Quotes on Envy

Not praising the deserving prevents envy.

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.

According to how gifted we are, we are all given a large or small key to this treasury of wonders. I have been blessed with a small key to the world of the young. It's a place where good and evil are clearly stamped. It's a place where the better part of human nature triumphs over tragedies, and where innocence rides high. It is a great pleasure to write there, because the young have what the rest of us only envy, and that is a belief in goodness and perpetual hope.

Envy assails the noblest: the winds howl around the highest peaks.

O jealousy! thou magnifier of trifles.

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

Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

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

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.

Surely no child, and few adults, have ever watched a bird in flight without envy.

Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.

No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us.

To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are.

Ah, if only there were two of me, she thought, one who spoke and the other who listened, one who lived and one who watched, how I would love myself! I would envy no one.

Envy never comes to the ball dressed as envy; it comes dressed as high moral standards or distaste for materialism.

Let us praise the noble turkey vulture: No one envies him; he harms nobody; and he contemplates our little world from a most serene and noble height.

Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.

Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.

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.