Schadenfreude Quotes

• To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Envy, Feels, Savour

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• I remember learning German - so beautiful, so strange - at school in Australia on the other side of the earth. My family was nonplussed about me learning such an odd, ugly language and, though of course too sophisticated to say it, the language of the enemy. But I liked the sticklebrick nature of it, building long supple words by putting short ones together. Things could be brought into being that had no name in English - Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, sippenhaft, Sonderweg, Scheissfreundlichkeit, Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

  Anna Funder

  Beautiful, School, Names

  Anna Funder (2011). “Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall”, p.10, Granta Books

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• Schadenfreude is so nutritious.

  Will Self

  23 Copy quote

• To hear that your neighbor was worse off than yourself was not an altogether unpleasant experience.

  Lizette Woodworth Reese

  Neighbor, Unpleasant Experiences

  Lizette Woodworth Reese (1929). “A Victorian village: reminiscences of other days”

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• Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.

  Eric Hoffer

  Laughter, Animal, Quality

  17 Copy quote

• People respect unhappiness and find it especially hard to forgive success.

  Francoise Sagan

  People, Forgiving, Unhappiness

  23 Copy quote

• We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

  Iris Murdoch

  Judging, World, Fantasy

  Iris Murdoch (2002). “Nuns and Soldiers”, p.490, Penguin

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• In sad truth, half our forebodings of our neighbors are but our own wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Wish, Half, Neighbor

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon, F. J. Sypher (1999). “Tales and sketches”, Scholars Facsimilies & Reprint

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• At some time in the history of the universe, there were no human minds, and at some time later, there were. Within the blink of a cosmic eye, a universe in which all was chaos and void came to include hunches, beliefs, sentiments, raw sensations, pains, emotions, wishes, ideas, images, inferences, the feel of rubber, Schadenfreude, and the taste of banana ice cream.

  David Berlinski

  Pain, Eye, Ideas

  60 Copy quote

• Since Madonna is positioned as always "cooler than thou", we all are primed for schadenfreude if something in her fabulous life goes amiss.

  Naomi Wolf

  Fabulous Life, Fabulous, Ifs

  "Madonna acts just like a serious male artist would - and people hate her for it" by Naomi Wolf, www.theguardian.com. February 6, 2012.

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• The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

  Noam Chomsky

  Indulge In, Perspective, Would Be

  "The United States Has Essentially a One-Party System". Interview with Gabor Steingart, www.spiegel.de. October 10, 2008.

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• I'll always understand the Schadenfreude aspect to short-selling. I get that no one will always like it. I'm also convinced to the deepest part of my bones that short-selling plays the role of real-time financial watchdog. It's one of the few checks and balances in the market.

  James Chanos

  Real, Play, Balance

  11 Copy quote

• I often find myself worrying about celebrities. It's an entirely caring thing; it's not like the people who commission those photographs with cruel arrows to go on the covers of the celebrity magazines. The photographs show botched plastic surgery, raging eczema, weight gain and horrible clothes for maximum schadenfreude.

  Peter York

  Caring, Clothes, Arrows

  8 Copy quote