This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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.
The slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient if it produce amendment, and the greatest insufficient if it do not.
You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
Sorrow |
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.
No one... who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in perturbation? “By no means.” No one... who is in a state of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but whoever is delivered from sorrows and fears and perturbations, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude.
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 |
Temperence in all things, including our hopes as well as our fears, is a worthy goal, but it is hardly human to be always temperate. It is far wiser to know how to balance a great sorrow with a great happiness, or a recurrence of dread with a renewal of faith.
Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter.
Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.