This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Angus Wilson, fully Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson
All the seven deadly sins are self destroying, morbid appetites, but in their early stages at least, lust and gluttony, avarice and sloth know some gratification, while anger and pride have power, even though that power eventually destroys itself. Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape.
Anger | Appetite | Avarice | Effort | Envy | Fear | Gluttony | Lust | Power | Pride | Self | Sloth |
Imagination cannot makes fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable.
There is a diabolical trio existing in the natural man, implacable, inextinguishable, co-operative and consentaneous, pride, envy, and hate; pride that makes us fancy we deserve all the goods that others possess; envy that some should be admired while we are overlooked; and hate, because all that is bestowed on others, diminishes the sum we think due to ourselves.
If sensuality be our only happiness, we ought to envy the brutes; for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.
Envy | Instinct | Reason | Sensuality | Happiness |
Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the illustrious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, assimilate not.
Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by defeat.
Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by a defeat.
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad.
We often glory in the most criminal passion; but that of envy is so shameful that we dare not even own it.
The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
Envy | Esteem | Greed | Self | Self-esteem |
One should fear the envy of relatives and friends more than the envy of enemies.