Envy Quotes

As a moth gnaws a garment so doth envy consume a man.

Existential envy which is directed against the other person’s very nature, is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: “I can forgive everything, but not that you are— that you are what you are—that I am not what you are—indeed that I am not you.” This form of envy strips the opponent of his very existence, for this existence as such is felt to be a “pressure,” a “reproach,” and an unbearable humiliation. In the lives of great men there are always critical periods of instability, in which they alternately envy and try to love those whose merits they cannot but esteem. Only gradually, one of these attitudes will predominate. Here lies the meaning of Goethe’s reflection that “against another’s great merits, there is no remedy but love.

Max Scheler

What kind of plan B?" Hale asked. He was almost holding his breath when a voice answered, "My kind." Macey tried to read the look on his face then, but it was gone in a flash. It had been a simple moment of peace and joy and pure happiness. That voice made Hale happy. It kept him calm. It was his backup and his conscience. Macey couldn't help herself, she envied him.

Ally Carter

Rivalry discovers that courtesy overlooks.

Baltasar Gracián

You sometimes heard about the marginally talented wives of powerful men publishing children's books or designing handbags or, most commonly, becoming photographers. There might even be a show of the wife's work in a well-known but slightly off gallery. Everyone would come see it, and they would treat the wife with unctuous respect. Her photographs of celebrities without makeup, and seascapes, and street people, would be enormous, as though size and great equipment could make up for whatever else was missing.

Meg Wolitzer

Life is funny sometimes. Of course it isn’t as funny as smashing your brand new Mustang convertible into your house and having your life flash before your eyes. Sitting here in my car in the middle of my den, I can't help but think that things could have worked out differently - that could have been happier - that could have lived the life that was meant for me. That was, if I didn't have to keep up with the Greenbergs.

Phil Wohl

Marvel hates her because she's pretty and doesn't have any kids to worry about.

Janet Fitch

If an American worker saw you driving a Cadillac, he worked to. earn enough to buy one for himself; the English worker, on the other hand, sought to deprive you of yours.

Elizabeth Powers

Part of me wanted to be like the other guys at school. I wanted to be simple. People who do less thinking tend to be happier... I wanted to be like the other guys because they were having more fun. But I couldn't be like them because I hated everything they stood for.

J. Matthew Nespoli

I was just thinking... how it is not and it will never be okay to cause pain in someone's life just because of the fact that you are envious of them! Is someone taller than you? Richer than you? More beautiful? That doesn't make it okay to hurt those people, for all you know, they bear deep wounds and carry heavy burdens and their heartache is far greater than anything you could ever bear! People try to hurt people that they're envious of, without knowing that they are adding to what is already painful. And because someone has more than you or has what it is that you want, doesn't mean that they owe you anything! It's not their fault! Be careful, you may just be wounding an angel soul, and a wound inflicted upon an angel soul, will always, always come back to haunt- YOU.

C. JoyBell C.

No bird in a cage has ever come to know what the mountain winds feel like, by staring at the free flying birds, wishing that they would fall from the sky!

C. JoyBell C.

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.

Yann Martel

Envy and resentment are terribly corrosive passions. To suffer at the sight or even the thought of others' enjoyment of life makes one a committed enemy of human happiness. Such people end up being practically a curse upon the human race. They vandalize life, exerting themselves not in the pursuit of gain or pleasure, but to hinder others' enjoyment.

Robert Sheaffer

Is it not strange that the more someone has, the less he feels he has? Envy can never be sated.

Jeff Wheeler

M. Proust was more severe than M. de Caillavet on Anatole France: "He was selfish and supercilious. He had read so much that he had left his heart in other people's books, and all that remained was dryness. One day I asked him how he came to know so much. He said, 'Not by being such a handsome young man as you. I wasn't in demand, and instead of going out I studied and learned'.

Céleste Albaret

The ultimate goal of the arriviste’s aspirations is not to acquire a thing of value, but to be more highly esteemed than others. He merely uses the “thing” as an indifferent occasion for overcoming the oppressive feeling of inferiority which results from his constant comparisons.

Max Scheler

Everyone wanted to see [him] fall so they could devour his remains. As is usually the case, the army of sycophants had turned into a horde of hungry hyenas

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Fiercely guard the passions igniting your heart, so that your flames reach the highest ceilings of success without the eyes of envy.

Suzy Kassem

Harboring envy is saying to God that how He fashioned you in not good enough. Let it go. Embrace who you were created to be.

Ashley N. Sauls

... the serpent hissing between the lips of Envy is so huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that the muscles of her face are strained and contorted,...

Marcel Proust

Envy is an envious person and truth they don't like to wear

Marcelle Hinkson

Princess, the great difference between people in this world is not between the rich and the poor or the good and the evil, the biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have the pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't any pleasure in love, but just watched it with envy, sick envy. The spectators and the performers.

Tennessee Williams

Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did anybody ever seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since it's lodgement is in the heart and not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee against it.

Herman Melville

You know, sometimes I even envy myself.

Johnny Rich

Envy of other people shows how they are unhappy. Their continual attention to others behavior shows how they are boring.

Seneca

Envy, bitter envy, was permeating his soul drop by drop, like a poison that tainted all his pleasures and made his life hateful.

Guy de Maupassant

Unlock joy in any situation!True understanding and mutual respect do not bridge blames, destructive, negative criticisms, false excuses and gossips. To express disappointments and ill-feelings are normal however to gossip around certain people and events in order to put another person down and destroy one's credibility is a form of bullying whether one expresses it publicly or privately.Beware of segregation, regionalism, individualism, discrimination, stereotyping, destructive criticism, false accusations, biased wrong assumptions, prejudice, senseless comparison and unwanted competition because life is much more meaningful to live for where there is unity and harmony.

Angelica Hopes

Still am I the richest and most to be envied - I, the lonesomest one!

Friedrich Nietzsche

The grass is yellow on both sides, envy turning on of them green.

Meghan Blistinsky

I don't envy "busy." Busy means having a schedule, not living life. What I really covet is leisure and peace of mind. Those who have both, have it all.

Donna Lynn Hope

Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however trivial, which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it was no advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to have to envy them.

Marcel Proust

This bastard was in a self-help program? For what? Square-jawed, cleft-chin sufferers? Handsome Bastards Anonymous?

Susan Juby

You can't ever be your heroes, but you can love their gifts.

John Piper

Often change yourself, when you see that people envy you : they will start to change themselves too, but at that time YOU will not envy them...

Alen Sargsyan

I once had a complete life - in love, in envy, in pains. Now, I was living a death. A peaceful, gorgeous, liberating death.

Prashant Chopra

Lack can greatly be the reasons for our conscious and unconscious steps in life. Mind what you lack, move for what is a must and be happy with what you have!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Lack can greatly be the reason for our conscious and unconscious steps in life. Mind what you lack, move for what is a must and be happy with what you have!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Many critics are born of envy.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

He has a mouth, lord," Gerbruht said."I envy him," I said."Envy him, lord?""Most of us have to lower our trews to shit.

Bernard Cornwell

Envy is a sign that you are being overtaken

Bangambiki Habyarimana

I hate this complete obsession with class, especially at this place, you can hardly say 'hello' to anyone before they are getting all prolier-than-thou and telling you about how their dad's a one eyed chimney-sweep with rickets, and how they've still got an outside loo, and have never been on a plane or whatever, all that dubious crap, most of which is usually lies anyway, and I'm thinking why are you telling me this? Am I meant to feel guilty? D'you think it's my fault or something, or are you just feeling pleased with yourself for escaping your pre-determined social role or some self congratulatory bullshit? I mean, what does it matter anyway? People are people, if you ask me, and they rise or fall by their own talents and merits, and their own labours, and blaming the fact they've got a settee rather than a sofa, or eat tea rather tan dinner, that's just an excuse, it's just whining self-pity and shoddy thinking.... I don;t make judgements about other people because of their background and I expect people to treat me with the same courtesy... It's my parent's moeny and its not as if they got it from nicking people's dole or running sweatshops in Johannesburg or something. They worked fucking hard for what they've got. It's a privilege and they treat it as such and they do their best to give something back. But if you ask me, theres no snob like an inverted snob... Im just so fucking bored of people trying to pass plain old envy off as some sort of virtue.

David Nicholls

Never trust anyone who wants what you've got. Friend or no, envy is an overwhelming emotion.

Eunice Blake

People are so unnecessarily negative about envy. It really ought to be struck off the list of deadly sins.

David Lagercrantz

Never be envious of what someone else has.You don't know the price they paid to get it, and you don't know the price they are paying to keep it.

Stephan Labossiere

Where envy is unavoidable it must be used as a stimulus to one’s own efforts, not to the thwarting of the efforts of rivals.

Bertrand Russell

Even envy, wants to even the score.

Anthony Liccione

For Jack Kennedy, who only made campaigning LOOK easy, it was, in fact, anything but.

David Pietrusza

What a shame to be so angered by what you don't have that you treat what you do have like it's nothing.

Caroline Kepnes

Be happy when people envy you, you are on the right path

Bangambiki Habyarimana

At the heart of her bad nature, like many bad natures, was probably envy. And at the heart of envy was possibly hope - that the good fortune of others might one day be hers

Katherine Boo

There is only one invitation it would kill me to refuse, yet I'm tempted to turn it down all the time. I get the invitation every morning when I wake up to actually live a life of complete engagement, a life of whimsy, a life where love does. It doesn't come in an envelope. It's ushered in by a sunrise, the sound of a bird, or the smell of coffee drifting lazily from the kitchen. It's the invitation to actually live, to fully participate in this amazing life for one more day. Nobody turns down an invitation to the White House, but I've seen plenty of people turn down an invitation to fully live.Turning down this invitation comes in lots of flavors. It looks like numbing yourself or distracting yourself or seeing something really beautiful as normal. It can also look like refusing to forgive or not being grateful or getting wrapped around the axle with fear or envy. I think every day God sends us an invitation to live and sometimes we forget to show up or get head-faked into thinking we haven't really been invited. But you see, we have been invited -- every day, all over again

Bob Goff

Crowds most envy the lonely man who walks confidently as if he is walking with the great crowds!

Mehmet Murat ildan

Contentment is indispensable joy.

Lailah Gifty Akita

A spirit of candor and frankness, when wholly unaccompanied with coarseness, headmired in others, but he could not acquire it himself.

Anne Brontë

And envy, envious of a time when the poet, the mystic, the scientist and the statesman were nobler than the merchant.

Soroosh Shahrivar

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

Gore Vidal

I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.

George Eliot

They envy the distinction I have won; let them, therefore, envy my toils, my honesty, and the methods by which I gained it.

Sallust

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Envy Quotes

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