Top 100 Envy'd Quotes
#1. O let me be undone the common way, And have the common comfort to be pity'd, And not be ruin'd in the mask of bliss, And so be envy'd, and be wretched too!
Edward Young
#2. I'd the upbringing a nun would envy. Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body.
Joe Orton
#3. On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.
David Duchovny
#4. And okay, fine. If you have to kiss her, you have to kiss her. And believe me, I do not envy you. That's taking one for the team a little far. I mean, I think I'd rather endure the stabbing myself instead of having to kiss her.
Gena Showalter
#5. Because thankfulness is the tonic that always cures the cancers of greed, envy and jealously, it should be taken in liberal doses daily.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#6. I wanted what women always want: permission. But he'd had that before this book was even written; it was, after all, the first thing I'd envied about him. It was arguably what enabled him to write the book in the first place. ("Envy")
Kathryn Chetkovich
#7. Envy's a sharper spur than pay: No author ever spar'd a brother; Wits are gamecocks to one another.
John Gay
#8. I never wished I'd been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration.
Bette Davis
#9. No one can have so little that someone else can find nothing to envy. Poverty and simplicity were not shields from the greed of others. If you had nothing left to steal, they'd take your body and enslave it.
Robin Hobb
#10. Thiel concluded that "greed is far preferable to envy: It is less destructive (I'd rather live in a society where people don't share than in one where they try to take what belongs to everybody else) and it is more honest.
George Packer
#11. I honestly felt no envy or resentment, only astonishment at how much of a world there was out there and how much of it others already knew. The agenda for self-cultivation that had been set for my classmates by their teachers and parents was something I'd have to develop for myself.
Sonia Sotomayor
#12. Just think! Garden, garden, garden, garden, garden, two happy people, and it could have gone on forever! They knew, they'd been told, but they ate it anyway, and from there on out, 'family!' Shame, fear, jobs, mortality, envy, murder ... "
"Well," William said brightly, "and sex.
Deborah Eisenberg
#13. Envy, like a false mirror, distorts the symmetry of the sweetest form.
Norm MacDonald
#14. You can get away from envy by enjoying the pleasures that come your way, by doing the work that you have to do, and by avoiding comparisons with those whom you imagine, perhaps quite falsely, to be more fortunate than yourself.
Bertrand Russell
#16. How could we even begin to disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinising our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.
Ernst F. Schumacher
#17. Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. - It is not fair. - He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. - I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must.
Jane Austen
#18. What is the use of acquiring one's heart's desire if one cannot handle and gloat over it, show it to one's friends, and gather an anthology of envy and admiration?
Dorothy L. Sayers
#19. What good is envy? It's the one sin you can't have any fun at.
Charlie Munger
#20. Oh, miraculous chameleon, science, who can reverse your doctrine hourly and never shake our faith! What cult ever battered by this world of doubt can help but envy you?
Ada Palmer
#22. It's unreasonable and unjustified, of course, but it's always there, hiding in the long shadow thrown by envy.
Gregory David Roberts
#23. The idea of caring is that someone is making money faster [than you are] is one of the deadly sins. Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There's a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?
Charlie Munger
#24. He that would live clear of envy must lay his finger on his mouth, and keep his hand out of the ink-pot.
Roger L'Estrange
#25. That's how envy works: the better things are, the worse they are, because they don't belong to you.
William Deresiewicz
#26. I love the power of the musician who composes and performs. I envy their ability to put a nugget of truth in three minutes of sweat and emotional outpouring, colored entirely from their thoughts.
Kim Harrison
#27. I think," said the Major, taking his pipe from his mouth, "that desire is the most wonderful thing in life. Anybody who can really feel it, is a king, and I envy nobody else!" He put back his pipe.
D.H. Lawrence
#28. O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on.
William Shakespeare
#29. Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It's the rhythm of your life. It's the expression in time and movement,in happiness, joy, sadness and envy.
Jacques D'Amboise
#30. When he paraded his possessions hereafter, they would not consider the two together. They'd look with envy at the things and pity the man that owned them.
Zora Neale Hurston
#32. 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.
Edmund Waller
#33. Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.
Alexander Pope
#34. Hands-Off Parenting Envy the kangaroo. That pouch setup is extraordinary: The baby crawls out of the womb when it is about two inches long, gets into the pouch, and proceeds to mature. I'd have a baby if it would develop in my handbag. RITA RUDNER
Anonymous
#35. Who hath not heard the rich complain Of surfeits, and corporeal pain? He barr'd from every use of wealth, Envies the ploughman's strength and health.
John Gay
#36. I can still picture the two sisters sitting together on the terrace, well wrapped up against the chill, one with her terminal cancer, the other with her cardiac asthma and arthritis, envy and resentment forgotten as they faced the great equalizer of death.
P.D. James
#37. If you just can't get rid of envy, then start creating a life, so that if you saw yourself from afar, you'd be envious of you.
Charles F. Glassman
#38. I'd be really jealous of me too. I mean, what's not to envy? No friends, no family, no future - but it's OK because guess what? I'm the White Light. Well Whooppeee Do.
Sarah Alderson
#39. I used to envy people who had written books, the way I think women envy other women who've had babies. I was resentful, shy, and inhibited around people who had written books. They'd done things I wanted to do.
Joan Juliet Buck
#40. Never pity missionaries; envy them. They are where the real action is
where life and death, sin and grace, Heaven and Hell converge.
Robert C. Shannon
#41. They'd seen her laugh before he did, had seen her live before he had. The thought of it provoked envy inside of Wharick, and that emotion at times, could be just as powerful as jealousy.
-Madison Thorne Grey, Sustenance
Madison Thorne Grey
#42. Jimmy had been full of himself back then, thinks Snowman with indulgence and a little envy. He'd been unhappy too, of course. It went without saying, his unhappiness. He'd put a lot of energy into it.
Margaret Atwood
#43. I tell you what I envy about people in love - I'd love it if someone knew me I mean really knew me. What I like what I'm afraid of what kind of toothpaste I use. - Rose Morgan
Barbra Streisand
#44. But only one lady is my equal in every way. Intellectually, physically, magically." "It's all about her, isn't it?" My envy is almost palpable. "You'd endanger anyone to have her in your arms." "Absolutely, I would.
A.G. Howard
#45. Love me until Venus gasps with envy.
Love me again until Eros swears celibacy.
Gloria D. Gonsalves
#46. Roots never get the appreciation that a flower does, but that doesn't make them envious.
Debasish Mridha
#47. Envy the kangaroo. That pouch setup is extraordinary; the baby crawls out of the womb when it is about two inches long, gets into the pouch, and proceeds to mature. I'd have a baby if it would develop in my handbag.
Rita Rudner
#48. How much I'd always envied the tight life of voles. The hidey hole was happiness.
Sam Lipsyte
#49. She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She'd become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those people who changed diapers for free but still got treated like a rented mule.
Lorraine Zago Rosenthal
#50. You have a dedication to life and truth that burns out of you as beauty and I envy it so much I want to be around it for the rest of my life.
Trevor D. Richardson
#51. They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.
Bob Monkhouse
#52. The evils of envy and hatred masquerading as humanitarian idealism had darkened his life from its outset, stamping him as a man quick to search for the reality behind the expression of fine sentiments.
Theodore Dalrymple
#53. Chain of envy linked them, showing each what was lacking in life, but offering also the consolation that happiness was present right next door, in the life of a neighbour, an element of the same society.
Aravind Adiga
#54. If envy were the cause of terrorism, Beverly Hills [and] Fifth Avenue ... would have become targets long ago.
Fareed Zakaria
#55. I have never been given to envy - save for the envy I feel toward those people who have the ability to make a marriage work and endure happily.
J. Paul Getty
#56. Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy
of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.
Arthur C. Clarke
#57. Chronocanine Envy:
Sadness experienced when one realized that, unlike one's dog, one cannot live only in the present tense. As Kierkegaard said, Life must be lived forward.
Douglas Coupland
#58. With that malignant envy which turns pale, And sickens, even if a friend prevail.
Charles Churchill
#59. A nonviolent occupation is that occupation which is fundamentally free from violence and which involves no exploitation or envy of others.
Mahatma Gandhi
#60. The bloody-minded murder those whom they envy, and for what they covet.
Dean Koontz
#61. Thy shall not envy any person.
Each person has his or her unique calling and divine purpose to fulfill.
Follow your own path.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#63. The sun weeps because it can no longer caress your skin or warm your lips." He sifted his fingers through my hair. "I do not envy the sun, Eva. But I truly hate the moon, because its light touches you in all the ways I cannot.
Michele Bardsley
#65. People who hate you because of a mere jealousy over your success hurt themselves in disguise. This is because you carry an image of who they wish they had become. Don't hate them back because they may also become like you one day and it will mean hurting that image you carry!
Israelmore Ayivor
#66. God is growing bitter, He envies man his mortality.
Jacques Rigaut
#67. I'd much rather you assumed for yourself a higher rank than mere menial labourer for the duration of this great adventure.'
He paused. 'You wish me to strike heroic poses against the sunset, Lady Envy?'
'Indeed!
Steven Erikson
#68. To be envied, admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame it feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame.
David Foster Wallace
#69. Pride, envy, avarice - these are the sparks have set on fire the hearts of all men.
Dante Alighieri
#70. I envy the people who go to Paris the first time
Marc Jacobs
#71. Envy of the male role can come as much from an undervaluation of the role of wife and mother as from an overvaluation of the public aspects of achievement that have been reserved for men.
Margaret Mead
#72. The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.
Victor Hugo
#73. I almost envy your horse," she said, "because these thighs hug him all day."
-Rebecca to Jake
Lorraine Heath
#74. There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
Agnes Repplier
#75. You know, sometimes I envy you. It must be nice to be a wolf. Just for a while." "It has its drawbacks." Like fleas, she thought, as they locked up the museum. And the food. And the constant nagging feeling that you should be wearing three bras at once.
Terry Pratchett
#76. If we sow the seeds of hatred and envy and discouragement in others, we, in turn, develop these qualities in ourselves.
Napoleon Hill
#77. I Have Learned Why People Work So Hard To Succeed: It Is Because They Envy The Things Their Neighbors Have. But It Is Useless. It Is Like Chasing The Wind ... It Is Better To Have Only A Little, With Peace Of Mind, Than Be Busy All The Time With Both Hands, Trying To Catch The Wind
Anonymous
#78. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.
Thomas Browne
#79. Each time I read a book, I cataloged the parts that struck me dumb with envy and admiration for their beauty and power and truth.
Jack Gantos
#80. There is nothing by which a man exasperates most people more, than displaying a superior ability of briliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time; but their envy makes them curse him at their hearts.
Samuel Johnson
#81. The real work was the identification of those aspects of yourself that led to what he called "the negative emotions" - anger, envy, bitterness, greed, cynicism, hatred and the like - things that poured hurt into an already overfull world.
Roland Merullo
#82. Gloucestershire police must be the envy of the human rights-abusing cop world. From Turkey to Indonesia they will say, 'Kidnapping peace protestors! How did they get away with that one?'
Mark Thomas
#83. My younger sister's a comedian. She has a sketch comedy group in Chicago called Schadenfreude and I look at her with such admiration and envy because it's such an amazing thing to make someone laugh.
Brian D'Arcy James
#84. I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism, by developing love for all humanity, because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me, because I will believe in them, and in myself.
Napoleon Hill
#85. Envy is always referred to by its political alias, 'social justice.
Thomas Sowell
#86. I envy children who know that they're going to become doctors, know they're going to go into the forces or whatever. I think choice is one of the hardest things, but that's what I try to give my children, to say you can do anything.
Jeremy Irons
#87. Envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition - only to his getting it.
Ada Leverson
#88. Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#89. Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
William Hazlitt
#90. I envy Muslims their practice of regular and genuine prayer. It's a beautiful practice that enriches their daily lives.
Jay Parini
#91. Jealousy is the suspicion of one's own inferiority.
Emily Post
#92. I assumed it was perfect, that everyone was happy and beautiful and wanted for nothing, and in my numb, limited way I felt envy and wanted to eat them all the more
Isaac Marion
#93. I envy my dad and his faith. I envy all people who have someone to beseech, who know where they're going, who sleep under the fluffy white comforter of belief.
Kelly Corrigan
#94. Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul. Perhaps the comparison can be extended.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#95. Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
Petrarch
#96. When you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does.
Marilyn Monroe
#97. My brother, do men grieve over the fight of cats and dogs? So the jealousy, envy, and elbowing of common men should make no impression on your mind.
Swami Vivekananda
#98. Envy grew like a cancer, deep and invasive.
J. Lynn
#99. They all behaved as if they were absolutely disgusted by this, and amid the ribbing and hilarity that this elaborate performance of disgust and envy produced they were able to hide their true feelings of disgust and envy.
Jonathan Lynn
#100. 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
