A Quote by John Gay

Envy's a sharper spur than pay.

John Gay

Quote Topics

Envy Pay Sharper Spur Than

Quote Author

John Gay
English - Poet
June 30, 1685 - December 4, 1732

Envy's a sharper spur than pay: No author ever spar'd a brother; Wits are gamecocks to one another.

John Gay

perhaps there's no sharper spur to meditation than answered prayer.

Hortense Calisher

God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.

Hannibal

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

Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.

Charles Caleb Colton

You can make your mind sharper, you can get sharper with time.

Ryan Montgomery

Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.

William Hazlitt

I don't believe that economic equality is possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity.

Boris Johnson

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

Heraclitus

Sharper than a serpents tongue, tighter than a bongo drum, quicker than a one night stand, slicker than a mambo band.

Don Henley

The pleasure of being alive is brought into sharper focus when you need to pay attention to staying alive.

Richard Louv

To worry about differences in earned incomes simply because some persons earn more than other persons is to wallow in envy. And envy is, and ought to remain, a deadly sin rather than be fashioned into a livewire for energizing public policy.

Donald J. Boudreaux

I'm not a completely envy-free zone - I envy 25-year-old men with magnificent bodies - but when I look at my colleagues on the whole, I don't think I have much to envy!

David Starkey

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.