Quotes and Sayings about Envy
"Pride, envy, avarice - these are the sparks have set on fire the hearts of all men."
- Dante Alighieri
(Related: Men, Envy, Fire, Pride)
"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."
- Sherwood Anderson
(Related: Work, Love, Envy, Horses)
"Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy."
- Aristotle
(Related: Men, Envy, Jealousy)
"Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from Hell."
- Philip James Bailey
(Related: Envy, Hell)
"By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy."
- George Bancroft
(Related: Envy, Glory, Respect)
"Envy, like the worm, never runs but to the fairest fruit; like a cunning bloodhound, it singles out the fattest deer in the flock."
- Francis Beaumont
(Related: Cunning, Envy)
"Envy is human nature."
- Monica Bellucci
(Related: Nature, Envy, Human nature)
"Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion."
- John Berger
(Related: Being, Emotion, Envy, Glamour)
"Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope."
- Josh Billings
(Related: Love, Envy)
"Never trust anyone who wants what you've got. Friend or no, envy is an overwhelming emotion."
- Eubie Blake
(Related: Trust, Friend, Emotion, Envy)
"God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(Related: God, Love, Truth, Envy, Hatred, Judges, Satan)
"In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well."
- Alain de Botton
(Related: Work, Competition, Day, Envy, Fool, Problems, Writer)
"Yes, free markets tend to produce unequal incomes. We should not be ashamed of that. On the contrary, our system is the envy of the world and should be a source of pride."
- Arthur C. Brooks
(Related: Envy, Pride, World)
"Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now started out as some kind of schlep."
- Helen Gurley Brown
(Related: Successful, Career, Envy, Now, Woman)
"I don't envy men and I certainly wouldn't like to become one now."
- Louise Brown
(Related: Men, Envy, Now)
"Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks."
- Thomas Browne
(Related: Age, Envy)
"Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind."
- Buddha
(Related: Peace, Envy, Mind)
"If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom."
- George Byron
(Related: Wisdom, Certainty, Envy, Fool, Self)
"Above all, you must fight conceit, envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your heart."
- Abraham Cahan
(Related: Heart, Conceit, Envy, Fight)
"Envy is like a fly that passes all the body's sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores."
- Arthur Chapman
(Related: Body, Envy)
"Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read."
- Charles Churchill
(Related: Envy, Resentment, Whim)
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Failure, Virtue, Envy, Ignorance, Misery, Philosophy, Sharing, Socialism)
"To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Sacrifice, Envy)
"Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own."
- Harold Coffin
(Related: Art, Blessings, Envy)
"Loyalty will not permit envy, hate, and uncharitableness to creep into our public thinking."
- Bainbridge Colby
(Related: Envy, Hate, Loyalty, Public, Thinking, Will)
"The United States transportation system is the envy of the world."
- Jerry Costello
(Related: Envy, states, United, World)
"This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high."
- Abraham Cowley
(Related: Lie, Contempt, Envy, May)
"On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts."
- David Duchovny
(Related: People, Envy, Kids, Right)
"On every movie I've done as a director, I look at the producers and having done it, I don't envy them, at all."
- Griffin Dunne
(Related: Envy)
"I do not envy the headache you will have when you awake. In the meantime, dream of large women."
- Cary Elwes
(Related: Women, Dream, Envy, Will)
"In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins."
- Joseph Epstein
(Related: Envy, May)
"Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all."
- Joseph Epstein
(Related: Envy, Fun)
"I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy."
- Joseph Epstein
(Related: Envy)
"Envy is never general, but always very particular - at least envy of the kind one feels strongly."
- Joseph Epstein
(Related: Envy)
"When I went to Philadelphia I was 26 years old and really sitting on top of the world. Family life, a professional career, plenty of friends and associates, and a good reputation, a wish list that could be the envy of many."
- Julius Erving
(Related: Family, Life, Career, Envy, Friends, Old, Reputation, World, Years)
"Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation."
