This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Envy is a worm that gnaws and consumes the entrails of ambitious men." - Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui, sometimes referred to as Pachacuti
"The Eskimos don't believe in competition. They don't believe in envy. They believe in sharing." - Judy Wicks
"It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered." - Aeschylus NULL
"How rare, men with the character to praise a friend’s success without a trace of envy." - Aeschylus NULL
"Since things that are found in the soul are of three kinds - passions, faculties, states of character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, for example, of becoming angry or being pained or feeling pity; by states of character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions, for example, with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions. Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and because we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way), but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or blamed." - Aristotle NULL
"Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again." - Author Unknown NULL
"Envy is the basis of democracy." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Imagination cannot makes fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable." - Blaise Pascal
"Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another’s prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Envy ought in strict truth to have no place whatever allowed it in the heart of man; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it, and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it." - Charles Caleb Colton
"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." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by defeat." - Charles Caleb Colton
"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." - Charles Caleb Colton
"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." - Charles Caleb Colton
"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." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The torment of envy is like a grain of sand in the eye." - Chinese Proverbs
"When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
"Three sparks - pride, envy, and avarice - have been kindled in all hearts." - Dante, full name Durante degli Alighieri, aka Dante Alighieri NULL
"Envy is destroyed by true friendship, as coquetry by true love." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"The most certain sign of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"The truest mark of being born with great qualities is being born without envy." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"We often glory in the most criminal passion; but that of envy is so shameful that we dare not even own it." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"‘Tis the beginning of hell in this life, and a passion not to be excused. Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of an excuse: envy alone wants both." - Edmund Burke
"Envy is the antagonist of the fortunate." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL
"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." - Eric Hoffer
"There is some good in public envy, whereas in private there is none; for public envy is as an ostracism that eclipseth men when they grow too great; and therefore it is a bridle also to great ones to keep within bounds." - Francis Bacon
"It was well said that envy keeps no holidays." - Francis Bacon
"The chief barrier to happiness is envy." - Frank Tyger
"Envy is stronger than greed." - French Proverbs
"Where there is envy, there is malice." - Greek Proverbs
"Plenty and envy lay down together." - Hausa Proverbs
"One should fear the envy of relatives and friends more than the envy of enemies." - Homer NULL
"Envy may justly be called “the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity;” it is the most acid fruit that grows on the stock of sin, an fluid so subtle that nothing but the fire of divine love can purge it from the soul." - Hosea Ballou
"In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy." - Ivan Illich
"To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be." - James Bryant Conant
"Merit challenges envy." - John Dryden
"Even lust and envy sleep." - John Dryden
"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies... I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind." - Joseph Addison
"Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope." - Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
"It is the blot and disgrace of the age to envy virtue." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Envy, most grim of all diseases." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"Envy assails the noblest; the winds howl around the highest peaks." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"Envy feeds only on the living." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"Indulgence in constant thoughts of fear, anger, melancholy, remorse, envy, sorrow, hatred, discontent, or worry; and lack of the necessities for normal and happy living, such as right food, proper exercise, fresh air, sunshine, agreeable work and a purpose in life, all are causes of nervous disease." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh