The Envious Quotes

Have you forgotten what we are to say to ourselves every morning? 'Today I shall meet cruel men, cowards and liars, the envious and the drunken. They will be like that because they do not know what is good from what is bad. This is an evil which has fallen upon them not upon me. They are to be pitied, not... ~ C.S. Lewis

The silence of the envious is too noisy. ~ Khalil Gibran

Abusing the prosperous in order to curry the favor of the envious, is an old game that still works better than it should. ~ Edgar Watson Howe

The gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster. ~ John Quincy Adams

The envious must climb with their eyes sewn shut so they cannot covet; the prideful must carry huge stones on their backs to bend them low in a humble manner; the gluttonous must climb without food or water, thereby suffering excruciating hunger; and the lustful must ascend through hot flames to purge themselves of passion's heat. ~ Dan Brown

I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. ~ Herman Melville

I will meet the cruel and the cowardly today, she thought, liars and the envious, the uncaring and unknowing: they will be all around. But their numbers and their carelessness do not mean I have to be like them. For my own part, I know my job; my commissions comes from Those Who Are. ~ Diane Duane

Your machinery is beautiful. Your society people have apologized to me for the envious ridicule with which your newspapers have referred to me. Your newspapers are comic but never amusing. Your Water Tower is a castellated monstrosity with pepperboxes stuck all over it. I am amazed that any people could so abuse Gothic art and make a structure not like a water tower but like a tower of a medieval castle. It should be torn down. It is a shame to spend so much money on buildings with such an unsatisfactory result. Your city looks positively dreary. ~ Oscar Wilde

For him in vain the envious seasons roll
Who bears eternal summer in his soul. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Overwhelming and astounding inequality,especially when it has an element of the unattainable, arouses far less envy than minimal inequality, which inevitably causes the envious to think: I might have been in his place. ~ Helmut Schoeck

It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else. ~ Plutarch

Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it,
feel it, and hate in silence. ~ Washington Allston

O frost bitten blossoms, That are unfolding your wings From out the envious black branches. Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine. The twigs conspire against you! Hear hem! They hold you from behind. ~ William Carlos Williams

For not many men . . . can love a friend who fortune prospers without envying; and about the envious brain cold poison clings and doubles all the pain life brings him. His own woundings he must nurse, and feel another's gladness like a curse. ~ Aeschylus

Satan the envious said with a sigh: Christians know more about their hell than I ~ Alfred Kreymborg

If ever I create a website, I'll call it Two-Face Book, and I'll invite everyone to it, it will be a game board, of a whitewash chalkboard.
A social network, with reserved intentions, where we can fall into our cliques and circle of friends. We can dis who we want and accept who appeals to our discretion. Where the users will keep abusing, and abusers keep using, where the computer bullies will keep swinging and the J-birds that fly by will die; where the lonely will keep seeking and the needy still go desperate, where the envious will keep hating, and the lustful will keep flashing. Where those that think ignoring, will keep one down and the wannabes will foolishly think themselves greater by the number of "likes" that pours caffeine into their coffee. We can jump on the bandwagon of likes, or reserve not to show we care. Where the scorners, scammers and stalkers lay wait to take hold of the innocent and fragile, and my pockets will get fatter as more and more will join up, where being fake is accepted. As a mirror that stares at a different face. It will be my two-face epilogue, in a 3-world dimension, of a twofold war. I will build an empire of contagious hooks, and still we will live, happily-ever disastrous. ~ Anthony Liccione

Reputation being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and the Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness. ~ Anna Brownell Jameson

There is no worse discriminator than envy. No worse traitor than envy. Even those who are seemingly righteous, are brought down low by their envy. A true man will be known by his absence of envy. An evil man will be known by the presence of envy within him. ~ C. JoyBell C.

