Envy Quotes

I think envy motivates a lot of people.

The young boys I speak with say to me: Why would I want to live in this world - where they rely on charity, dry pieces of bread and water, where they are subjected to harsh treatment, when they can be free and be the envy of their colleagues in the afterlife. They are only too eager to sign on the dotted line and join the ranks of the Taliban.

I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it's a constitution that's the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it's the most generous nation in the world.

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.

Envy aims very high.

Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy.

The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.

Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too.

People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune.

The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch.

The country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We have to offer an alternative vision.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.

They envy the distinction I have won; let them therefore, envy my toils, my honesty, and the methods by which I gained it.

Envy, my son, wears herself away, and droops like a lamb under the influence of the evil eye.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.

Nonetheless, do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter? Of course I do. I might add, perhaps even a touch of envy too, because of the solace.

Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy.

I think a lot of people in television news look at the cable networks with great envy.

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

Envy is an insult to oneself.

I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them.

How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.

Envy, like the worm, never runs but to the fairest fruit; like a cunning bloodhound, it singles out the fattest deer in the flock.

Envy is human nature.

Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.

Never trust anyone who wants what you've got. Friend or no, envy is an overwhelming emotion.

I almost envy people who say whatever they want.

I do have height envy. I'm 5'1 and my sisters are giants so I do have height envy.

Yes, free markets tend to produce unequal incomes. We should not be ashamed of that. On the contrary, our system is the envy of the world and should be a source of pride.

Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now started out as some kind of schlep.

I don't envy men and I certainly wouldn't like to become one now.

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.

A note of caution: We can never achieve goals that envy sets for us. Looking at your friends and wishing you had what they had is a waste of precious energy. Because we are all unique, what makes another happy may do the opposite for you. That's why advice is nice but often disappointing when heeded.

I live my life, breathless... A life of constant motion and excitement. A life that many will envy and most would avoid!

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

Envy is like a fly that passes all the body's sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores.

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

To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy.

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own.

Loyalty will not permit envy, hate, and uncharitableness to creep into our public thinking.

The United States transportation system is the envy of the world.

This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high.

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.

On every movie I've done as a director, I look at the producers and having done it, I don't envy them, at all.

I do not envy the headache you will have when you awake. In the meantime, dream of large women.

Touch was important. The evening of the Third of July we would go around the neighborhood and look at the fireworks others had bought, taking them out of the brown paper sack and handling them cautiously as if they were precious stones. There was envy when we saw sacks with more in them than we had.

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.

I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.

Envy is never general, but always very particular - at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.

In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.

I envy the happiness of others... I envy the sense of belonging... I seem always to be remaking myself.

Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.

Our citizens and those who have gone before us charted the broad outlines of where we need to go, and they would envy our opportunity to translate those dreams into action. And I believe they will judge us very harshly should we fail to act.

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.

You always feel like rock critics are frustrated musicians. I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment.

I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.

As an observer, I react to the realities of Israeli life with both envy and relief. Nobody wants to live under the threat of constant attack from enemies right next door, under ceaseless and often unfair international scrutiny, defending his homeland by day and living with the memories of mass genocide at night.

Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death.

I probably have less revision than those who have that wonderful rush of story to tell - you know, I can't wait to tell you what happened the other day. It comes tumbling out and maybe then they go back and refine. I kind of envy that way of working, but I just have never done it.

I'm pretty rubbish, as we say in Britain, artwise, and I always envy people who can pick up something and even do just a little doodle of someone that looks vaguely like them. It's impressive.

I don't envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.

People who make the choice to study, work hard or do whatever they endeavor is to give it the max on themselves to reach to the top level. And you have the people who get envy and jealous, yet are not willing to put that work in, and they want to get the same praise.

'Envy the Night' was my first stand alone, the first book I'd written in the third person and I loved the feel of that, and it was different but it was also the same. 'So Cold the River,' I knew, was going to be really different, and that's why I thought about doing it as a novella under a pseudonym, because I didn't want to damage my career.

The best song lyrics seem to me so artful, so brilliant, so warm and humorous, with both passion and wit, that my admiration is matched only by my envy.

I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on.

Envy like fire always makes for the highest points.