Envy Quotations

We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.

I'd the upbringing a nun would envy. Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body.

The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.

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.

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'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.

Birds have wings; they're free; they can fly where they want when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people envy.

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

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

Moral indignation in most cases is, 2% moral, 48% indignation, and 50% envy.

All the world is competent to judge my pictures except those who are of my profession.

Only fools live in the past or carry envy to the present.

If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang.

Sometimes I envy people who can be only half crazy, with one foot in the passion and one foot in the real world. But that's not me. I dive into the total crazy experience. That's the only way to travel.

When one begins, as I did, to analyze men after a fairly long experience of analyzing women, one receives a most surprising impression of the intensity of this envy of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, as well as of breasts and of the act of suckling.

Above all, you must fight conceit, envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your heart.

The gifts given to us by God must not be relinquished to those who speak ill of them and who are moved by envy or ignorance.

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

The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.

I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

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

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.

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.

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.

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

I envy people who can think, 'No, I'm not going to work today' when they have a huge pile of deadlines stacking up.

It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.

I envy those who can wear red lipstick or any bold lip colour, really. My top lip just doesn't seem to take colour - there's nothing I can do to change that, so I usually just use a nude on the bottom lip.

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.

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.

A man who envies our family is a man who needs help.

God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred.

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

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.

Let others either envy or pity me; I care not, so long as I enjoy myself.

It is just as cowardly to judge an absent person as it is wicked to strike a defenseless one. Only the ignorant and narrow-minded gossip, for they speak of persons instead of things.

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do.

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

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

All who have taken it upon themselves to rule over others have incurred hatred and unpopularity for a time; but if one has a great aim to pursue, this burden of envy must be accepted, and it is wise to accept it.

I was always trying to do architectural jam sessions. But it's not quite as easy as singing or playing a guitar, so I would always see wonderful live musicians and just envy them that I wasn't in that medium.

The reason I'm in San Diego is not because I want distance from South Africa but because I want proximity to the people I love. But I don't envy growing up in America. As ugly as aspects of it were, my biggest blessing was to be born a South African.

What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.

To walk behind others on a road you are traveling together, to give precedence to others without envy - this is painful for an individual and painful for a nation.

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.

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

The only time I've ever really felt envy is when I've watched people make music, which made my time living in the now-legendary Jazz Loft at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York a constant source of agony and ecstasy!

At the time of Woodstock, I was just 13, but I used to see these exotic hippy creatures and I did look on with envy. How could you not? In an ideal world, I would have loved to have been a hippy - but I might have been a bit strait-laced. It was my fantasy.

I actually envy actors who have a persona: 'This is the way I am. This is the part I play.' And do it over and over and over. To me, that's a lot easier than trying to reinvent yourself every six months.

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art.

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.

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.

Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from Hell.

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

I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him

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

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue.

A renewed commitment to the freedom and opportunity of our people is the touchstone of our time. In this new century, where tests are many and challenges change with the shifting of the wind, we must hold fast to the principles that have made our nation the envy of the world.

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.

Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise. For envy is a kind of praise.

Religion is meant to teach us true spiritual human character. It is meant for self-transformation. It is meant to transform anxiety into peace, arrogance into humility, envy into compassion, to awaken the pure soul in man and his love for the Source, which is God.

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

In America, if you succeed, you don't have to apologize. In Italy, success is envied, and envy is the worst, worst, worst thing in the world. It's easy for me to say because I have had more than many others, but at the end of the day, I have never envied anyone. I wish to no one that they waste their time envying anyone else.

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.

There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

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.

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.

I envy the sensibility in Europe, appreciating beauty in women as they age. I'm going to go that way. I might dye my gray hair for a bit, but beyond that the buck stops. I'm not having any work done.

You campaigned against rich people and you got enough envy whipped up in the country and you're gonna get 'em. You're gonna stick it to those rich people. But guess what? You may not get anymore revenue. You may not get anymore economic growth. But you can say, 'I stuck it to the rich people.'

I'm always nervous doing auditions - to be honest, I hate it. I always envy the actors who are so cool and cold-blooded when they go in for an audition, especially if it's for a part that you would really love to play.

You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.

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

I almost envy people who say whatever they want.

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

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.

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

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

Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions.

I'm tired of liberals dividing this country up into little groups, setting them upon each other, breeding spite and envy, and then having the nerve to accuse conservatives of hatred.

The history of American higher education over the twentieth century is an extraordinary one, the story of the creation of a powerhouse set of institutions that are the envy of the civilized world. Once they were the province, both among the student and faculty bodies, of children of privilege, generally WASPs.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Oh God, don't envy me, I have my own pains.

The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.

How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.

Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.

Beg of God the removal of envy, that God may deliver you from externals, and bestow upon you an inward occupation, which will absorb you so that your attention is not drawn away.

Envy like fire always makes for the highest points.

He only profits from praise who values criticism.

When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad.

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.

Virtually everywhere in the world, people still wake up and want their country to be more like the United States than any other nation. We are the envy of the world because of what we stand for and how our democratic process, flawed as it may often seem to be, operates. We should take pride in that.

I'm not confident around compliments or being celebrated, and I'm not comfortable with the thought of envy, which some people thrive on.

It is good to vary in order that you may frustrate the curious, especially those who envy you.

Bryan Adams might not be what I want to put on, but he's a pop singer with a great voice and great guitar tone. Plus, he's done more for Canada than Rush have, because he works all the time. I envy him for that.