Top 175 Envy Quotes

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.

Envy is never general, but always very particular – at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.

Envy is an insult to oneself.

I’ve always had rock star envy. Unfortunately, writing is a pedestrian, tame occupation done while sitting in coffee-stained pajamas in front of a computer rather than prowling around a huge stage in sweaty leather pants, so I have to get my kicks vicariously.

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

In a way, I envy the freedom artists have. Artists can push themselves beyond their limits, in pursuit of their ideas and their vision, even if they are inhabited by demons that can also play tricks on them.

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they’re going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

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

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

I envy the dead.

I envy the dead.

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

I have friends who write all the time, and I envy them terribly.

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

I envy the happiness of others… I envy the sense of belonging… I seem always to be remaking myself.

Envy, my son, wears herself away, and droops like a lamb under the influence of the evil eye.

I don’t envy young actors.

I’m still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit.

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

I rather envy writers who do variations on a theme. I like reading those books, but in practice, I can’t do it.

I have little taste for fashionable dissipations, cards, and dancing; the theatre and tea parties are my aversion, and I look with little envy on those who find their enjoyment in such transitory delights, if delights they may be called.

One of my favorite things about America is our breathtaking collection of national and state parks, many of which boast wonders the Psalmist would envy.

We’ve never been people that go around and confront people that have been financially successful and say, ‘We hate you. We envy you because of how well you’re doing.’

Sometimes I feel like I’m lacking a playfulness. I envy guys who are consistently able to maintain a playful, optimistic perspective on things.

In any court-like environment of power, you will inevitably find people who are drawn to those who are successful or powerful, not out of admiration, but out of secret envy.

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.

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

Envy, propelled by fear, can be even more toxic than anger, because it involves the thought that other people enjoy the good things of life which the envier can’t hope to attain through hard work and emulation.

If we weren’t born with anti-social passions – narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious – why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?

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

My wife Helen is Cornish and both sides of her family are Cornish going back at least a dozen generations. And I envy that and desperately want it for my children.

Yeah, I think when you don’t make it to the playoffs and you’re watching those games, I think there’s envy in every game you watch.

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

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.

I envy Muslims their practice of regular and genuine prayer. It’s a beautiful practice that enriches their daily lives.

In a lot of ways, I envy someone like Omar Sharif who lived in a hotel for decades.

Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn’t that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.

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.

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

Yes, Clay Matthews has a long, golden, Fabio-esque flowing mane that most women would chick-slap someone for. And yes, the shiny, beautiful, dark locks that cascade out of Troy Polamalu’s helmet are the envy of volume-challenged women and bald men everywhere. But do we need to talk about it incessantly?

In 20 years, I’m going to – I’m sure – envy the body that I have now. I look fabulous and it’s important to celebrate.

Carrying envy makes life more difficult.

Do I envy Madonna’s body? Yes. Do I thank God that she has it? Yes! If you’re fifty-something and you look like Madonna, and you put a lifetime’s work in the way you look, then flash it to the world!

I never quite understood these actors – though I envy them sometimes – who can lie out for a year or two. I feel as though time is a real pressing issue, and I want to get as much work done in the time that I have left.

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.

A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator with some natural gift for legerdemain.

The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.

O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!

To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy.

While many people overseas envy Korea’s development, it is true that society has many problems such as economic polarization and a low birthrate.

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.

I envy children who know that they’re going to become doctors, know they’re going to go into the forces or whatever. I think choice is one of the hardest things, but that’s what I try to give my children, to say you can do anything.

Labour want to control all parts of the economy and society so that they can pursue the politics of envy. It would leave us all paying higher taxes and the economy in tatters.

Envy is human nature.

I do not envy any animal, though I envy many of their capacities.

In my own life, hate has consumed me at times. Or envy. When my TV show was canceled, I didn’t think it deserved to be canceled because people liked it. It was canceled for the wrong reasons, you know? I was consumed with hate for about a year.

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

When the enemies’ land force is once conquered and expelled from the continent, our Marine will rise as if by enchantment and become, within the memory of persons now living, the wonder and envy of the world.

The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch.

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

There are people who have never been taught anything, and know everything, have never been anywhere, and understand everything, have never given a moment’s thought to anything, and comprehend everything. ‘Blessed hands’ is the name bestowed on these fortunate beings. The world envies, honours and respects them.

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

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.

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

If you don’t know what Gamergate is, my God, do I envy you.

My parents and two sisters were great musicians but my family’s approach to music was always way more academic than mine. They were virtuoso players. But they were all impressed that I could sit down at a piano and find a melody. We had a different approach, we had mutual envy.

But if you look at Victoria’s Secret models, honestly, young girls don’t necessarily look up to them for the healthiest reasons. It’s more about the envy, the desire to look aesthetically best: it’s an unattainable, elitist mindset.

I honestly felt no envy or resentment, only astonishment at how much of a world there was out there and how much of it others already knew. The agenda for self-cultivation that had been set for my classmates by their teachers and parents was something I’d have to develop for myself.

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

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.

Certainly, you envy the guys that have done all kinds of things, a variety of good scripts and good directors. Then again, having worked with Cassavetes has satisfied a big part of that.

When you do well, everybody’s after you, and sometimes the motives are legitimate, and sometimes it’s envy and jealousy.

I have never been given to envy – save for the envy I feel toward those people who have the ability to make a marriage work and endure happily.

Despite some struggles of our own, America’s business and economic system remains the envy of much of the world.

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.

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.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.

With colleagues in the work environment, we fail to see the source of their envy or the reason for their manipulations; our attempts at influencing them are based on the assumptions that they want the same things as ourselves.

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

Far less envy in America than in France, and far less wit.

The U.S. can still maintain research institutions, such as Caltech, that are the envy of the world, yet it would be hubristic and naive to think that this position is sustainable without investing in science education and basic research.

People always ask me: How are you? I say I’m the envy of millions. I’ve been a lucky guy.

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

I don’t work a five-day week as a rule, and I’ve managed to fill that time up. It hasn’t been that hard. I volunteer at school. I’m working because I love it. Yet, I don’t not envy women who have a stay-at-home job, because you miss stuff.

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.

Music – not just the lyrics, but the music itself – expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them.

I admire but don’t envy people who have children and also have big, wonderful perfect houses. Maybe Martha Stewart could do it; to me those two things aren’t compatible, but I know our children will grow up with a feeling that home is a place of comfort.

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

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.

In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day’s work for a writer. You can’t put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

I don’t envy anybody else’s career because I feel they’ve earned where they’re at and worked hard. I wouldn’t mind Jack White’s gig, though. He does it all!

America was and still is able to make the necessary changes to maintain research institutions that are the envy of the world.

This getting old is something. I think I envy my dog, because my dog is sixteen, and she’s limping, and she’s still living, but she doesn’t look at me like she knows. She’s not thinking what I’m thinking. It’s a cruel trick that we all know the ending.

I envy those Hindus and Buddhists who have in their religion philosophy and ancestor worship which build in the believer a continuity with the past, and that most important ingredient in the building of a nation – memory.

In snowboarding, I’ve always looked at really strong competitors through a lens of gratitude rather than envy in the sense that the better my competition is, the more it forces me to work hard, focus, and be better myself if I want to succeed, which I do.

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.

I envy guys who can write funny.

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.

The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.

It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.

Family is so central to Afghan life that all Afghan stories are family stories. Family is something I simply can’t resist because all the great themes of human life – duty, grief, sacrifice, love, envy – you find all those things within families.

The Women’s Super League is the envy of the world in the women’s game because the clubs, the Football Association and the media are so well aligned.

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.

I’m not a completely envy-free zone – I envy 25-year-old men with magnificent bodies – but when I look at my colleagues on the whole, I don’t think I have much to envy!

Disgust is often more deeply buried than envy and anger, but it compounds and intensifies the other negative emotions.

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.

Putin has built a mobilisation society, his sky high popularity numbers, which Donald Trump so envies, are fully dependent on being able to mobilise the population against an enemy and that imagined enemy is the United States.

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

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

America’s space program has been the envy and inspiration of the world. It has made landmark scientific discoveries that are a lasting legacy of this nation’s greatness. It has studied Earth in ways no other nation can match.

I think there’s a big price to pay for consciousness, knowing that it’s all going to end and we’re mortal. I envy dogs. They don’t know they’re getting old! And they don’t know it’s towards the end. I mean, they never think, ‘I used to get by on 16 hours of sleep a day. Now, if I don’t get 19, I’m a wreck.’

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.

I envy the people who say, ‘oh, well, I’ve got my name in the golden book and I’m going to be entered into the pearly gates.’

A man’s tailored jacket is like a compartmentalized storage unit with sleeves. Women eye those pockets with envy while searching for a ticket stub lost in a handbag.

I guess, when I go there in the centre, when I do my rehabilitation, I look at the people with only one leg and I actually envy them because I’d love to have one leg. I guess the ones that only have one leg, they envy the ones that they are only missing one leg below the knee, and on and on.

