envy Quotes

“Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won’t be dissatisfied, you won’t be envious, you won’t be longing for somebody else’s things. On the contrary, you’ll be overwhelmed with what comes back.”

Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.

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.

“I forget the rest of the gym and the victors and how miserable I am and lose myself in the shooting. When I manage to take down five birds in one round, I realize it’s so quiet I can hear each one hit the floor. I turn and see the majority of the victors have stopped to watch me. Their faces show everything from envy to hatred to admiration.”

“I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envying him that a little, which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little.”

“Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies.”

“And on that evening when we grow older still we’ll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we’ll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.”

“Av’rice, envy, pride, Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all On fire.”

“These of death No hope may entertain: and their blind life So meanly passes, that all other lots They envy. Fame of them the world hath none, Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.”

“And that was what destroyed you in the end: the longing for something you could never have.”

“God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself.”

“In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.“

“Her abode is concealed in the lowest recesses of a cave, wanting sun, and not pervious to any wind, dismal and filled with benumbing cold; and which is ever without fire, and ever abounding with darkness.”

“She both torments and is tormented at the same moment, and is ever her own punishment.”

“He was surprised to find this young woman – who though but a milkmaid had just that touch of rarity about her which might make her the envied of her housemates – shaping such sad imaginings.”

“Whatever,” he said and tipped his head back as he polished off the remnants of whatever it was he was drinking. “It’s not like she’s the only game in town.” He took a step towards me but I was too consumed with my own thoughts to pay it any attention.

“ ‘So you don’t care that she’s just using you? Why don’t you go over there and tell Trace.’ He laughed as though I’d just dropped the punchline to some silly, little kid’s joke.”

“I shook my head, still staring forward at the real-life nightmare unfolding before me. I felt Caleb’s eyes on me, assessing me as I watched them. ‘You really like him, don’t you?’ It came out like an afterthought; a passing observation that had just occurred to him.”

“It only took me two flat seconds to spot them. Trace and Nikki Together again.”

“My stomach bottomed out as I watched them from the doorway. He was leaning back against the wall, wearing jeans and a fitted white t-shirt that hugged him in all the right places, while Nikki was tipping into him, wolfing up all his personal space with her runway-ready body. She was all dolled up with a skin-tight pink dress and a pair of matching heels that looked like they belonged on a stage. And not the theater kind.”

″ ‘Why can’t I have someone to talk to?’ I said. The stars said nothing, but I pretended to ignore the rudeness. ‘The Shaper has people to talk to,’ I said. I wrung my fingers. ‘Hrothgar has people to talk to.’ ”

“I’ve always wanted her hair, though I’d never tell her that. Where hers is like fire, my hair is what we call river brown. Dark at the root, pale at the ends, as the color leeches from our hair with the stress of Stilts life. Most keep their hair short to hide their gray ends but I don’t. I like the reminder that even my hair knows life shouldn’t be this way.”

“One night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the window. At other times I should have felt very much disgusted, but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the gentleman thrown out of the window – and I envied him so much that I even went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.’ ”

“But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all... why then perhaps we /must/ stand fast a little --even at the risk of being heroes.”

“It’s my lot in life to forever envy anyone taller than I am. Oh well.. a little tease and a back comb and my hair gets me at least 2″ closer to heaven.”

“Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.”

“Most gossip is envy in disguise.”

“I told Ma once the Howards had a room just for company, a room just for books, and a room just for plants, and she said that was three rooms too many. First time I ever saw any envy in my ma.”

“Envy and malice are indefatigable. Where they have not invention enough to frame new slanders, or the slanders newly framed are found totally inadequate to their purpose, they will call in the feeble aid of old calumnies”

“He wished he could go back in time to the turning point, the moment inside the treasury when he was smitten with envy of the King’s wealth. If history could be unwound and he were there again, he would consider the consequences and he wouldn’t steal.”

“She would have given anything to be popular, envied, attractive, and in demand.”

“Follow your envy - it shows you what you want.”

“He wanted to be friends with his father and feel the same closeness there had been between his father and Jamie. Jamie would have been a big man. He had gone on the boat that last summer, and Mark had listened enviously as Jamie and his father discussed fishing and boating problems in man-to-man fashion.”

“Agilulf passed by, attentive, nervous and proud; people’s bodies gave him a disagreeable feeling resembling envy, but also a stab of pride, of contemptuous superiority.”

“All his classmates envied him his ink because it was so bright and pretty, with sepia tone none of them had ever seen before. However, the boy learned a strange alphabet that no one else understood and he had to leave the school because the teacher said he was setting a bad example.”

“All that great wealth came to my hands, and if I do not say how great it was, ‘tis that I may not wake envy, for it was far more than I could have thought.”

“What about me?” said Pooh sadly. “I suppose I shan’t be useful?” “Never mind, Pooh,” said Piglet comfortingly. “Another time perhaps.” “Without Pooh,” said Rabbit solemnly as he sharpened his pencil, “the adventure would be impossible.” “Oh!” said Piglet, and tried not to look disappointed.

Here’s an envious fellow making himself boozy on wine when he ought to be nursing his wrath, and here is a fool who sees the woman he loves stolen from under his nose and takes on like a big baby.

“I’m not envious: I never feel hurt at the brightness of Isabella’s yellow hair and the whiteness of her skin, at her dainty elegance, and the fondness all the family exhibit for her.”

All the faces turned to Darya Alexandrovna looked to her healthy and happy, making her envious of their enjoyment of life. “They’re all living, they’re all enjoying life,” Darya Alexandrovna still mused when she had passed the peasant women and was driving uphill again at a trot, seated comfortably on the soft springs of the old carriage, “while I, let out, as it were from prison, from the world of worries that fret me to death, am only looking about me now for an instant. They all live; those peasant women and my sister Natalia and Varenka and Anna, whom I am going to see—all, but not I.”