Jealousy and envy are often considered some of the more destructive human feelings.
Jealousy often makes us do incredibly harmful things, both to ourselves and to the people around us. When you are jealous of someone you experience a plethora of negative emotions, it brings out the worst aspects of us.
We’ve compiled a list of 79 jealousy quotes to help you understand all of its many masks. Humankind has dealt with jealousy and envy since time immemorial, and they feature heavily as big no-no’s in every religion, whether that’s Christianity or Buddhism.
Before we get to the quotes let's take a few moments to explore jealousy.
Why Read Jealousy Quotes
Why will reading jealousy quotes help you overcome this feeling? How can it help with envy? Many great thinkers and wise individuals from across history have delved deeply into this emotion, and they’ve bequeathed us with some truly priceless advice if we open our ears (and hearts) to some of their words.
You can’t fight jealousy and win, overcoming jealousy is not a boxing match, trying to fight the more negative side of yourself that you see when you experience emotions like jealousy is fruitless. The battle will only tire you out and drain your physical and mental reserves.
Jealousy does its greatest harm when you’re fatigued and fed up – it’s an emotion that thrives on conflict and drama. In many ways, jealousy wants to create internal conflict within you.
So if we can’t overcome our jealousy by fighting it then what can we do? The answer is by being more conscious, increasing your awareness is like poison for your jealousy. Once you understand your unique flavor of jealousy you are more readily prepared for it.
These quotes will help you develop the awareness muscles, it takes a certain composure and presence of mind to handle dark feelings like jealousy.
Time spent reading quotes like these is like a miracle growth for your awareness, and when we have words of wisdom that we can reflect on it help us respond consciously even when jealousy or envy strikes.
79 Jealousy Quotes to Overcome Your Envy
- “Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own.” – Harold Coffin
- “Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.” – Fulton J. Sheen
- “It’s a completely useless emotion – jealousy. I don’t go there.” – Joy Behar
- “Jealousy eats away at relationships like acid. It’s corrosive and destructive. It destroys trust and intimacy.” – Dr. Gary Chapman
- “Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.” – John Berger
- “Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.” – John Dryden
- “Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.” – Gene Tierney
- “Jealousy is an ugly emotion, because it is based on fear. Fear is ugly, because it is based in ignorance. Ignorance is ugly, because it prevents people from seeing things clearly.” – Deepak Chopra
- “They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.” – Bob Monkhouse
- “Don’t waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.” – Mary Schmich
- “Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.” – Gene Tierney
- “Friends ask you questions; enemies go around asking others about you looking for the answer they want to believe” – Maria Nieves
- “The price of success is to bear the criticism of envy.” – Denis Waitley
- “There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” – Peter F. Drucker
- “I had forgotten. Disgust shadows desire. Another life is never safely envied.” – Robert Wells
- “Don’t waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.” – Mary Schmich
- “The knives of jealousy are honed on details.” – Ruth Rendell
- “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice kindness.” – Dalai Lama XIV
- “Some people suffer from the green-eyed monster called envy.” – Ana Monnar
- “Jealousy is the dragon in paradise; the hell of heaven; and the most bitter of the emotions because it is associated with the sweetest.” – R. Orage
- My wife’s jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was.” – Rodney Dangerfield
- “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-5
- “The fenced-in dog barks at the one running free.” – Marty Rubin
- “As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a [person].” – John Chrysostom
- “I am Envy…I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.” – Christopher Marlowe
- “Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.” – François de la Rochefoucauld
- “No bird ever looked at a plane in envy” – Iain Thomas
- “You can be the moon and still be jealous of the stars.” – Gary Allan
- “If you want to know what a man really thinks of you, watch how he treats his inferiors, Not his equals.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” – Carrie Fisher
- “Those who clap you on the back with one hand may clench envy's mask behind theirs with the other.” – Stewart Stafford
- “Insecure people only eclipse your sun because they’re jealous of your daylight and tired of their dark, starless nights.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “Jealousy in romance is like salt in food._ A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening.” – Maya Angelou
- “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou
- “Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “Humans are suspicious and jealous creatures. When they see something perfect, they want to find a flaw.” – Gosho Aoyama
- “To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.” – Francoise Sagan
- “Don’t let anyone steal your joy. Don’t let anything destroy your peace of mind. Be careful of your thoughts. Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings create your actions. Your actions change your destiny.” – Buddha
Don’t let anyone steal your joy. Don’t let anything destroy your peace of mind. Be careful of your thoughts. Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings create your actions. Your actions change your destiny.” – Buddha
- “Whoever envies another confesses his superiority.” – Samuel Johnson
- “People can do all kinds of things that maybe aren’t wise in hindsight because of jealousy.” – Kristin Bauer van Straten
- “Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.” – Erica Jong
- “It takes two to make a quarrel, but only one to end it.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.” – Ann Brashares
- “What sort of love is permeated by jealousy? You are jealous because you are unaware that everything you need is inside you.” – Peter Deunov
- “The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.” – William Penn
- “You cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.” – Jonathan Swift
- “A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” – Seneca
- “I don’t ever remember being particularly jealous of anybody, because I figured if I can’t do it myself, I don’t deserve to get it.” – Clyde Tombaugh
- “Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.” – Buddha
- “Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.” – William Shenstone
- “More men die of jealousy than of cancer.” – Joseph P. Kennedy
- “Jealous persons are always in search of imaginary slights, which they magnify into crimes.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “The surest route to breeding jealousy is to compare. Since jealousy comes from feeling less than another, comparisons only fan the fires.” – Dorothy Corkille Briggs
- “The truest mark of being born with great qualities, is being born without envy.” – François de La Rochefoucauld
- “There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard.” – Washington Irving
- “Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves.” – Joseph Addison
- “Jealousies are like ghosts: they come unbidden into the heart, and there haunt us until we either drive them away or kill ourselves trying to chase them off.” – Gail Sheehy
- “Envy is pain at the good fortune of others.” – Aristotle
- “Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read, it merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.” – Margaret Mead
- “A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.” – Robert A. Heinlein
- “You’ll never find happiness if you look for it under the wrong name.” – Albert Einstein
- “Never hate jealous people. They are jealous because they think you are better than them.” – Paulo Coelho
- “Jealousy hyphenates love in all the wrong places.” – Terri Guillemets
- “Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.” – Aphra Behn
- “The best way to get over jealousy is to realize how little it matters.” – William Shakespeare
- “Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.” – Paul Eldridge
- “He that is not jealous is not in love.” – Saint Augustine
- “The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build.” – Margaret Thatcher
- “Pure love allows no room for jealousy.” – James Lendall Basford
- “To live without comparison is to remove a tremendous burden.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
- “It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.” – Lawrence Durrell
- “Jealousy has a lot to do with how people see themselves. If you are comparing yourself to someone, stop doing this. You were created to be exactly who you are.” – Stanley Steel
- “By holding a grudge or allowing spite to rule your day, you are placing emphasis on the negative and not on the positive. Get rid of envy or jealousy.” – Byron Pulsifer
- “The little “me” is jealous. The true self is content.” – Maxime Lagacé
- “The fastest way to lose friends and alienate people is to get better and improve yourself.” Life Math Money
- “Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
- “Jealousy is the only vice that gives no pleasure.” – Patrick Henry
- “Our envy of others devours us most of all.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- “As iron is eaten by rust, so are the envious consumed by envy.” – Antisthenes
Final Thoughts on Jealousy Quotes
As you can see from the quotes above, jealousy is a powerful and destructive emotion that brings out the worst in us when unchecked.
These quotes can help you gain perspective and build up the awareness you need to break from the thought patterns and behaviors that can feed and perpetuate any jealousy that you have.
Thanks for reading, and check out these 25 daily affirmations for happiness and positive thinking, to help you start your path to freedom from envy and jealousy.
And if you want more eye-opening quotes, be sure to check out these blog posts:
- 105 Loneliness Quotes for When You Feel Sad or Alone
- 71 Move On Quotes to Focus on What’s Next in Life
- 87 Broken Trust Quotes for When People Hurt You
Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then check out and recite these 57 affirmations for success.
Tom Smith is a creative writer with over 6 years of professional experience. He discovered the joy of writing after covering some furniture in his childhood home with graffiti. In later years, he got himself a BA in creative writing and hasn’t looked back. After discovering the power of positive thinking and discovering the spiritual side of life, he believes it's a huge privilege to be able to write about all things personal development.
