Jealousy

Jealousy is an emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, such as a relationship, friendship, or love. Jealousy often consists of a combination of emotions such as anger, sadness, and disgust. It is not to be confused with envy.

A believer is never jealous.
- Imam Ali, Ghurar al-hikam. Āmidī, ʻAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Muḥammad (2012). Exalted aphorisms and pearls of speech: a translation of Ghurar al-hikam wa-durar al-kalim: a collection of aphorisms of Imam ʻAli ibn Abi Talib (1st ed.). Qum, Iran: Ansariyan Publications. p. 294. ISBN 9642192802.

Jealousy. The person who hasn't felt it cannot know how much it hurts, or imagine the madness committed in its name.
- Isabel Allende Portrait in Sepia (2000)

Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?
- Proverbs 27:4, The Bible

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
- Song of Songs 8:6, The Bible

In the fire of his jealousy the whole world will be consumed, for he will make a sudden end of all who live in the earth.
- Zephaniah 1:17-19, The Bible

Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.
- The Song of Solomon viii. 6, The Bible

JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,
For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
- Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto I, Stanza 65

I didn't think that working hard and wanting something that's out of your control would be that bothersome to people. It was just really disappointing for me.
- Alessia Cara, interview with Patrick Ryan of USA Today (June 2018)

Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is to watch the success of our enemies; its wages to be sure of it.
- Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon (1825)

Some give out of faith others out of friendship. Do not envy others for the gifts they receive, or you will have no peace of mind by day or by night. Those who have destroyed the roots of jealousy have peace of mind always.
- Dhammapada Verse 249-250.

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

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860), Book I, Chapter X.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860), Book VI, Chapter X.

Jealousy: Let it go; results could be tragic.
- Eve, "Let Me Blow Ya Mind", Scorpion (6 March 2001), New York: Ruff Ryders Entertainment

It doesn't matter, what they say. In the jealous games people play, our lips are sealed.
- The Go-Go's, "Our Lips Are Sealed", Beauty and the Beat (8 July 1981), I.R.S. Records

In jealousy there is more self-love than love.
- François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1665), No. 334.

Jealousy feeds upon suspicion, and it turns into fury or it ends as soon as we pass from suspicion into certainty.
- François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1665).

It doesn't matter what they say in the jealous games people play; our lips are sealed.
- Go-Go's, "Our Lips Are Sealed"

The jealousy that arises from another's achievement is overcome by developing an awareness of and admiration for one's own and other's achievement.
- Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama in Harvard, page 174.

How often, for example, a young man desires affection from someone who cannot give it to him, who has it not to give! From such a desire as that comes often a great deal of sadness, jealousy and much other ill-feeling. You will say that such a desire is natural; undoubtedly it is, and affection which is returned is a great source of happiness. Yet if it cannot be returned, a man should have the strength to accept the situation, and not allow sorrow to be caused by the unsatisfied desire.
- C.W. Leadbeater, in The Masters and the Path, (1925), Speaking about the Four Noble Truths

Nor jealousy
Was understood, the injur'd lover's hell.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book V, line 449.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt!
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act IV, scene 5, line 19.

Though I perchance am vicious in my guess,
As, I confess, it is my nature's plague
To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy
Shapes faults that are not.
- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act III, scene 3, line 146.

O, beware, my lord of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss,
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
But, O, what damned minutes tells he o'er,
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!
- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act III, scene 3, line 166. ("Fondly loves" in some editions).

Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.
- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act III, scene 3, line 322.

But jealous souls will not be answer'd so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous.
- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act III, scene 4, line 158.

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 (c. 1610-11), Act III, scene 2, line 112.

Entire affection hateth nicer hands.
- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book I, Canto VIII, Stanza 40.

Quark: "...it's good to want things"
Odo: "Even things you can't have?"
Quark: "Especially things I can't have"
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Episode 1.9, The Passenger (Feb. 22, 1993).

But through the heart
Should Jealousy its venom once diffuse,
'Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmix'd, incessant gall,
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's paradise.
- James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 1,073.

But yesterday my worries got the best of me
Well, yesterday I'm sorry that I didn't see
I think you'll go, you know, eventually
It's my jealousy
- Tom Odell, Jealousy (2016).

Since jealousy is unfortunately a very common emotion in everyday experience and is felt frequently by a great majority of people, its use in stories and plays has been somewhat overdone. Certain schools of fiction portray jealousy as a proof of true love. This mistaken theory maintains that a lover can always tell when a woman begins to fall in love with him by observing when she begins to be jealous of other women. There is just enough truth in the theory to keep it alive long after psychology should have disposed of it.
- Walter B. Pitkin and William M. Marston, “The Art of Sound Pictures”, D. Appleton and Company, New York London (1930), Chapter VII FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS, p. 189.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 403-04.

The damning tho't stuck in my throat and cut me like a knife,
That she, whom all my life I'd loved, should be another's wife.
- H. G. Bell, The Uncle. Written for and recited by Henry Irving.

Then grew a wrinkle on fair Venus' brow,
The amber sweet of love is turn'd to gall!
Gloomy was Heaven; bright Phœbus did avow
He would be coy, and would not love at all;
Swearing no greater mischief could be wrought,
Than love united to a jealous thought.
- Robert Greene, Jealousy.

Jealousy is said to be the offspring of Love. Yet, unless the parent makes haste to strangle the child, the child will not rest till it has poisoned the parent.
- J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.

Les hommes sont la cause que les femmes ne s'aiment point.
- Men are the cause of women not loving one another.
- La Bruyère.

No true love there can be without
Its dread penalty—jealousy.
- Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto I, Stanza 24, line 8.

Can't I another's face commend,
Or to her virtues be a friend,
But instantly your forehead louers,
As if her merit lessen'd yours?
- Edward Moore, The Farmer, the Spaniel, and the Cat, Fable 9, line 5.

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, Part V.