- Henry Fielding
(Related: Envy, Worth)
"Our citizens and those who have gone before us charted the broad outlines of where we need to go, and they would envy our opportunity to translate those dreams into action. And I believe they will judge us very harshly should we fail to act."
- Dave Freudenthal
(Related: Dreams, Opportunity, Action, Envy, Will)
"There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Virtue, Envy, Feeling)
"Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise. For envy is a kind of praise."
- John Gay
(Related: Envy, Fools, May, Praise)
"I have never been given to envy - save for the envy I feel toward those people who have the ability to make a marriage work and endure happily."
- Paul Getty
(Related: Marriage, Work, People, Ability, Envy)
"Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Related: Envy, Hate, Hatred)
"It is good to vary in order that you may frustrate the curious, especially those who envy you."
- Baltasar Gracian
(Related: Envy, May, Order)
"A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother's love."
- Thomas Chandler Haliburton
(Related: Love, Mother, Envy, First, Smile, Smiles, Woman, Words)
"I don't work a five-day week as a rule, and I've managed to fill that time up. It hasn't been that hard. I volunteer at school. I'm working because I love it. Yet, I don't not envy women who have a stay-at-home job, because you miss stuff."
- Deidre Hall
(Related: Love, Time, Women, Work, Envy, Job, School)
"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
(Related: Love, Envy, Justice)
"I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt."
- Ben Hecht
(Related: Wealth, Envy, Guilt, Man, Poor, Poverty)
"Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death."
- Heinrich Heine
(Related: Death, People, Communism, Envy, Hunger, Language)
"Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy."
- Heraclitus
(Related: Happiness, Envy)
"The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living."
- Thomas Hobbes
(Related: Competition, Envy, Living, Praise)
"I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation."
- Dustin Hoffman
(Related: People, Envy, Nothing, Sunset, Vacation, Wonder)
"I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Equality, Envy, Passion, Respect)
"Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace."
- Horace
(Related: Envy, Poverty)
"The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Gods, Being, Ecstasy, Envy, Joy)
"The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring."
- Victor Hugo
(Related: Envy, Hate)
"I envy children who know that they're going to become doctors, know they're going to go into the forces or whatever. I think choice is one of the hardest things, but that's what I try to give my children, to say you can do anything."
- Jeremy Irons
(Related: Children, Choice, Doctors, Envy)
"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."
- Jim Jeffords
(Related: Economy, Envy, Future, Nation, Nothing, Security, World)
"One of the greatest things drama can do, at it's best, is to redefine the words we use every day such as love, home, family, loyalty and envy. Tragedy need not be a downer."
- Ben Kingsley
(Related: Family, Home, Love, Day, Drama, Envy, Loyalty, Tragedy, Words)
"I'm still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit."
- Mike Krzyzewski
(Related: Time, Wife, Habit, Daughters, Envy, Trying)
"Skating takes up 70 percent of my time, school about 25 percent. Having fun and talking to my friends, 5 percent. It's hard. I envy other kids a lot of things, but I get a guilt trip when I'm not training."
- Michelle Kwan
(Related: Time, Envy, Friends, Fun, Guilt, Kids, School, Talking, Training)
"I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on."
- Oscar Levant
(Related: People, Blame, Envy)
"Envy like fire always makes for the highest points."
- Titus Livius
(Related: Envy, Fire)
"We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do."
- Karl A. Menninger
(Related: Envy, Forbidden)
"Large parties given to very young children... foster the passions of vanity and envy, and produce a love of dress and display which is very repulsive in the character of a child."
- Susanna Moodie
(Related: Love, Character, Children, Dress, Envy, Vanity)
"I envy the dead."
- William Mulholland
(Related: Envy)
"The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful... or fun for that matter."
- Dave Mustaine
(Related: Bible, Books, Envy, Fun, Gluttony, Greed, Help, Lust, Pretty, Pride, Self, Wrath)
"I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire."
- Charles Olson
(Related: American, Envy, Poets, Reason)
"I'd the upbringing a nun would envy. Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body."
- Joe Orton
(Related: Body, Envy)
"Envy aims very high."
- Ovid
(Related: Envy)
"A renewed commitment to the freedom and opportunity of our people is the touchstone of our time. In this new century, where tests are many and challenges change with the shifting of the wind, we must hold fast to the principles that have made our nation the envy of the world."
- Bill Owens
(Related: Change, Time, People, Opportunity, Commitment, Envy, Freedom, Nation, Principles, Tests, Wind, World)
"Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy."
- Camille Paglia
(Related: Men, Women, Content, Earth, Envy, Nothing, Satisfaction)
"It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last."
- Charles Sanders Peirce
(Related: Envy, Man, Reason)
"Birds have wings; they're free; they can fly where they want when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people envy."
- Roger Tory Peterson
(Related: People, Birds, Envy, Want)
"Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace."
- Petrarch
(Related: Peace, Anger, Ambition, Enemies, Envy, Pride)
"If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang."
- Charley Reese
(Related: Envy, Malice)
"O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!"
- Samuel Richardson
(Related: Power, Envy, Nothing)
"The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Being, Envy)
"People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: People, Being, Envy, Fortune, May, Merit, Pride)
"Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Envy, Pride)
"Only fools live in the past or carry envy to the present."
- Chi Chi Rodriguez
(Related: Envy, Fools, Past, Present)
"The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch."
- Jim Rohn
(Related: Envy)
"Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures."
- Theodore Roosevelt
(Related: Wealth, Deep, Envy, Harm, Hatred, Vices)
"We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be."
- Jean Rostand
(Related: Time, People)
"Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions."
- Paul Ryan
(Related: Change, People, Fear, Hope, Anxiety, Emotions, Envy)
"They envy the distinction I have won; let them therefore, envy my toils, my honesty, and the methods by which I gained it."
- Sallust
(Related: Honesty, Envy)
"Envy, my son, wears herself away, and droops like a lamb under the influence of the evil eye."
- Jacopo Sannazaro
(Related: Son, Envy, Evil, Eye, Influence)
"When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(Related: People, Dumb, Envy)
"Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it."
- William Shenstone
(Related: Fear, Envy, Jealousy)
"There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy."
- William Shenstone
(Related: People, Day, Envy, Nothing, Reason)
"There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy."
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(Related: Heart, Envy, Passion)
"Moral indignation in most cases is, 2% moral, 48% indignation, and 50% envy."
- Vittorio De Sica
(Related: Envy)
"I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: People, Attention, Envy)
"I never quite understood these actors - though I envy them sometimes - who can lie out for a year or two. I feel as though time is a real pressing issue, and I want to get as much work done in the time that I have left."
- Sylvester Stallone
(Related: Time, Work, Lie, Actors, Envy, Want)
"Far less envy in America than in France, and far less wit."
- Stendhal
(Related: America, Envy, France, Wit)
"Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that."
- Oliver Stone
(Related: Power, Envy, Jealousy)
"To walk behind others on a road you are traveling together, to give precedence to others without envy - this is painful for an individual and painful for a nation."
- Gustav Stresemann
(Related: Envy, Nation, Road, Traveling)
"When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad."
- Tacitus
(Related: Men, Envy)
"The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous."
- Rabindranath Tagore
(Related: Envy)
"Nonetheless, do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter? Of course I do. I might add, perhaps even a touch of envy too, because of the solace."
- Studs Terkel
(Related: People, Envy, Respect)
"Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts."
- Jean Vanier
(Related: People, Belief, Envy, Gifts, Ignorance)
"With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy."
- Lope de Vega
(Related: Books, Envy, Flowers, Garden)
"I think a lot of people in television news look at the cable networks with great envy."
- Chris Wallace
(Related: People, Envy, News, Television)
"Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Time, Christ, Envy, Sin)
"Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Home, Envy, Pride)
"Envy is an insult to oneself."
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(Related: Envy, Insult)
"A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned."
- Xun Zi
(Related: Faith, Feelings, Crime, Envy, Hate, Loyalty, Sense, Violence, Will)