isn't a sign of success.

  Suzanne Collins

  Wrinkles, Elderly, People

  Suzanne Collins (2011). “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, p.167, Scholastic Inc.

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• The thing is that I am a member of that sad, ever-dwindling minority... the child of an unbroken home. I have carried this albatross since the age of eleven, when I started at grammar school. Not a day would pass without somebody I knew turning out to be adopted or illegitimate, or to have mothers who were about to hare off with some bloke, or to have dead fathers and shabby stepfathers. What busy lives they led. How I envied their excuses for introspection, their ear-marked receptacles for every just antagonism and noble loyalty.

  Martin Amis

  Loyalty, Mother, Children

  Martin Amis (1973). “The Rachel papers”, Jonathan Cape

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think we need to find out why the citizens of the world's wealthiest, most envied, most powerful country are so cynical, so distressed, so angry, so ticked of about so many things.

  William Bennett

  Country, Powerful, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.

  Erica Jong

  Cheerful, Terrified, My Friends

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.233, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• ‎He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.

  Charles Finch

  Book, People, Favourite

  45 Copy quote

• I envied women with signature hair-dos, signature perfumes, signature sign-offs. Novelists who tell Vogue Magazine: “I can’t live without my Smythson notebook, Pomegranate Noir cologne by Jo Malone and Frette sheets”. In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system.

  Emma Forrest

  Notebook, Hair, Vogue Magazine

  Emma Forrest (2012). “Your Voice in My Head”, p.30, A&C Black

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Simple, Numbers, Gentleman

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.63, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• She left me, offended at my want of sympathy, and thinking, no doubt, that I envied her. I did not - at least, I firmly believed I did not.

  Anne Bronte

  Sympathy, Thinking, Doubt

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.691, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• If our inward griefs were written on our brows, how many who are envied now would be pitied. It would seem that they had their deadliest foe in their own breast, and their whole happiness would be reduced to mere seeming.

  Pietro Metastasio

  Happiness, Grief, Would Be

  4 Copy quote

• I wasn't even in a newspaper office where I was getting assignments in competition with other people. I remember earlier, though, that I knew a young woman who had been published in the New Yorker, and I was so jealous of her. It wasn't exactly a personal competition. I just envied that accomplishment.

  Gloria Steinem

  Jealous, Accomplishment, Office

  Source: www.elle.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man of fashion does not like to be reckoned poor, no more than he likes to be reckoned unhappy. We none of us endeavor to be happy, Sir, but merely to be thought so; and for my part, I had rather be in a state of misery, and envied for my supposed happiness, than in a state of happiness, and pitied for my supposed misery.

  Elizabeth Inchbald

  Fashion, Men, Unhappy

  6 Copy quote

• Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Self, Envy

  Francis Bacon (1778). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England: In Five Volumes”, p.457

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always believed that fame is a curse. I never envied one of the famous people I've known.

  Bob Dylan

  People, Fame, Curse

  "Why Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature". Interview with Robert Chalmers, www.gq-magazine.co.uk. October 13, 2016.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The people "have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge- I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers."

  John Adams

  Character, Mean, Divine Right

  'A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law' (1765)

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.

  Voltaire

  Animal, Two, People

  Voltaire's letter, 1739.

  86 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune.

  Francis Bacon

  Depressing, Men, Hands

  Francis Bacon, John Blackbourne, George Fabyan Collection (Library of Congress) (1730). “Francisci Baconi Baronis de Verulamio ... Opera Omnia Quatuor Voluminibus Comprehensa: Containing, I. His Natural history. II. Physiological and medical remains. III. The new Atlantis. IV. His Apothegms. V. Essays. VI. Colours of good and evil. VII. History of the reign of Henry VII. VIII. History of Henry VIII. IX. Beginning of the history of Great Britain. X. Of a war with Spain. XI. Of an holy war. XII. The history of the office of alienations. XIII. Advice to the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Geor”, p.310

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Edward Young

  Envy, World, Littles

  4 Copy quote

• The envious pine at others' success; no greater punishment than envy was devised by Sicilian tyrants.

  Horace

  Punishment, Tyrants, Envy

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 226-27, Epistles, I. 2. 57, 1922.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source