Envy Quotations | Page 5

Had the crow only fed without cawing she would have had more to eat, and much less of strife and envy to contend with. [To noise abroad our success is to invite envy and competition.]

If envy were a fever, all the world would be ill

I doubt that we Americans can come to terms with our money neuroses without understanding the more florid pathology of the very rich for it is our envy and admiration of the rich that supports their habit and keeps us hooked ourselves

How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.

I do not envy the British Cabinet or the Bush administration their choice,

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

How can we explain the perpetuity of envy--a vice which yields no return?

How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.

Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.

Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart like a viper in its hole.

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

Go forward while you can, but if your strength fails you, sit down near the road and gaze without anger or envy at those who pass by. They don't have far to go, either.

Not a single thought managed to take shape in her mind: for the likeness of this day to the last seemed to her the clearest proof that it would be another quite useless day, a day she would gladly have done without. For a moment she thought that a day like this would be pointless for anyone on earth, then abruptly changed her mind as she realised that thousands of women, after a hard week's work, or a family quarrel, or even just after catching a cold, would envy her just for having the leisure to rest in comfort.

Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.

The cure for the sin of envy and jealousy is to find our contentment in God

There is nothing more important to our Nation's future, to our homeland security, and to our economy than ensuring we have a top-notch educational system that is the envy of the world.

Envy not greatness: for thou mak'st thereby Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater.

Let us not envy a certain class of men for their enormous riches; they have paid such an equivalent for them that it would not suit us; they have given for them their peace of mind, their health, their honour, and their conscience; this is rather too dear, and there is nothing to be made out of such a bargain.

We seek our happiness outside ourselves, and in the opinion of men we know to be flatterers, insincere, unjust, full of envy, caprice and prejudice.

An assembly of the states, a court of justice, shows nothing so serious and grave as a table of gamesters playing very high; a melancholy solicitude clouds their looks; envy and rancor agitate their minds while the meeting lasts, without regard to friendship, alliances, birth or distinctions.

Envy and hatred go together. Mutually strengthened by the fact pursue the same object.

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.

I envy certain writers, because there are writers who do go into a kind of different zone, where the writing isn't controlled anymore.

You are just jealous," Magnus remarked calmly. "Because you do not have the soul of a true artiste like myself." "Oh, I am positively green with envy," Ragnor snapped. "Come now, Ragnor. That's not fair," said Magnus. "You know I love it when you make jokes about your complexion.

I have these huge, pointed ears. They're like three times the size of Orlando Bloom's ears. And I think he has ear envy, I love my ears.

I used to have a lot of envy for those musicians who have been universally loved.

The manifestation of the disease of fear is anger, hate, sadness, envy, and hypocrisy; the result of the disease is all the emotions that make humans suffer.

I'm a frustrated driver. I would love to be out on the track instead of them. I look at them with envy.

The envious will die, but envy never. [Fr., Les envieux mourront, mais non jamais l'envie.]

The envious will die, but envy never.

At moments like this I envy those who have found a safe haven in which to bestow their hearts; or perhaps I envy them for having a heart to bestow. I often feel that I myself am without one, and possess in its stead merely a heart shaped stone.

Jimmy had been full of himself back then, thinks Snowman with indulgence and a little envy. He’d been unhappy too, of course. It went without saying, his unhappiness. He’d put a lot of energy into it.

The judgment of posterity is truer, because it is free from envy and malevolence.

It is the stain and disgrace of the age to envy virtue, and to be anxious to crush the very flower of dignity.

Probably nothing in the experience of the rank and file of workers causes more bitterness and envy than the realization which comes sooner or later to many of them that they are "stuck" and can go no further.

Power is seldom innocent, and envy is the yokefellow of eminence.

The brave or the fortunate can afford to laugh at envy.

It is better to arouse envy than pity.

I can see the greed and envy in your eyes.

Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.

In our road through life we may happen to meet with a man casting a stone reverentially to enlarge the cairn of another which stone he has carried in his bosom to sling against that very other's head.

The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy.

The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.

Work hard to discover your gift and you will never envy or hate another human being who is manifesting theirs.

A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

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

Envy awakens at the sound of a distant laugh.

A beautiful woman peers out her window, as full of envy as the harridan who peers up at her from the street.

People may show jealousy, but hide their envy.

Envy grieves. Jealousy rages.

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

There is a vast difference between success at twenty-five and success at sixty. At sixty, nobody envies you. Instead, everybody rejoices generously, sincerely, in your good fortune.

