ENVY.
Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them.—Proverbs, xxiv. 1.
Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?—Proverbs, xxvii. 4.
But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?
For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.—Mark, xv. 9, 10.
For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.—James, iii. 16.
And next to him malicious Envy rode
Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
Between his cankered teeth a venomous tode,
That all the poison ran about his jaw:
But inwardly he chawed his own maw
At neighbour’s wealth that made him ever sad,
For death it was when any good he saw;
And wept, that cause of weeping none he had;
And when he heard of harme he waxed wondrous glad.
Spenser.
I envy not their hap
Whom favour doth advance;
I take no pleasure in their pain
That have less happy chance.
To rise by others’ fall
I deem a losing gain;
All states with others’ ruin built,
To ruin run amain.
Southwell.
Here are no false entrapping baits,
To hasten too, too hasty fates;
Unless it be
The fond credulity
Of silly fish, which, worldling like, still look
Upon the bait, but never on the hook:
Nor envy, unless among
The birds, for prize of their sweet song.
Sir Walter Raleigh.
For every thing contains within itself
The seeds and sources of its own corruption;
The cankering rust corrodes the brightest steel;
The moth frets out your garment, and the worm
Eats its slow way into the solid oak:
But Envy, of all evil things the worst,
The same to-day, to-morrow, and for ever,
Saps and consumes the heart in which it works.
Cumberland.
Envy’s a sharper spur than pay,
And, unprovok’d,’t will court the fray.
*****
Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise,
For envy is a kind of praise.
*****
Canst thou discern another’s mind?
What is’t you envy? Envy’s blind.
Tell Envy, when she would annoy,
That thousands want what you enjoy.
Gay.
The lion craved the fox’s art;
The fox the lion’s force and heart;
The cock implored the pigeon’s flight,
Whose wings were rapid, strong, and light;
The pigeon strength of wing despised,
And the cock’s matchless valour prized.
The fishes wish’d to graze the plain;
The beasts to skim beneath the main.
Thus, envious of another’s state,
Each blam’d the partial hand of fate.
Gay.
Slander’d in vain, enjoy the spleen of foes;
Let these from envy hate—from interest those!
Guilt, like the first, your gratitude requires,
Since none can envy till he first admires;
And nature tells the last his crime is none,
Who to your interest but prefers his own.
Aaron Hill.
What made the man of Envy what he was,
Was worth in others, vileness in himself,
A lust of praise, with undeserving deeds,
And conscience poverty of soul; and still
It was his earnest work and daily toil,
With lying tongue, to make the noble seem
Mean as himself.
Pollok.