Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Caleb Colton

To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be.

Charles Caleb Colton

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.

Charles Caleb Colton

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.

Charles Caleb Colton

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat.

Edward Gibbon

Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.

Bertrand Russell

A life which goes excessively against natural impulse is... likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and uncharitableness.

Agnes Repplier

There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.

Agnes Repplier

the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.

Charlotte Lennox

No woman is envious of another's virtue who is conscious of her own.

Charlie Munger

Even if you assume that the whole economy would work better had we never had double taxation, having the envy and resentment of the richest paying low or no taxes screams of injustice. You have to have a fair system.

Charlie Munger

It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy.

William Shakespeare

No metal can--no, not the hangman's axe--bear half the keenness of thy sharp envy.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Envy is the religion of the mediocre

Elizabeth Montagu

it is more to my personal happiness and advantage to indulge the love and admiration of excellence, than to cherish a secret envy of it.

Edmund Waller

Poets may boast (as safely-vain) Their work shall with the world remain: Both bound together, live, or die, The verses and the prophecy. But who can hope his lines shou'd long Last, in a daily changing tongue? While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails.

Betty Dodson

The first thing the male establishment wants to control is uterus and birth. You might call it womb envy. But even worse is the fact we are still using the male model of sexual response for women.

Bo Sanchez

Don't envy the harvest of the rich. Envy their planting.

John Brady

They play well together because there is no jealousy within the relationship, none whatsoever. The key is that there is no envy with the two of them.

No revenge is so heroic than that which torments envy by doing good.

Johnny Vaughan

After a while you have to envy these people because they have community.

John Glenn

I've been lucky enough to have a lot of opportunities in my own life, so I'm not usually given over to much envy of other people. But for Neil, I make a big exception.

Bertrand Russell

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Bertrand Russell

Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.

Bertrand Russell

Envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness.

Benjamin Disraeli

Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstone - extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy and superstition; and with one commanding characteristic - whether Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying or scribbling - never a gentleman.

Alain de Botton

We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.

Alain de Botton

The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

Alain de Botton

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

Charles Churchill

Those who raise envy will easily incur censure.

Charles Churchill

With that malignant envy which turns pale, And sickens, even if a friend prevail.

Charles Churchill

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Arthur C. Clarke

They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young.

Brigham Young

... the introduction of the doctrine of polygamy was the first time in my life that I desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation.