Most of us love a celebration, but when someone else is the one getting the attention, showing off a new purchase, having PDA, posting cute family pictures nonstop, etc., the impulse to smile and cheer may quickly turn to annoyance and bitterness. Between scrolling through Instagram, seeing new cars driving through the neighborhood, hearing the details from a friend’s luxurious getaway, wondering if anyone is going to flirt with your significant other at a work event, and more, there are endless opportunities to let jealousy get inside your head. Because insecurity is likely at the root of a jealous mindset, it’s important to focus on your own blessings and keep positive affirmations louder than self-conscious fears. If you’re struggling with unhealthy comparisons to others, or are around friends and family who have jealous tendencies, these quotes about envy will likely resonate and hopefully help with either shifting your own mindset from resentment to intentional gratitude, or encouraging boundary-setting in your relationships. Don’t let the green-eyed monster run the show—obsess over these 100 quotes about jealousy instead!
100 Jealousy Quotes
- “When we look inward, not outward, we can dismantle the parts of our personalities that have controlled us for so long - such as anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority.” — Gary Zukav
- “Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.” — Robert A. Heinlein
- “The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.” — William Penn
- “A lot of people get so hung up on what they can’t have that they don’t think for a second about whether they really want it.” — Lionel Shriver
- “A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.” — Robert A. Heinlein
- “The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.” — Bette Midler
- “There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.” — George Eliot
- “Jealousy’s a weak emotion.” — Jay-Z
- “I think it’s important to get your surroundings as well as yourself into a positive state - meaning surround yourself with positive people, not the kind who are negative and jealous of everything you do.” — Heidi Klum
- “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
- “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” — Carrie Fisher
- “He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.” — Buddha
- “You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.” — Margaret Atwood
- “Oh, what a bitter thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.” — William Shakespeare
- “I don’t believe in comparing myself with anyone else, as that leads to hatred and jealousy.” — Shehnaaz Gill
- “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
- “Jealousy is such a waste of time because you’re jealous of them, and they go about their lives and have a wonderful time, so what’s the point?” — Joy Behar
- “Insecure people only eclipse your sun because they’re jealous of your daylight and tired of their dark, starless nights.” — Shannon L. Alder
- “Drama can be an addiction. It’s so, so sneaky. Jealousy - all of those things can really send you in a lot of different crazy directions.” — Christian Slater
- “The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.” — Socrates
- “Isn’t it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?” — Sean Covey
- “To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.” — Francoise Sagan
- “Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.” — Josh Billings
- “I’ve felt regret but I’ve also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don’t believe it. You feel it, it’s like guilt, it’s like jealousy, it’s like all those horrible things. You’ve just got to snip them and get them out, because they’re no good.” — Jude Law
- “It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.” — Aeschylus
- “Jealousy injures us with the dagger of self-doubt.” — Terri Guillemets
- “I hate jealousy so much that if I ever do feel it, I try to shut it down immediately, but it’s so hard.” — Peyton List
- “It is never wise to seek or wish for another’s misfortune. If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang.” — Charley Reese
- “I believe in healthy competition not jealousy.” — Kovai Sarala
- “Jealousy—tormenting yourself, for fear you should be tormented by another.” — Paul Chatfield
- “Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.” — Oliver Stone
- “When you do well, everybody’s after you, and sometimes the motive are legitimate, and sometimes it’s envy and jealousy.” — Robert Kraft
- “Jealousy is simply and clearly the fear that you do not have value. Jealousy scans for evidence to prove the point - that others will be preferred and rewarded more than you. There is only one alternative - self-value. If you cannot love yourself, you will not believe that you are loved. You will always think it’s a mistake or luck.” — Jennifer James
- “Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.” — Anna Godbersen
- “Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man’s self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.” — Francis Bacon
- “I don’t get jealousy, I don’t get how people hate each other - I never did.” — Nas
- “Take heed you harbor not that vice called Envy, lest another’s happiness be your torment, and God’s blessing become your curse.” — Wellins Calcott
- “Fear often manifests in cynicism, anger, jealousy, and anxiety. I worry that many of our communities are being driven by fear.” — Vivek Murthy
- “Even if people pretend that they’re OK with it, jealousy can eat people alive.” — Phoebe Fox
- “There is no greater glory than love, nor any greater punishment than jealousy.” — Lope de Vega
- “Don’t waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.” — Mary Schmich
- “Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive. ” — Havelock Ellis
- “Jealousy isn’t a pleasant quality, but if it isn’t overdone (and if it’s combined with modesty), apart from its inconvenience there’s even something touching about it.” — Milan Kundera
- “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” — William Shakespeare
- “I do not say anything from jealousy.” — Anna Held
- “Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.” — Emil Cioran
- “Surrounded by the flames of jealousy, the jealous one winds up, like the scorpion, turning the poisoned sting against himself.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
- “It’s true that people who feel inadequate, insecure, or overly dependent tend to be more jealous than others.” — Helen Fisher
- “I hate jealousy, I hate possessiveness. I’m nobody’s possession.” — Olga Kurylenko
- “He that is jealous is not in love.” — Saint Augustine
- “Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.” — Gene Tierney
- “Jealousy is the fear of comparison.” — Max Frisch
- “My parents are very competitive, so we are very competitive as kids. But it’s a good kind of competition; it’s not a jealousy. You always want to do your best, and if it can’t be you, you want it to be your brother or your sister, you know what I mean?” — Janet Jackson
- “Envy is like a fly that passes all the body’s sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores.” — Arthur Chapman
- “Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistible urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. Yippee.” — J.R. Ward
- “Jealousy is unavoidable - it’s part of the price we pay for intimacy.” — Rachel Simmons
- “It would be impossible to estimate how much time and energy we invest in trying to fix, change and deny our emotions - especially the ones that shake us at our very core, like hurt, jealousy, loneliness, shame, rage, and grief.” — Debbie Ford
- “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” — 1 Corinthians 13:4
- “As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion.” — Antisthenes
- “Jealousy is when you count someone else’s blessings instead of your own.” — Amanda Metcalf
- “Sure, I can get a little bit jealous. The good part about jealousy is that it comes from passion. It’s also the dangerous part and it’s an ugly emotion that hurts.” — Matthew McConaughey
- “I’m an imperfect person. I’ve let anger, jealousy, all the emotions, get the best of me. If I go into books, word by word, little by little, they help re-center and re-ground me and put me on the right path.” — Keith Thurman
- “Jealousy is a scary thing.” — Laura Dern
- “Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.” — Aphra Behn
- “Humans are suspicious and jealous creatures. When they see something perfect, they want to find a flaw.” — Gosho Aoyama
- “Jealousy is the grave of affection.” — Mary Baker Eddy
- “Whoever envies another confesses his superiority.” — Samuel Johnson
- “Jealousy is a dog’s bark which attracts thieves.” — Karl Kraus
- “People can do all kinds of things that maybe aren’t wise in hindsight because of jealousy.” — Kristin Bauer van Straten
- “It’s a completely useless emotion - jealousy. I don’t go there.” — Joy Behar
- “Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.” — Erica Jong
- “I am convinced that the jealous, the angry, the bitter, and the egotistical are the first to race to the top of mountains. A confident person enjoys the journey, the people they meet along the way and sees life not as a competition.” — Shannon L. Alder
- “The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.” — Baltasar Gracian
- “Jealousy is just love and hate at the same time.” — Drake
- “Jealousy is the great exaggerator.” — Johann Chrisoph Friedrich von Schiller
- “Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.” — John Dryden
- “Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise. For envy is a kind of praise.” — John Gay
- “Passion can quickly slip to jealousy, or even hatred.” — Arthur Golden
- “Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.” — George Eliot
- “Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.” — Elizabeth Bowen
- “Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.” — Van Wyck Brooks
- “The jealous are possessed by a mad devil and a dull spirit at the same time.” — Johann Kaspar Lavater
- “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” — Proverbs 14:30
- “Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.” — Mark Twain
- “Love shouldn’t be about jealousy or anything like that. It should be about commitment and being able to trust that person. If you can’t have that from the get-go, there’s a problem.” — Aaron Carter
- “I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!” — Oscar Wilde
- “Jealousy is a disease. Get well soon.” — Paris Hilton
- “I am used to jealousy and people putting me in a box and labeling me without really knowing me.” — Sonja Morgan
- “Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.” — Johannes Brahms
- “The knives of jealousy are honed on details.” — Ruth Rendell
- “Jealousy is the tie that binds, and binds, and binds.” — Helen Rowland
- “Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it, For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.” — Lord Byron
- “Jealousy is the worst trait in any person.” — Adam DeVine
- “Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.” — H.G. Wells
- “You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntington, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don’t rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again.” — Anne Brontë
- “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent.” — Milan Kundera
- “Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.” — Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- “Never hate jealous people. They are jealous because they think you are better than them.” — Paulo Coelho
- “Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.” — William Shenstone
- “I don’t want anything negative in my life, like hate, comparison, competition, and jealousy. I think these things are very heavy and take away from you the way of enjoying life.” — Vivek Oberoi Check out:- 100 quotes to stay positive- 100 quotes about peace- Inspirational quotes for women- Happy quotes to lift your mood
