A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

Ambrose Bierce

Quote Topics

Adapted Capacity Emulation Envy Meanest

Quote Author

Ambrose Bierce
American - Journalist
June 24, 1842 - 1914

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

Emulation is active virtue; envy is brooding malice.

Ouida

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

Henry Fuseli

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

Alexander Pope

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

Henry Fielding

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

Honore de Balzac

Envy, the meanest of vices, creeps on the ground like a serpent.

Ovid

Unsuccessful emulation is too apt to sink into envy, which of all sins has not even the excuse to offer of temporary gratification.

Sydney Thompson Dobell

With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste.

Thorstein Veblen

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.

Martha Nussbaum

Envy, envy eats them alive. If you had money, they’d envy you that. But since you don’t, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren’t happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.

Dean Koontz

Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility; for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced.

Joseph Hall

Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.

Leo Tolstoy

Shakespeare has been adapted by Akira Kurosawa. 'Dangerous Liaisons' has been adapted into a Chinese movie. 'Blood Simple', the Coen brothers movie, was adapted by Zhang Yimou.