Top 69 Good Envy Quotes
#1. There is no good envy, except the one that motivates us to reach higher goals and be better than the person we were yesterday.
Ogwo David Emenike
#2. Saying of the Prophet
Envy
Envy devours good deeds, as a fire devours fuel.
Idries Shah
#3. She learned quickly that it was not good to be too different. Great differences caused envy, suspicion, fear, charges of witchcraft.
Octavia E. Butler
#4. He seemed touched by a larger spirit, his course guided by something beyond him, so talented, so able, so good-natured that he did not even inspire envy in a city rich with envy.
David Halberstam
#5. To harbor no envy, no anger, no resentment against an offender is still not to have charity for him. It is possible, without any charity, to avoid rendering evil for evil. But to render, spontaneously, good for evil - such belongs to a perfect spiritual love.
Maximus The Confessor
#6. There is a battle of two wolves inside us all. One is evil: it is anger, envy, greed, arrogance, jealousy, resentment, lies. The other is good: it is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, truth. The wolf that wins? The one you feed. - Cherokee proverb Spanning
Angela Stevens
#7. In the race for wealth, a neighbor tries to outdo his neighbor, but this strife is good for men. For the potter envies potter, and the carpenter the carpenter, and the beggar rivals the beggar, and the singer the singer.
Hesiod
#8. Envy is resentment of good things that happen to other people. Jealousy increases the importance of the person we wish belonged only to us. Envy, as I told you, is poison, and futile - we want to be the other person. But jealousy is generous - we want the other person to be ours.
Carlos Fuentes
#9. They envy your youth. You two are like exotic creatures from the land of the young.'
I've never understood all that these-are-the-best-years-of-your-life crap. If this is as good as it gets then I might as well quit now. Let me get to the shimmery oasis of adulthood.
Leanne Hall
#10. Above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc dimittis, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
Francis Bacon
#11. When I went to Philadelphia I was 26 years old and really sitting on top of the world. Family life, a professional career, plenty of friends and associates, and a good reputation, a wish list that could be the envy of many.
Julius Erving
#12. It is good to vary in order that you may frustrate the curious, especially those who envy you.
Baltasar Gracian
#13. Now and then sprays of rain flew over and misted our faces. Every time I refused to wipe away the wetness. It made the world seem so alive to me. I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention.
Sue Monk Kidd
#14. I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm.
William Shakespeare
#15. Avarice breeds envy, a worm that is always gnawing, letting the avaricious enjoy neither their own nor anyone else's good.
St. Catherine Of Siena
#16. Envy says, What is inside me is bad. What is outside me is good. I hate anyone who has something I desire.
Henry Cloud
#17. Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#18. It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men.
W. Somerset Maugham
#19. O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!
Samuel Richardson
#20. Competition between women is good only if it does not prevail; that is to say if it coexists with affinity, affection, with a real sense of being mutually indispensable, with sudden peaks of solidarity in spite of envy, jealousy and the whole inevitable cohort of bad feelings.
Elena Ferrante
#21. According to Aristotle, envy is pain for the presence of good things in others, whereas emulation is pain for their absence in us. This is a subtle but critical difference. Unlike envy, which is self-defeating, emulation is a good thing because it makes us take steps towards securing good things.
Neel Burton
#22. Jokes rot. They're not like songs. I always envy singers - Sting is always going to sing 'Roxanne'. But people want to hear new jokes. I've written jokes as good as 'Roxanne', I believe. But I can't tell them again.
Chris Rock
#23. Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.
Pythagoras
#24. 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.
Agnes Repplier
#25. What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.
Baron De Montesquieu
#26. And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life
Ursula K. Le Guin
#27. There's nothing more refreshing than a good dose of paranoia after sex. ~ Tara Cole
Cindy Cruciger
#28. Envy, bleating 'I'm as good as you', is the hotbed of Fascism.
C.S. Lewis
#29. It is often found that modesty and humility not only do no good, but are positively hurtful, when they are shown to the arrogant who have taken up a prejudice against you, either from envy or from any other cause.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#30. There is a vast difference between success at twenty-five and success at sixty. At sixty, nobody envies you. Instead, everybody rejoices generously, sincerely, in your good fortune.
Marie Dressler
#31. Who does not sometimes envy the good and the brave, who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#32. [Envy not for ... ] Whatever difference there may appear to be in men's fortunes, there is still a certain compensation of good and ill in all, that makes them equal.
Pierre Charron
#33. Charlie Brown: A penny! Rats! Why couldn't I have found a nickel? What good is a penny these days? Why do things like that always happen to me?! *walks off frustrated*
Lucy: Gee, he found a penny! Why don't things like that ever happen to me?
