quotations about jealousy
It is said that jealousy is love, but I deny it; for though jealousy be procured by love, as ashes are by fire, yet jealousy extinguishes love as ashes smother the flame.
MARGARET OF NAVARRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Love, as it is divine with loyalty, so is it hellish with jealousy.
RICHARD WALL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Jealousy is a secret avowal we make of our own inferiority.
JOHN XERES
attributed, Day's Collacon
I'd rather be with someone who's a little jealous than someone who's never jealous. There's something a little dead fish about them.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
"Scarlett Johansson Is 2013's Sexiest Woman Alive", Esquire, November 2013
If I shall be condemn'd
Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else
But what your jealousies awake, I tell you,
'Tis rigour, and not law.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Winter's Tale
Jealousy seldom punishes with the severity it suffers.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
You are jealous because you are unaware that everything you need is inside you.
PETER DEUNOV
Love Is All Forgiving: Reflections on Love and Spirituality
Jealousy, the jaundice of the soul.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
Jealousy is a pain which eagerly seeks what causes pain.
LODOVICO ARIOSTO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Men are jealous of every woman, even when they don't have the slightest interest in her themselves.
JAN NERUDA
Prague Tales
The thing with jealousy is that we often confuse it with care. How many times were you dismissed by friends and family when you expressed concern over a jealous partner? "It just means that he cares" or "she is doing it because she cannot bear to be away" or, worse still, "this is his/her way of showing love" -- there is always something to justify this unhealthy behavior. But, guess what, jealousy is always toxic!
AINEE NIZAMI
"5 Times Jealousy Is NOT Romantic", iDiva, February 2, 2018
A jealous man sleeps dog sleep.
THOMAS OVERBURY
The Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose of Sir Thomas Overbury
All jealousy must be strangled in its birth, or time will soon conspire to make it strong enough to overcome the truth.
WILLIAM DAVENANT
attributed, Day's Collacon
The jealous man is not able, nor does he have the will, to imagine the opposite of what he fears, indeed he cannot feel joy except in the magnification of his own sorrow, and by suffering through the magnified enjoyment from which he knows he is banned. The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell -- in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond.
UMBERTO ECO
The Island of the Day Before
O jealousy,
Thou ugliest fiend of hell! thy deadly venom
Preys on my vitals, turns the healthful hue
Of my fresh cheek to haggard sallowness,
And drinks my spirit up!
HANNAH MORE
David and Goliath
Surrounded by the flames of jealousy, the jealous one winds up, like the scorpion, turning the poisoned sting against himself.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Most haters are stuck in a poisonous mental prison of jealousy and self-doubt that blinds them to their own potentiality.
STEVE MARABOLI
Unapologetically You
Jealousy is one of the meanest, but not the least powerful, of the unclean spirits that infest modern society.
C. MIDDLETON
"Minor Morals", Blackwood's Magazine, June 1853
Jealousy is indeed a poor medium to secure love, but it is a secure medium to destroy one's self-respect. For jealous people, like dope-fiends, stoop to the lowest level and in the end inspire only disgust and loathing.
EMMA GOLDMAN
lecture, "Jealousy: Causes and a Possible Cure,", Red Emma Speaks, c. 1912
You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale