A Quote by Evan Esar

The only thing more certain than the hatred of enemies is the envy of friends.

Evan Esar

Quote Topics

Certain Enemies Envy Friends Hatred More Only Than The Only Thing Thing

Quote Author

Evan Esar
American - Writer
1899 - 1995

Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Robert Greene

Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.

Bertrand Russell

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

Alain de Botton

Washington once advised his adopted grandson that where there is no occasion for expressing an opinion, it is best to be silent. For there is nothing more certain than that it is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends.

Ron Chernow

Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns to soon to hatred.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Envy is more incapable of reconciliation than hatred is.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Envy is more irreconcilable than hate. It is the most corroding of all political vices and also a great power in our land. The friends of freedom are content to be envied, but envy not.

Hans F. Sennholz

The enemies of American civilization-- for such are the enemies of slavery-- seem to be more on the alert than its friends.

William Walker

Say not unto thyself, Behold, truth breedeth hatred, and I will avoid it; dissimulation raiseth friends, and I will follow it. Are not the enemies made by truth, better than the friends obtained by flattery?

Akhenaton

The love for our enemies takes us along the way of the cross and into fellowship with the Crucified. The more we are driven along this road, the more certain is the victory of love over the enemy's hatred. For then it is not the disciple's own love, but the love of Jesus Christ alone, who for the sake of his enemies went to the cross and prayed for them as he hung there.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Worse than thieves, murderers, or cannibals, those who offer compromise slow you and sap your vitality while pretending to be your friends. They are not your friends. Compromisers are the enemies of all humanity, the enemies of life itself. Compromisers are the enemies of everything important, sacred, and true.

L. Neil Smith

It is better to decide a difference between enemies than friends, for one of our friends will certainly become an enemy and one of our enemies a friend.