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Literary notes about envious (AI summary)

Literature frequently employs the word “envious” to illuminate a range of resentful emotions, often portraying characters whose hearts are clouded by jealousy and ill will. It is used to accentuate moral degradation or inner turmoil, as seen when an “envious, evil heart” disrupts familial peace [1] or when a character’s disposition is marked by envious malice [2]. At times the word serves to underscore a broader social or cosmic antagonism, depicting how envy can pervade interpersonal dynamics or even jeopardize one’s fate, as in the portrayal of a fate “engulfed by envious” forces [3, 4]. Such usages enrich narratives by casting envy as both a personal failing and a destructive societal undercurrent.
  1. But when he saw his young brother coming out of the wood laden with his booty, his envious, evil heart gave him no peace.
    — from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
  2. I might say the like of angry, peevish, envious, ambitious;
    — from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
  3. Lord, let thy hand be exalted, and let them not see: let the envious people see, and be confounded: and let fire devour thy enemies.
    — from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete
  4. To an envious man nothing is more delightful than another's misfortune, and nothing more painful than another's success.
    — from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza

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