#envy

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts. ↗

— Steven Pressfield

#creativity #envy #writing #art

I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts--and they never fail to have a fatal effect on my self-esteem. When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as much about novels as I do but has somehow also found the mental space to adore and be knowledgeable about the opera, have strong opinions about the relative rankings of Renaissance painters, an encyclopedic knowledge of the English civil war, of French wines--I feel an anxiety that nudges beyond the envious into the existential. How did she find the time? ↗

— Zadie Smith

#connoisseurs #envy #knowledge #self-esteem #art

Rivalry discovers that courtesy overlooks. ↗

— Baltasar Gracián

#rivalry #art

Existential envy which is directed against the other person’s very nature, is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: “I can forgive everything, but not that you are— that you are what you are—that I am not what you are—indeed that I am not you.” This form of envy strips the opponent of his very existence, for this existence as such is felt to be a “pressure,” a “reproach,” and an unbearable humiliation. In the lives of great men there are always critical periods of instability, in which they alternately envy and try to love those whose merits they cannot but esteem. Only gradually, one of these attitudes will predominate. Here lies the meaning of Goethe’s reflection that “against another’s great merits, there is no remedy but love. ↗

— Max Scheler

#attitude

Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#ethical #grief #jodi-picoult #life #moral

There is a magnificent, beautiful, wonderful painting in front of you! It is intricate, detailed, a painstaking labor of devotion and love! The colors are like no other, they swim and leap, they trickle and embellish! And yet you choose to fixate your eyes on the small fly which has landed on it! Why do you do such a thing? ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#envy #inspirational-attitude #inspirational-life #inspirational-quotes #negative-attitude

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy. ↗

— Yann Martel

#envy #life #death

You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn't stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried. ↗

— Ann Brashares

#death #envy #god #heart #lungs

Rena noticed me watching it pass. 'You think they don't got problem?' Rena said. 'Everybody got problem. You got me, they got insurance, house payment, Preparation H.' She smiled, baring the part between her two upper teeth. 'We are the free birds. They want to be us. ↗

— Janet Fitch

#free-bird #freedom #problems #wanting #white-oleander

The bittersweet about truth is that nothing could be more hurtful, yet nothing could be more helpful. ↗

— Mike Norton

#brotherhood #envy #friend #friendship #need