Mediocrity doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

Comparison is a thug that robs your joy. But it's even more than that - Comparison makes you a thug who beats down somebody - or your soul.

What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers or jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by burst of anger and quarrels.

Whoever envies another confesses his superiority.

Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.

Fill'd the air with barbarous dissonance.

Envy is the offspring of pride,

these people would indeed only be concerned for themselves, for their egoism, just like the bandit, from whom they are distinguished only by the absurdity of their means.

The businessman who wishes to gain a market by throttling a superior competitor, the worker who wants a share of his employer's wealth, the artist who envies a rival's higher talent - they're all wishing facts out of existence and destruction is the only means of their wish. If they pursue it, they will not achieve a market, a fortune, or an immortal fame - they will merely destroy production

Worry soils, even the purest mind.Envy poisons, even the purest heart.Greed sullies, even the purest soul.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

And then they say one is misanthropical. Hang it! who can help being misanthropical when he finds everybody getting on in life except himself?