ENVY QUOTES II

quotations about envy

Envy is a gun with a faulty breech-lock which flares back and burns the gunner.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


For envy is a gadding passion, and walketh the streets, and doth not keep home.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays


Envy is like farts. Everyone suffers from it. But, if you let it out ... you don't smell very nice.

NINA RAINE

Rabbit


Envy generally admires and abhors out of proportion.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


If envy, like anger, did not burn itself in its own fire, and consume and destroy those persons it possesses, before it can destroy those it wishes worst to, it would set the whole world on fire, and leave the most excellent persons the most miserable.

EARL OF CLARENDON

attributed, Day's Collacon


Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


Covetousness, which is idolatry.

BIBLE

Colossians 3:5


If envy would burn, there would be no need for wood.

SERBIAN PROVERB


Envy ... feeds on outcast entrails like a kite;
In which foul heap, if any ill lies hid,
She sticks her beak into it, shakes it up,
And hurls it all abroad, that all may view it.
Corruption is her nutriment; but touch her
With any precious ointment, and you kill her:
Where she finds any filth in men, she feasts,
And with her black throat bruits it through the world
Being sound and healthful; but if she but taste
The slenderest pittance of commended virtue,
She surfeits of it, and is like a fly
That passes all the body's soundest parts,
And dwells upon the sores; or if her squint eye
Have power to find none there, she forges some:
She makes that crooked ever which is straight;
Calls valour giddiness, justice tyranny;
A wise man may shun her, she not herself:
Whithersoever she flies from her harms,
She bears her foe still clasp'd in her own arms;
And therefore ... let us avoid her.

GEORGE CHAPMAN

Bussy D'Ambois


If envy were a ringworm, we would all have scabs.

MEXICAN PROVERB


Envy like fire always makes for the highest points.

LIVY

Annales


Our envy always outlives the felicity of its object.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Moral Maxims


There was no pleasure like being envied on a mass scale.

ANNA GODBERSON

The Luxe


Envy follows worth as a shadow follows a body.

SPANISH PROVERB


Envy was a treasure-hoarding dragon, dainty and diabolical.

HOLLY CUPALA

Tell Me a Secret


Envy, among other ingredients, has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characteristics


Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude - and destroy if possible - those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Angel's Game


Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy.

AESCHYLUS

Agamemnon


Envy ought in strict truth to have no place whatever allowed it in the heart of man; for the goods of this present world, are so vile and low, that they are beneath it; and those of the future world, are so vast and exalted, that they are above it.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


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

NORMAN MACDONALD

Maxims and Moral Reflections