Envy will merit as its shade pursue,
But like a shadow proves the substance true.
Jealousy Quotes
Shakespeare leads by a long way, followed by Giannina Braschi, Horace, Seneca and La Rochefoucauld. George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) is the best-sourced writer here, with two lines: anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love, and jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart. Leonardo’s notebooks say envy wounds with false accusations.
Two entries are flagged misattributed. “The living will envy the dead” is credited to Nikita Khrushchev, and a remark that we are all clever enough at envying a famous man while he is alive and praising him when he is dead is credited to Mimnermus.
Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave,
Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.
No metal can,
No, not the hangman's axe, bear half the keenness
Of thy sharp envy.
Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,
For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
O! beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.