A Literary Prescription for

Jealousy

For the green-eyed ache of wanting what is not yours, and the quiet way back from it.

Jealousy is one of the least comfortable feelings to admit to, which is exactly why it festers. It is the sting of comparison, the sense that someone else has the life, the love, or the ease you longed for. It is also completely human, and rarely the villain it feels like: usually it is only love or longing pointed in the wrong direction. These books and poems are for meeting the feeling honestly, loosening its grip, and turning your gaze back, gently, to your own life.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Prescribed reading

Some of these are wise guides to comparison, envy and the emotions we would rather not admit to, and some are novels that show, unforgettably, where jealousy can lead when it goes unspoken. Non-fiction and fiction together, they help you name the feeling, understand it, and find the quiet way back from it.

Status Anxiety

Alain de Botton · 2004

De Botton examines our restless worry about how we measure up, and traces envy back to the impossible standards we rarely stop to question. Erudite and reassuring, he loosens the grip of comparisons we never actually chose. For anyone whose jealousy is really about status and self-worth, it is a genuinely freeing read.

Emotional Agility

Susan David · 2016

Psychologist Susan David offers a practical, compassionate approach to difficult emotions, including the ones we are ashamed of, like envy and jealousy. Rather than suppressing or obeying them, she teaches how to hold them lightly and choose your response. A useful, humane guide for anyone ruled a little too often by feelings they wish they did not have.

Mating in Captivity

Esther Perel · 2006

Perel’s insightful book on desire and long-term love touches with great wisdom on jealousy and possessiveness in relationships, and what they are really telling us. Frank, intelligent and non-judgemental, it reframes difficult feelings as information rather than failure. Illuminating for anyone whose jealousy shows up most sharply in love.

Othello

William Shakespeare · 1603

The greatest study of jealousy ever written: Iago drips poison into Othello’s ear, and a noble man is destroyed by the ‘green-eyed monster’ of suspicion. Shakespeare shows with terrifying clarity how jealousy feeds on itself and warps everything it touches. A tragedy that has lost none of its power to warn, and to move.

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë · 1847

Brontë’s wild, stormy novel is driven by love turned possessive and jealous, and the ruin it wreaks across two generations. Heathcliff’s consuming, vengeful passion is one of literature’s great portraits of what happens when longing curdles. Dark, unforgettable and strangely cathartic company for anyone in the grip of the feeling.

The Talented Mr Ripley

Patricia Highsmith · 1955

Highsmith’s chilling masterpiece follows Tom Ripley, so consumed by envy of another man’s charmed life that he decides to take it. It is a brilliant, unsettling study of covetousness and the hollowness beneath it. Gripping and psychologically acute, it turns the reader’s own envy into something to examine rather than obey.

Poems about jealousy

For turning the feeling around

from “A Poison Tree”

William Blake, 1794

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water’d it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears

Blake’s deceptively simple poem shows exactly how jealousy and resentment work: unspoken, watered by secrecy and fear, they grow into something poisonous. Named and let into the light, they lose their power. It is a small, sharp lesson in why the feelings we hide are the ones that harm us most.

Shop William Blake prints →

from “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is”

Edward Dyer, 1588

My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
…I little have, and seek no more.
Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
Content with that my mind doth bring.

Dyer’s Elizabethan poem is the perfect antidote to envy: a declaration that contentment is an inner kingdom no one else’s fortune can touch. He wants for little because his own mind supplies enough. A centuries-old reminder that the cure for comparison is not more, but the quiet sufficiency of what is already yours.

Shop Edward Dyer prints →

“The Coin”

Sara Teasdale, 1920

Into my heart’s treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take
Nor a thief purloin,
—Oh better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing.

Teasdale’s tiny, perfect poem turns attention away from what others have and towards the private riches only you hold: a remembered moment of beauty, worth more than any king’s gold. It is jealousy’s gentlest cure, the practice of treasuring your own life. A lovely few lines to keep close.

Shop Sara Teasdale prints →

Quotes & Prose

Quotes about jealousy to keep

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

Fulton J. Sheen

Get this quote as a print →

For jealousy is the injured lover’s hell.

John Milton

Get this quote as a print →

The grass is greener where you water it.

Neil Barringham

Get this quote as a print →

Comparison is an act of violence against the self.

Iyanla Vanzant

Get this quote as a print →

Envy is only love pointed in the wrong direction. Turn it back towards your own life, and see what is already there.

Georgia Clare

Get this quote as a print →

From Georgia

A gentler way to look

A practice for reconnecting with your own worth, so comparison loses its grip, and an essay on how a simple gratitude practice quietly turns comparison back into contentment.

Self-Worth: See Your Unique Value

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A guided practice for reconnecting with your own unique value, so the achievements of others stop feeling like a measure of your worth.

Listen Now For Free

How a Gratitude Journal Changed My Life

Personal essay by Georgia Clare · The Library

On the quiet, steadying practice of noticing what is already good in your own life, and how it turns the eye away from what everyone else seems to have.

Read the Essay →

The Inner Peace Toolkit

Digital Self-Care Toolkit · Georgia Clare

2 guided meditations, an Inner Peace Journal, an affirmations eBook, 10 printable affirmation prints and 10 calming phone wallpapers — small daily practices to come back to whenever you need to slow down and reconnect with yourself.

Explore the Toolkit →

Questions people ask

Reading for Jealousy

Where should I start?

Start with Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton, a wise, consoling look at where our envy and comparison actually come from, and how to loosen their grip. And if you would rather a story, The Talented Mr Ripley is a brilliant, chilling study of a man consumed by wanting someone else’s life. The poems below are quiet antidotes worth keeping.

What can I read when I can’t stop comparing myself to others?

Books that turn the feeling around gently. Emotional Agility helps you handle difficult emotions like envy without being ruled by them, and the novels here, Othello and Wuthering Heights, show with real force where unchecked jealousy can lead. Or begin with the poems and the lines to keep further down the page. Comparison is deeply human, and far more common than the polished surfaces around you suggest.

Which quotes about jealousy are worth keeping?

Quotes worth keeping include “Comparison is the thief of joy.” (Theodore Roosevelt), “Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.” (Fulton Sheen) and “For jealousy is the injured lover’s hell.” (John Milton). You will find these and more in the quotes section above.

Can reading really help with jealousy?

It genuinely can. Jealousy thrives in secrecy and shame, and simply seeing it named honestly, in a wise book or an unforgettable character, loosens its hold. Literature also does something gentler: it reminds you that the lives you envy have their own hidden weather, and turns your attention back to the quiet riches of your own. These books will not scold you for the feeling. But they will help you carry it more lightly.

Jealousy

Prescribed reading

For turning the feeling around

Quotes about jealousy to keep

A gentler way to look

Reading for Jealousy

Where should I start?

What can I read when I can’t stop comparing myself to others?

Which quotes about jealousy are worth keeping?

Can reading really help with jealousy?

More prescriptions await.