Envy

Envy is an emotion that "occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it." Envy is one of the seven deadly sins.

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• O! beware, my lord, of jealousy;
  It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock
  The meat it feeds on.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello

• ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

• Envy and wrath shorten the life.
  • The Bible, Old Testament, Ecclesiasticus 30:24

• This only grant me, that my means may lie
  Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
  • Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), of Myself

• What a wretched and apostate state is this! To be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him! The condition of the envious man is the most emphatically miserable; he is not only incapable of rejoicing in another's merit or success, but lives in a world wherein all mankind are in a plot against his quiet, studying their own happiness and advantage.
  • Joseph Addison, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 209.

• It is the practice of the multitude to bark at eminent men, as little dogs do at strangers.
  • Seneca the Younger, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 209.

• If we did but know how little some enjoy of the great things that they possess, there would not be much envy in the world.
  • Edward Young, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 209.

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• Because I envied your normal life, it seems that envy is my sin.
  • Jonathan Doe, Se7en

• Covetous men are fools, miserable wretches, buzzards, madmen, who live by themselves, in perpetual slavery, fear, suspicion, sorrow, discontent, with more of gall than honey in their enjoyments; who are rather possessed by their money than possessors of it.
  • Robert Burton (1577-1640)

• Covetousness, like a candle ill made, smothers the splendor of a happy fortune in its own grease.
  • F. Osborn

• Covetousness, which is idolatry.
  • The Bible, Colossians 3:5

• Envy is a thousand times worse than hunger, since it is hunger of the spirit.
  • Miguel de Unamuno

• Envy is immortal – much to the envy of the envious!
  • Leonid S. Sukhorukov

• He deservedly loses his own property who covets that of another.
  • Phaedrus

• If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that it may be said to possess him.
  • Francis Bacon

• If thou seeketh to obtain by force what our Lord did not give thee, thou wilt not get it.
  • Anonymous

• Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
  • Josh Billings

• The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world; to take in everything, and part with nothing.
  • Robert South

• The only instance of a despairing sinner left upon record in the New Testament is that of a treacherous and greedy Judas.
  • Anonymous

• There is not a vice which more effectually contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man's affections centre in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire of accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold on the heart, it shuts out all other considerations, but such as may promote its views. In its zeal for the attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good, and good for evil; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware, then, of the beginning of covetousness, for you know not where it will end.
  • Richard Mant

• The worst present for an envious person is a palace… with a view of a better one.
  • Leonid S. Sukhorukov

• There's no profit in envy.
  • Quark. A Ferengi proverb. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

• Those who give not till they die show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer.
  • Joseph Hall

• Why are we so blind? That which we improve, we have, that which we hoard is not for ourselves.
  • Dorothee DeLuzy

• Envy never enriched any man.
  • English 17th Century proverb.

• Envy shoots at others and wounds herself.
  • English 16th Century proverb