Charles M. Schulz
#34. There is something to be said for jealousy, because it only designs the preservation of some good which we either have or think wehave a right to. But envy is a raging madness that cannot bear the wealth or fortune of others.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#35. If you have a strong ego [and] something good happens to an acquaintance of yours, [it] makes you feel bad. It's called envy ... The ego thinks something has been taken away from you because somebody else has received something good. It's a complete illusion, but that's the madness of the ego.
Eckhart Tolle
#36. Believe all the good you can of everyone. Do not measure others by yourself. If they have advantages which you have not, let your liberality keep pace with their good fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one.
William Hazlitt
#37. The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.
Criss Jami
#38. That's what is was to be young - to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.
Kurt Vonnegut
#39. I might have been different, I might have been as good as you - wiser - almost stainless. I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory.
Charlotte Bronte
#40. Yes, our old age is not going to be sunny orchard drowse. By shutting down the fire curtain, though, I find I can live in the moment; which is good; why yield a moment to regret or envy or worry? Why indeed? (24 December 1940)
Virginia Woolf
#41. But I envy the Commander's Wife her knitting. It's good to have small goals that can be easily attained.
Margaret Atwood
#42. There will always be people who can do it better than you, but that's a good thing! Start to see competition as inspiration - without envy.
Kathryn Budig
#43. Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" - whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing.
Arnold Schoenberg
#44. I don't believe that there is a human creature in his senses, arrived to maturity, that at some time or other has not been carried away by this passion (sc. envy) in good earnest; yet I never met with any one who dared own he was guilty of it but in jest.
Bernard De Mandeville
#45. Harboring envy is saying to God that how He fashioned you in not good enough. Let it go. Embrace who you were created to be.
Ashley N. Sauls
#46. This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators save only he Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; [70] He only in a general honest thought And common good to all made one of them. His
William Shakespeare
#47. It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens.
Orson Scott Card
#48. There is no worse discriminator than envy. No worse traitor than envy. Even those who are seemingly righteous, are brought down low by their envy. A true man will be known by his absence of envy. An evil man will be known by the presence of envy within him.
C. JoyBell C.
#49. The love we have for our native land would be good and praiseworthy if it did not degenerate, as we see it does everywhere, into vanity, the spirit of predominance, acquisitiveness, hate, envy, nationalism, and militarism
Henri Barbusse
#50. 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
#51. What good is envy? It's the one sin you can't have any fun at.
Charlie Munger
#52. 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
#53. Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbor to have them through envy.
Aristotle.
#54. That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remained Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge .
John Milton
#55. At the heart of her bad nature, like many bad natures, was probably envy. And at the heart of envy was possibly hope - that the good fortune of others might one day be hers
Katherine Boo
#57. Honor isn't about other people, it's about what you want to be," Louise said. "A hero does the good and noble thing. The villain allows fear or envy or selfishness to let him ignore what is right.
Wen Spencer
#58. Jehan snorted. "He's a legend in his own mind. Pay no attention to him."
Sav barked a laugh. "Envy isn't a good look for you, Highness."
"And you may kiss my royal ass, peasant.
Lara Adrian
#59. Lucian's father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day's work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy.
Melina Marchetta
#60. When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad.
Tacitus
#61. The fascinated loathing which he (Jean Lorrain) cultivated for the decadence of fin de siecle Paris has a good deal of envy and ardent desire in it; in the words of Hubert Juin, he 'loved his epoch to the point of detestation.'
(Introduction: "The Life And Career Of Jean Lorrain)
Francis Amery
#62. A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned.
Xun Zi
#63. We are savages insides. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn't a person reading this who hasn't at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else.
Cheryl Strayed
#64. I'm not equipped to handle what she has, both good and bad and what she has is always a package deal of both. In other words, I've been assigned a load I can handle.
Lysa TerKeurst
#65. For all the unkind things said about envy, it would only be fair to acknowledge that not all envy is destructive. If envy leads us to work hard and to improve our skills, it becomes a stimulant to self-improvement. God has given us no quality that cannot be used for good.
Sidney Greenberg
#66. Sir, I am a true laborer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck. (As You Like It, Act 3, Sc. 2.)
William Shakespeare
#67. Envy is an ill-natured vice, and is made up of meanness and malice. It wishes the force of goodness to be strained, and the measure of happiness abated. It laments over prosperity, and sickens at the sight of health. It oftentimes wants spirit as well as good nature.
Jeremy Collier
#68. Moderation is a fear of falling into that envy and contempt which those who grow giddy with their good fortune quite justly draw upon themselves. It is a vain boasting of the greatness of our mind.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#69. Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,
Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,
And subdivide, and never come to death.
Wilfred Owen
