Talk:Envy

Unsourced

• Covetous men are fools, miserable wretches, buzzards, madmen, who live by themselves, in perpetual slavery, fear, suspicion, sorrow, discontent, with more of gall than honey in their enjoyments; who are rather possessed by their money than possessors of it.
  • Robert Burton (1577-1640)

• Covetousness, like a candle ill made, smothers the splendor of a happy fortune in its own grease.
  • F. Osborn

• Envy is a thousand times worse than hunger, since it is hunger of the spirit.
  • Miguel de Unamuno

• He deservedly loses his own property who covets that of another.
  • Phaedrus

• If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that it may be said to possess him.
  • Francis Bacon

• If thou seeketh to obtain by force what our Lord did not give thee, thou wilt not get it.
  • Anonymous

• Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
  • Josh Billings

• The only instance of a despairing sinner left upon record in the New Testament is that of a treacherous and greedy Judas.
  • Anonymous

• There is not a vice which more effectually contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man's affections centre in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire of accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold on the heart, it shuts out all other considerations, but such as may promote its views. In its zeal for the attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good, and good for evil; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware, then, of the beginning of covetousness, for you know not where it will end.
  • Richard Mant

• There's no profit in envy.
  • Quark. A Ferengi proverb. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

• Those who give not till they die show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer.
  • Joseph Hall

• Why are we so blind? That which we improve, we have, that which we hoard is not for ourselves.
  • Dorothee DeLuzy

• Envy never enriched any man.
  • English 17th Century proverb.

• Envy shoots at others and wounds herself.
  • English 16th Century proverb

• There is no one envious enough to harm another that is not first a torment to himself.
  • St. Augustine, Contra Secundinum Manichaeum -- which translation?

Surplus

• Desire leads to coveting, and coveting leads to stealing. For if the owner (of the coveted object) does not wish to sell, even though he is offered a good price and is entreated to accept, the person (who covets the object) will come to steal it, as it is written (Mikha 2:2) [Micah 2:2], 'They covet fields and (then) steal them.' And if the owner approaches him with a view to reclaiming his money or preventing the theft, then he will come to murder. Go and learn from the example of Achav [Ahab] and Navot [Naboth].
  • Maimonides "Torah on the Web - Virtual Beit Midrash - 17yitro". Vbm-torah.org. Retrieved 2015-02-25.