Envy Quotes - Page 12

• An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.

  Socrates

  Daughter, Revenge, Pride

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her... I don’t know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored...Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that. It’s her general air of being someone in particular that strikes me.

  Henry James

  Girl, Strong, Clever

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• The tyranny imposed on the soul by anger, or fear, or lust, or pain, or envy, or desire, I generally call 'injustice.'

  Plato

  Pain, Anger, Soul

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• He in whose mind is no anger, hatred, or envy, who never loses his balance, dies, or is born, who is he but God?

  Swami Vivekananda

  Anger, Hatred, Mind

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Addresses on Bhakti Yoga: Art of living”, p.12, editionNEXT.com

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• Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that. That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating. They are full of envy and malice, editors are.

  Mark Twain

  Smart, Editors, Teeth

  Mark Twain (2014). “What Is Man? (Annotated Edition)”, p.138, Jazzybee Verlag

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• We need to get rid of hate, envy, jealousy, discord in ourselves, so we can reach a solution in terms of peace in order to feel that time has come for human happiness.

  Chico Xavier

  Hate, Order, Needs

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• I envy you going to Oxford: it is the most flower-like time of one's life. One sees the shadow of things in silver mirrors. Later on, one sees the Gorgon's head, and one suffers, because it does not turn one to stone.

  Oscar Wilde

  Flower, Mirrors, Oxford

  Oscar Wilde (1962). “Letters”

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• The human species was too fond of lying, cheating, envy, ignorance, self-pity, self-righteousness, and utopian visions that always led to mass murder-but until and if it destroyed itself, it harbored the potential to become nobler, to take responsibility for its actions, to live and let live, and to earn the stewardship of the earth.

  Dean Koontz

  Cheating, Lying, Ignorance

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• For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For
  whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Mean, Humility, Men

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “The World as Will and Representation”, p.234, Courier Corporation

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• Competition between women is good only if it does not prevail; that is to say if it coexists with affinity, affection, with a real sense of being mutually indispensable, with sudden peaks of solidarity in spite of envy, jealousy and the whole inevitable cohort of bad feelings.

  Elena Ferrante

  Real, Feelings, Competition

  Elena Ferrante (2016). “Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey”, p.304, Penguin

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• We prefer people who are trying to imitate us more than those who are trying to equal us. This is because imitation is a sign of esteem, but the desire to equal others is a sign of envy.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  People, Desire, Trying

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• Envy makes people lonely, and brings them great suffering. It is horrible stuff to have in our flesh, and it is a sin we need to take deadly seriously.

  Esther Smith

  Lonely, People, Suffering

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• Five great enemies of peace inhabit us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ambition, Pride, Enemy

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• Merit challenges envy.

  John Dryden

  Challenges, Merit

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• The Sicilian tyrants never devised a greater punishment than envy.

  Juvenal

  Punishment, Tyrants, Sicilian

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• Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.

  Alain de Botton

  Confused, Ambition, Tangled

  Twitter post from Sep 15, 2013

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• There comes a time in each man's education in which he comes to the conclusion that envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide, and society in in conspiracy against each one of its members.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Suicide, Ignorance, Men

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• You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed.

  Michel Faber

  War, Blood, Greed

  Michel Faber (2014). “The Book of Strange New Things”, p.447, Canongate Books

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• Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul. Perhaps the comparison can be extended.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Jealousy, Soul, Humans

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• The gilded sheath of pity sometimes covers the dagger of envy.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Daggers, Sometimes, Pity

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• Envy grieves. Jealousy rages.

  Mason Cooley

  Jealousy, Grieving, Rage

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• Envy awakens at the sound of a distant laugh.

  Mason Cooley

  Laughing, Sound

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• After Voltaire: envy is chained to the portico of the temple of glory and can neither enter nor leave.

  Mason Cooley

  Temples, Glory, Chained

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• Envy, like a false mirror, distorts the symmetry of the sweetest form.

  Norm MacDonald

  Mirrors, Form, Symmetry

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• A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.

  H. L. Mencken

  Ideas, Imbeciles, Skepticism

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.163, Vintage

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