All JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Quotes about “Envy”

“Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.”
“The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.”
“Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.”
“Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.”
“Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns to soon to hatred.”
“What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.”
“Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.”
“The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.”

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