Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Caleb Colton

To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be.

Charles Caleb Colton

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.

Charles Caleb Colton

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.

Charles Caleb Colton

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Envy is the religion of the mediocre

Edward Gibbon

Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.

Elizabeth Montagu

it is more to my personal happiness and advantage to indulge the love and admiration of excellence, than to cherish a secret envy of it.

Edmund Waller

Poets may boast (as safely-vain) Their work shall with the world remain: Both bound together, live, or die, The verses and the prophecy. But who can hope his lines shou'd long Last, in a daily changing tongue? While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails.

Bertrand Russell

A life which goes excessively against natural impulse is... likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and uncharitableness.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.

Charles Caleb Colton

Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.

Charles Caleb Colton

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

Charles Caleb Colton

No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked; no growth more certain.

Charles Caleb Colton

Accustom yourself to submit on all and every occasion, and on the most minute, no less than on the most important circumstances of life, to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good. This will give decision, tone, and energy to the mind, which, thus disciplined, will often reap victory from defeat and honor from repulse.

Charles Dickens

Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.

Charles Dickens

It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse.

Charles Simmons

It is a great evil, as well as a misfortune, to be unable to utter a prompt and decided 'no'.

Charles Stanley

We're living in a fearful time. Since 9/11 people have become more afraid than before, because of terrorism. There's a lot of confusion about evil, where it's all coming from.

David Mitchell

False modesty can be worse than arrogance.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.

Gordon Hinckley

Where there is appreciation, there is courtesy, there is concern for the rights and property of others. Without appreciation, there is arrogance and evil.

Edgar Friedenberg

It takes a kind of shabby arrogance to survive in our time, and a fairly romantic nature to want to.

Alan Kay

I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

Chen Shui-bian

We must not demonstrate any arrogance, and we must refrain from any irrational or undemocratic behavior.

Bob Lewis

Arrogance is a veneer -- a thin covering of excuses hiding deep performance deficiencies.

Benoit Mandelbrot

An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.

Rory Bremner

When I first met Tony Blair in 1996, he was open and idealistic, keen to bring a breath of fresh air to government. But something happened - was it just the arrogance of power? - that narrowed Labour's vision from purposeful reform and investment, to peevish and petulant pragmatism.