A Quote by Ouida

Emulation is active virtue; envy is brooding malice.

Ouida

Quote Topics

Active Brooding Emulation Envy Malice Virtue

Quote Author

Ouida
English - Novelist
January 1, 1839 - January 25, 1908

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.

Honore de Balzac

Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.

David Hume

Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.

Honore de Balzac

In particular, it is absurd to hope to banish envy of other people's possessions or fortunes, if only because the spirit of envy can lead to emulation and ambition and have positive consequences.

Christopher Hitchens

Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.

Thomas Browne

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.

Pythagoras

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

Ambrose Bierce

Emulation embalms the dead; envy, the vampire, blasts the living.

Henry Fuseli

Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.

Henry Fielding

Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.

Alexander Pope

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I would like to break out of this "dark, brooding" image, cause I'm actually not like that at all. In Ireland, brooding is a term we use for hens. A brooding hen is supposed to lay eggs. Everytime somebody says "He's dark and brooding" I think: "He's about to lay an egg".