Socially, the Cuban revolution created an education system and health service that remain the envy of much of the neo-liberal world.

Great writing fills me with hopeful enthusiasm and never envy.

This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high.

There’s all kinds of envy out there on the Left.

Envy aims very high.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy.

Philosophers see no harm in the Jesuits other than in their effect on humanity and the sciences. The vulgar and especially the prejudiced only hate them from an envy and jealousy born out of conspiracy and intrigue at an organisation which overshadows them.

‘Envy’ was a bit of a challenge for me. It was smooth.

America’s men and women in uniform bravely defend our nation and our values. Their skill, dedication, and valor are the envy of the world. When their time in uniform is over, they are entitled to world-class health care, a benefit they’ve earned and that their country is grateful to provide for them.

Everybody knows someone like that: wonderful, attractive people full of passion and ideals. You envy them, but you know there’s a dark side, which is brutal and cruel and violent. That dark side informs what’s wonderful about them, and the passion and rage inform the darkness; they’re inseparable.

We are and always will be the party of prosperity, not envy.

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.

When Democrats aren’t being fiscally reckless, they are economically irresponsible. Democrats bemoan corporate greed and have not a positive word to say about the entrepreneurs that have made our economy the envy of the world.

I envy people who drink – at least they know what to blame everything on.

The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful… or fun for that matter.

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.

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

I don’t envy my teachers. I used to preach to them.

Each person’s drive to overwork is unique, and doing too much numbs every workaholic’s emotions differently. Sometimes overwork numbs depression, sometimes anger, sometimes envy, sometimes sexuality. Or the overworker runs herself ragged in a race for attention.

I don’t envy these kids these days. Between Instagram and Twitter… the easiest thing is just take your phone off the hook, and you’re good.

I’ve learned that I’ve just barely scratched the surface of knowledge of the profession, and I have deep envy of and appreciation for filmmakers who really, truly understand the physics, the design of filmmaking. They can do story and color and composition and geometry and math and science all at once.

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.

If I had one wish, I would say to be born in the ’30s and be young in the ’50s and ’60s. It hurts my racing heart when I see things so far from what it was back then. I envy those guys so much.

I never envy the guys who get attention for partying too much or behaving badly.

Of course, we all watch James Bond with envy – knowing the U.S. government would never pay for the lifestyle he enjoys.

I envy Jonghyun’s technique and energy, Onew’s voice, Key’s rapping skills and Minho’s looks.

The United States has the world’s largest and most innovative economy, an unmatched rule of law, and a free market that is the envy of the international community. For investors, we are the reserve currency.

I envy my daughter’s childhood.

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

Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.

I am unable to eat what I want to and always work hard to maintain my body and looks. I envy other women who have a free lifestyle.

Honestly, I envy painters, who can have a masterpiece in one morning. Or musicians, who can write something in 30 minutes and arrange it in an hour, sometimes. ‘Cause with this, with writing, you can occasionally feel like a caveman, like you’ve been working with pitch and tar on this brush.

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!

You know, writing is really difficult, and it takes a real patience and a skill. I don’t know if I have that. I admire it in others, so much, and I envy it.

When I went to Philadelphia I was 26 years old and really sitting on top of the world. Family life, a professional career, plenty of friends and associates, and a good reputation, a wish list that could be the envy of many.

People who make the choice to study, work hard or do whatever they endeavor is to give it the max on themselves to reach to the top level. And you have the people who get envy and jealous, yet are not willing to put that work in, and they want to get the same praise.

One thing I really envy about my friends who have kids is that as their children develop, they’re able to revisit their own developmental stages and recognise themselves and undo a lot of things they decided.

I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.

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.

Skating takes up 70 percent of my time, school about 25 percent. Having fun and talking to my friends, 5 percent. It’s hard. I envy other kids a lot of things, but I get a guilt trip when I’m not training.

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

The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build.

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 don’t envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.

Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too.

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

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

I’m not married, and I don’t have any kids, so sometimes I envy that end of things when I see a family vacation or people at the beach with their kids or at sporting events with their kids; you wonder, ‘Is that a part of your life that you want to go into?’

Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly.

It was tragic every single time my mom told me we were moving. I would always envy my friends who had grown up in the same house their entire life, and they had markings on the wall of ‘me at five years old’ and all that. It made me so sad. I wished I’d had that.

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

The United States of America became the envy of the world because we welcomed the best and brightest minds from anywhere on the planet and gave them the opportunity to succeed.

By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.

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.

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.

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it’s a constitution that’s the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it’s the most generous nation in the world.