Greatness is always envied - it is only mediocrity that can boast of a host of friends.

Nothing gives small minds a better handle for hatred than superiority ...

Hatred is a prolific vice; envy, a barren vice.

I can't make you understand because you don't know the meaning of fear. You have the heart of a lion and an utter lack of imagination and I envy you both of those qualities. You'll never mind facing realities and you'll never want to escape from them as I do.

Infants, I note with envy, are receptive to enjoyment in a degree not attained by adults this side of the new Jerusalem.

So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them.

The living will envy the dead.

The survivors (of a nuclear war) would envy the dead.

When we envy another, we make their virtue our vice.

Franchement, quand je survole certains pays européens (les éoliennes) ne donne pas envie. (Frankly, when I fly over some European countries, their turbines don't fill me with envy.)

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.

Spite is never lonely; envy always tags along.

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

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

I envy drummers. It must be the ultimate to sing and play drums at the same time. Phil Collins, no wonder he's so f... happy.

...if you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down on you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.

Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite ‘telescope envy’ at gatherings of amateur astronomers.

I like to walk, touch living Mother Earth—bare feet best, and thrill every step. Used to envy happy reptiles that had advantage of so much body in contact with earth, bosom to bosom. [We] live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way.

Despite some struggles of our own, Americas business and economic system remains the envy of much of the world.

Envy is the reverse side of a coin called vanity - Nobody is ever envious of others who is not first proud of himself.

Gloucestershire police must be the envy of the human rights-abusing cop world. From Turkey to Indonesia they will say, 'Kidnapping peace protestors! How did they get away with that one?'

When is enough enough? In envy's eyes, enough never is. Somebody else always has something we want.

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

The lightsome countenance of a friend giveth such an inward decking to the house where it lodgeth, as proudest palaces have cause to envy the gilding.

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.

I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.

What I envy most about you and everyone else heading back to school is the certainty of it all. You’ve got a prescribed set of requirements to guide you through the next few years. Focus your energy on the completion of those assignments and you’ll succeed. Guaranteed. Where’s my syllabus to guide me through life?

Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else's happiness or success

And didn't it always go like that--body parts not lining up the way you wanted them to, all of it a little bit off, as if the world itself were an animated sequence of longing and envy and self-hatred and grandiosity and failure and success, a strange and endless cartoon loop that you couldn't stop watching, because, despite all you knew by now, it was still so interesting.

The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.

It is the nature of the unfortunate to be spiteful, and to envy those who are well to do.

Right now, make a list of what you admire about yourself- don't stop until you've filled a page. Sit and relish each quality and accomplishment. When you remember how much you have to be proud of, you don't need to envy others. Instead of wallowing in your jealousy, use your friends' accomplishments as inspiration to pursue the life you want.

Do not neglect to bring your revolver, Russell. It may be needed, and it does us no good in your drawer with that disgusting cheese." "My lovely Stilton; it's almost ripe, too. I do hope Mr. Thomas enjoys it." "Any riper and it will eat through the woodwork and drop into the room below." "You envy me my educated tastes." "That I will not honour with a response. Get out the door, Russell.

Let me be patient, let me be kind, make me unselfish, without being blind, though I may suffer, I'll envy it not and endure what comes cause he is all that I got

The woman I was seems hopelessly naive. I envy her.

Envy is ashamed of itself. If it weren't hanging back, it would go all the way to emulation and love.

If the resources of different nations are treated as exclusive properties of these nations as wholes, if international economic relations, instead of being relations between individuals, become increasingly relations between whole nations organized as trading bodies, they inevitably become the source of friction and envy between whole nations.

Social justice rests on the hate towards those that enjoy a comfortable position, namely, upon envy.

Human envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as 'the most anti-social and evil of all passions.'

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program - on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off - than on any positive task.

The envy of excellence leads to perdition; the love of it leads to the light.

The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers. I, on the contrary, maintain that they ought to be praised in their lifetime if they merit it; but jealousy and calumny, roused against their virtue or their talent, labour to degrade them if any one ventures to bear testimony to them. It is unjust criticism that they should fear to hazard, not sincere praise.

And I envy the intransigence of my own Countrymen who shoot to kill and never See the victim's face become their own Or find his motive sabotage their motives.

Jealousy dislikes the world to know it.

Envy and fear are the only passions to which no pleasure is attached.