This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When malice has reason on its side, it looks forth bravely, and displays that reason in all its luster. When austerity and self-denial have not realized true happiness, and the soul returns to the dictates of nature, the reaction is fearfully extravagant.
Looks | Malice | Nature | Reason | Self | Self-denial | Soul |
Imagination cannot makes fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable.
If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quiets is still deeper in debt to himself.
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.
By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.
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.
Is not beauty created at every encounter between a man and life, in which he repays his debt by focusing on the living moment all the power which life has given him as an obligation? Beauty - for the one who pays his debt. For others, too, perhaps.
Beauty | Debt | Life | Life | Man | Obligation | Power | Beauty |
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 |