Horace Quotes

The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have.

People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.

If you're miserable and someone flies by looking like they have everything in the whole world and it's never going to be you, that's tough to deal with.

The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.

How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.

If I can't be happy, nobody can be happy.

We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.

Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another's.

That which makes people dissatisfied with their condition, is the chimerical idea they form of the happiness of others.

The ox longs for the gaudy trappings of the horse; the lazy pack-horse would fain plough. [We envy the position of others, dissatisfied with our own.]

No one is content with his own lot.

Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.

It is not enough to be happy, it is also necessary that others not be.

I was always jealous of something getting more attention.

Sometimes the only way you can feel good about yourself is by making someone else look bad. And I'm tired of making other people feel good about themselves.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn't mean what you have isn't beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have - no one is ever 100 per cent like, 'Yes, I'm the bomb dot com - from head to toe!'

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

I don't get jealousy, I don't get how people hate each other - I never did.

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

You feel like everyone hates you if you've got a good life, now I feel maybe it's allowed because I've had my share of sadness.

Envy is human nature.

Everybody always thinks the grass is always greener.