Enemies to me are the sauce piquant to my dish of life.
—Elsa Maxwell, 1955Rivalry is the whetstone of talent.
—Roman proverbRevenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.
—William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847With the dead there is no rivalry.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1839I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate!
—Willa Cather, 1915We die of comfort and by conflict live.
—May Sarton, 1953He laughs best who laughs last.
—French proverbFrom hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.
—Herman Melville, 1851All our enemies are mortal.
—Paul Valéry, 1942Envy and hatred are apt to blind the eyes and render them unable to behold things as they are.
—Margaret of Valois, c. 1600We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.
—Aesop, c. 600 BCHate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love.
—Karl Kraus, 1912It would seem that in history it’s never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.
—Sybille Bedford, 1963Do we want laurels for ourselves most, / Or most that no one else shall have any?
—Amy Lowell, 1922Hoping for new friendship from old enemies is / Like expecting to find a rose in a furnace.
—Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, 1612Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s foe.
—Sophocles, 440 BCQuarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
—George Eliot, 1857The men of today are born to criticize; of Achilles they see only the heel.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880It is permitted to learn even from an enemy.
—Ovid, c. 8Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.
—Sigmund Freud, 1930How can we bear misfortune most easily? If we see our enemies faring worse.
—Thales of Miletus, c. 585 BCResentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.
—Book of Job, c. 600 BCOne of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
—E.B. White, 1977The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.
—Baltasar Gracián, 1647For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen, 1813Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
—Samuel Johnson, 1751Better a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside.
—Arabic proverbPut national causes first and personal grudges last.
—Sima Qian, c. 91 BCThe hatred of relatives is the bitterest.
—Tacitus, 117It is very foolish to attack one’s enemy openly if one can injure him in secret.
—Giambattista Giraldi, 1543You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
—Joseph Conrad, 1900Rivalry adds so much to the charms of one’s conquests.
—Louisa May Alcott, 1866What mighty contests rise from trivial things.
—Alexander Pope, 1712To outwit an enemy is not only just and glorious but profitable and sweet.
—Plutarch, c. 100An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1746Quarreling must lead to disorder, and disorder exhaustion.
—Xunzi, c. 250 BCWhen a coward sees a man he can beat, he becomes hungry for a fight.
—Chinua Achebe, 1960No one wins a quarrel by quarreling.
—German proverbPerish the universe, provided I have my revenge.
—Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, 1654Enemies are so stimulating.
—Katharine Hepburn, 1969I shall embrace my rival—until I suffocate him.
—Jean Racine, 1669The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.
—Anna Jameson, 1846