The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause. ~ Baltasar Gracian

As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion. ~ Antisthenes Pinto

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she. . . . ~ William Shakespeare

England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune. ~ William Shakespeare

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor. ~ Horace

The greatest harm that you can do unto the envious, is to do well. ~ John Lyly

To the extent that we believe we can skip steps, avoid the process, magically gain power through political connections or easy formulas, or depend on our natural talents, we move against this grain and reverse our natural powers. We become slaves to time – as it passes, we grow weaker, less capable, trapped in some dead end career. We become captive to the opinions and fears of others." (9) "This intense connection and desires allows them to withstand the pain of the process – the self-doubts, the tedious hours of practice and study, the inevitable setbacks, the endless barbs from the envious. They develop a resiliency and confidence that others lack. ~ Robert Greene

Mimicry reassures the weak, and the envious fool takes the risk as often as the visionary who mocks the error and leave the man alone. ~ Paul Theroux

To make ourselves invisible to creditors or to the envious, and even to our own worries, we can take advantage here on earth of a great democratic institution-in fact, democracy's only success-the night. ~ Jean Giraudoux

Action separates the heroes from the cowards, the achievers from the complainers, the successful from the mere dreamers, the happy from the envious; it separates those who rise to the challenge of their goals from the haters who cower in the shadow of stagnancy. ~ Steve Maraboli

Mindset matters... always. The difference found between the victorious and the envious, the successful and the haters; is mindset. ~ Steve Maraboli

Antisthenes used to say that envious people were devoured by their own disposition, just as iron is by rust. Envy of others comes from comparing what they have with what the envious person has, rather than the envious person realising they have more than what they could have and certainly more than some others and being grateful. It is really just an inability to get a correct perspective on their lives. ~ Diogenes

The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor. ~ Socrates

Power seems to confer on its possessor a mantle of superiority, specialness, and sexual potency, which the envious person desperately wants because he feels himself on some level to be inferior, unimportant, and impotent. ~ Alexander Lowen

She certainly didn't have the ability to share her ability with the envious ones - she could only share the products of her ability. They gladly took those, and then resented her for being able to produce them. Most human beings, she concluded long ago, love to worship from afar people with extraordinary ability, but prefer to have their friends be genial incompetents. And, of course, most of them get their preference. ~ Orson Scott Card

The envious will die, but envy never. ~ Moliere

Come and let us live my Deare,
Let us love and never feare,
What the sowrest Fathers say:
Brightest Sol that dies to day
Lives againe as blithe to morrow,
But if we darke sons of sorrow
Set; o then, how long a Night
Shuts the Eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A Thousand, and a Hundred, score
An Hundred, and a Thousand more,
Till another Thousand smother
That, and that wipe of another.
Thus at last when we have numbred
Many a Thousand, many a Hundred;
Wee'l confound the reckoning quite,
And lose our selves in wild delight:
While our joyes so multiply,
As shall mocke the envious eye. ~ Richard Crashaw

It is the habit of the envious man to absolve himself of public wrongs with his own personal grievances. ~ Victor Hugo

I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts
and they never fail to have a fatal effect on my self-esteem. When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as much about novels as I do but has somehow also found the mental space to adore and be knowledgeable about the opera, have strong opinions about the relative rankings of Renaissance painters, an encyclopedic knowledge of the English civil war, of French wines
I feel an anxiety that nudges beyond the envious into the existential. How did she find the time? ~ Zadie Smith

Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections. ~ George Bernard Shaw

In this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch interferer, the envious marplot of Eden, still has more or less to do with every human consignment to this planet of Earth. In every case, one way or another he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind us - I too have a hand here. The ~ Herman Melville

Even success softens not the heart of the envious. ~ Pindar

The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation. ~ Criss Jami

The benevolent have the advantage of the envious, even in this present life; for the envious man is tormented not only by all the ill that befalls himself, but by all the good that happens to another; whereas the benevolent man is the better prepared to bear his own calamities unruffled, from the complacency and serenity he has secured from contemplating the prosperity of all around him. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

You must acquire the trick of ignoring those who do not like you. In my experience, those who do not like you fall into two categories: the stupid, and the envious. The stupid will like you in five years time, the envious never. ~ Stephen Jeffreys

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless. ~ Ambrose Bierce

They loved in a way that made fairy tales envious. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be? ~ John Donne

There is not a hint of one person who was afraid to draw near him [Jesus]. There were those who mocked him. There were those who were envious of him. There were those who misunderstood him. There were those who revered him. But there was not one person who considered him too holy, too divine, or too celestial to touch. There was not one person who was reluctant to approach him for fear of being rejected. ~ Max Lucado

I was so envious of everyone who went to Sylvia Young Theatre School. I wanted to go, but my dad flat-out refused. He thought I'd become some tapdancing freak without qualifications. And he was right in a way. I'm glad I didn't go. That might have changed. ~ Russell Tovey

Before I began research for this book I was not consciously aware that women were aggressive in indirect ways, that they gossiped and ostracized each other incessantly, and did not acknowledge their own envious and competitive feelings. I now understand that, in order to survive as a woman, among women, one must speak carefully, cautiously, neutrally, indirectly; one must pay careful attention to what more socially powerful women have to say before one speaks; one must learn how to flatter, manipulate, aree with, and appease them. And, if one is hurt or offended by another woman, one does not say so outright; one expresses it indirectly, by turning others against her.
Of course, I refuse to learn these "girlish" lessons. ~ Phyllis Chesler

I'm envious of how well he's engineered to survive, to conquer, to outlast apocalypse. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I saw his eyes close and figured he'd probably be asleep immediately. I felt irrationally envious of him - someone who could just drift off, someone whose thoughts didn't keep him up. Someone like I'd once been. ~ Anonymous

Every author believes, when his first book is published, that those that acclaim it are his personal friends or impersonal peers, while its revilers can only be envious rogues and nonentities. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

INTERVIEWER
Have you ever been envious of another writer?
WODEHOUSE
No, never. I'm really such a voracious reader that I'm only too grateful to get some stuff I can read. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can't help showing it. ~ Charles Dickens

Don't waste your time being envious of what you don't have or who you want to be. Instead, focus on what you do have and who you can become. ~ April Mae Monterrosa

Some people's unhappiness caused or was caused by some people's happiness. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Daniel was twenty-three, a year younger than I was, and though he hadn't yet published a book of poems he seemed to have spent his time better, or more imaginatively, or maybe what could be said is that he felt a pressure to go places, meet people, and experience things that, whenever I have encountered it in someone, has always made me envious. ~ Nicole Krauss

There are days when I am envious of my hens:
when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure
as a single daily egg. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

A slowness to applaud betrays a cold temper or an envious spirit. ~ Hannah More

Instead of being critical of people in authority over you and envious of their position, be happy you're not responsible for everything they have to do. Instead of piling on complaints, thank them for what they do. Overwhelm them with encouragement and appreciation! ~ Joyce Meyer

Corruption wins not more than honesty. Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues. ~ William Shakespeare

Envy is everywhere. Who is without envy? And most people Are unaware or unashamed of being envious. ~ T. S. Eliot

I love to be busy. I'm envious of people who are able to take their spare time and relax. All I like to do is work. Perhaps it's lingering Calvinist guilt? ~ Moby

Victims may be defensive, submissive, over-accommodating to others, passive-aggressive in conflict, dependent on others for self-worth, overly sensitive, even manipulative. They're often angry, resentful, and envious, feeling unworthy or ashamed about their circumstances. Have you ever felt or acted this way? ~ David Emerald Womeldorff

I was always longing to do, emotionally and physically, what my male counterparts always got to do. I just felt envious, every time I saw a movie that I was in awe of, and it was usually a male lead. And those kinds of roles weren't available. They just weren't being written. ~ Sandra Bullock

I think I'd rather be heading to detention right now than to talk to him. My stomach is tied up in so many knots it could make a boy scout envious. ~ Colleen Hoover

I would love to do a Western someday. Every time I watch any of them, I'm so envious. ~ Sarah Clarke

Your tears are never invisible
there is always an insecure woman that lights up when you point them out. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Then her envious heart had peace, as much as an envious heart can have. ~ Wilhelm Grimm

Envy yearns to find flaws. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

I make my own cologne. It's called "Sweat," and it's hard work making it. But I can tell people love it, because they're so envious and jealous when I wear it that they avoid me altogether. ~ Jarod Kintz

Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale. ~ Baron De Montesquieu

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious. ~ Baruch Spinoza

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks. ~ Thomas Browne

Some people are each way more hurt by their worst enemy's success than they were hurt by their then best friend's death. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana