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envy quotes

  • Death†openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.2,'Of Death'.

  • The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.

    - Sir (Henry) Max(imilian) Beerbohm
    Zuleika Dobson, ch.4.

  • Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs 27:4.

  • Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.

    -Bible (Apocrypha)
    Wisdom of Solomon 2:24.

  • Envyand wrathshortenthelife, and carefulnessbringeth age before the time.

    -Bible (Apocrypha)
    Ecclesiasticus 30:24.

  • From envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord, deliver us.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Litany.

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

    - Abraham Cowley
      Essays, in Verse and Prose,'Of Myself'.

  • O thou whom envy ev'n is force t'admire!

    - Samuel Daniel
      'To the Right Honourable, the Lady Mary, Countess of Pembroke'. Daniel was part of the group of writers who met at Wilton, which also included Jonson andDrayton, andhe tutored Pembroke's son.

  • Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstonean extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisyand superstition and with one commanding characteristic.Whether Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying, or scribblingneveragentleman.Heisso vain that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions; but a parliamentary Constitution is not favourable to such ambitions. Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

    - Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
    c.1874  Letter.

  • In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

    - Ivan Illich
      Tools for Conviviality, ch.3.

  • Come, let us here enjoy the shade; For love in shadow best is made. Though envy oft his shadow be, None brooks the sunlight worse than he.

    - Ben Jonson
    The Underwood,'A Song' (published1640).

  • My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode to a Nightingale', stanza1.

  • The root of Evil, Avarice That damn'd ill-natur'd, baneful Vice, Was Slave to Prodigality, That noble Sin; whilst Luxury Employed a Million of the Poor, And odious Pride a Million more; Envy itself, and Vanity, Were Ministers of Industry; Their darling Folly, Fickleness, In Diet, Furniture and Dress That strange ridic'lous Vice, was made That very Wheel that turned theTrade.

    - Bernard Mandeville
      The Fable of the Bees, or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits (2nd edn.).

  • Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

    - Dorothy ne  e Rothschild Parker
    Quoted in Marion Meade Dorothy Parker (1988).

  • As every teacher, like every drill-sergeant or animal trainer, knows in his practice, teaching and training have virtually not yet begun, so long as the pupil istoo young, too stupid, too scared or too sulky to respondand to respond is not just to yield.Where there is a modicum of alacrity, interest or anyhow docility in the pupil, where he tries, however faintheartedly, to get things right rather than awkward, where, even, he registers even a slight contempt for the poor performances of others, of chagrin at his own, pleasure at his own successes and envy of those of others, then he is, in however slight a degree, co-operating and so self-moving.

    - Gilbert Ryle
    Quoted in R S Peters (ed) The Concept of Education (1966), ch.7.

  •    He has out-soared the shadow of our night; Envyand calumnyand hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza 40.

  • Go little book, thy self present, As child whose parent is unkent: To him that is the president Of noblesse and of chivalry, And if that Envy bark at thee, As sure it will, for succour flee.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Shepherd's Calendar,'To His Book'.

  • Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest; Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain, And virtue sank the deeper in his breast; Such profit he of envy could obtain.

    - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
      'Wyatt resteth here'.

  • 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
      'Of EnglishVerse'.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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