99 Talking Behind Your Back Quotes: Jealousy, Envy & Gossip

All of a sudden, when you appear among your colleagues, relatives, friends, or even family, they fall silent, and the awkward moment tells you something. They might be discussing your negativity, spreading rumors about every step you take.

It is not that people don’t talk about positive things; they do, but most prefer negative topics, the age-old drama of jealousy, often breeding whispers just out of hearing range. This is human nature, and you are not alone; we all experience it, but understanding this interplay of insecurity and comparison often disarms its sting.

In this article, we have gathered talking-behind-your-back quotes from wise minds, writers, philosophers, celebrities, and more who have dissected this very human experience to prepare us to rise above it and learn how to deal with jealousy, envy, and gossip.

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Talking Behind Your Back Quotes: Jealousy, Envy & Gossip

At its core, jealousy is often rooted in insecurity, fear of loss, and resentment toward others’ perceived fortune. As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer noted, “To be happy oneself is a difficult thing; to wish others to be so is an impossibility.”

People often want to discuss the internal discomfort that manifests externally through talking behind backs to diminish others’ value and express their dissatisfaction. These jealousy quotes link this internal envy with external negativity and offer insight on how to deal with them.

1. “Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.” – Harold Coffin

2. “The less you respond to negative people, the more peaceful your life will become.” – Buddha

3. “Love and jealousy are witches; they bear resemblance to each other at first, but you can always tell them apart in the end.” – Paulo Coelho

4. “I don’t want to be a genius—I have enough problems just trying to be a man.” – Albert Camus

5. “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” – George Bernard Shaw

6. “The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.” – Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)

7. “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” –Carrie Fisher and Nelson Mandela

8. “Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.” – Spanish Proverb

9. “Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.” – George Eliot

10. “Isn’t it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?” – Sean Covey

11. “Jealousy is a disease; love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.” – Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

12. “The tongue is a small thing, but what enormous damage it can do when fueled by envy.” – Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind

13. “Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.” – Walter Winchell

14. “Haters don’t really hate you; they hate themselves because you’re a reflection of what they wish to be.” – Yaira N.

15. “Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you, and treat you badly. Let God deal with the things they do, because hate in your heart will consume you too.” – Will Smith

16. “To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” – Elbert Hubbard (and sometimes Aristotle)

17. “People only rain on your parade because they’re jealous of your sun and tired of their shade.” – Kim Kardashian

18. “People throw stones at you, and you convert them into milestones.” – Sachin Tendulkar, Indian cricketer, interview with The Times of India

19. “Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” – Richard Nixon

20. “The family is a haven in a heartless world, but envy can turn it into a battlefield.” – Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (1979)

21. “A friend’s envy is worse than an enemy’s hatred, for it wears the mask of love.” – Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

22. “The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.” – Bette Midler

23. “False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us when we cross into the shade.” – Christian Nestell Bovee, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

24. “My wife’s jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was.” – Rodney Dangerfield

25. “If jealousy burned calories, I’d have a six-pack by now.” – Chrissy Teigen

26. “Love sees sharply, hatred sees even more sharply, but jealousy sees the sharpest, for it is love and hate at the same time.” – Arab Proverb, as quoted by Sarah Miles

27. “Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the flavor, but too much can spoil the pleasure.” – Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

28. “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill

29. “Gossip dies when it hits a wise man’s ears.” – Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Powerful Jealousy Quotes & Talking Behind Your Back Quotes

1. “Our envy of others devours us most of all.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

2. “Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority; envy is our uneasiness under it.” – William Shenstone

3. “The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.” – Victor Hugo

4. “An honest answer is the sign of true friendship.” – Proverb

5. “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” – Elbert Hubbard

6. “A man who is not jealous is not in love.” – St. Augustine

7. “What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, and clinging to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire, aversion, illusion.” – Buddha

8. “The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there is no room for compromise on basic principles.” – Ayn Rand

9. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

How Jealousy Breeds Backbiting (And Quotes That Expose It)

1. “Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.” – Fulton J. Sheen

2. “Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining true to ourselves.” – Anna Godbersen, The Luxe

3. “Jealousy… is a mental cancer.” – B.C. Forbes

4. “Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses, which make little things large, of dwarfs only giants.” – Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

5. “Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space, feels itself excluded.” – William Hazlitt, Characteristics (1823)

6. “Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.” – John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687)

7. “Envy is thin because it bites but never eats.” – Spanish proverb, Francis Bacon in Essays (1625)

8. “Jealousy is a kind of civil war in the soul, where judgment and imagination are at perpetual odds.” – Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)

Jealousy Haters Quotes & Backbiting Retorts

1. “The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.” – Albert Einstein

2. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

3. “Often those that criticize others reveal what they themselves lack.” – Shannon L. Alder

4. “Jealousy is the fear of comparison.” – Max Frisch

5. “Envy shoots at others and wounds itself.” – Edward Young, Night Thoughts

6. “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” – Coretta Scott King, from her memoir My Life with Martin Luther King Jr.

7. “Envy is the coward’s way of dealing with another’s success.” – George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)

8. “The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.” – Horace, from Epistles (20 BCE)

9. “Jealousy is the shadow cast by someone else’s light.” – Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (1973)

Family Jealousy Quotes & Relatives Talking Behind Your Back Quotes

1. “It is not a simple matter to differentiate envy from jealousy. However, there is a rather simple test that can be applied: an envious person is made unhappy by another’s good fortune, whereas a jealous person is made unhappy by another’s happiness.” – Joseph Epstein

2. “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” – George Burns

3. “Betray a friend, and you’ll often find you have ruined yourself.” – Aesop

4. “Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

5. “Jealousy in families is often cured by an honest conversation.” – Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

6. “The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.” – Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

7. “Family envy grows when kindness takes a back seat.” – Lisa Holloway, The Heart of Family (2020)

8. “Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul, and in families, it blinds us to love’s light.” – John Dryden

9. “In families, envy is a silent thief, stealing trust while we’re busy loving.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, from Eat, Pray, Love

10. “In families, jealousy is a silent poison, often disguised as concern.” – Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin (1944)

11. “Jealousy among kin is a fire that burns the ties that bind.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)

12. “Blood may be thicker than water, but envy runs deeper than both.” – Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care (2009)

13. “Family gossip is the echo of unspoken rivalries, reverberating through generations.” – Philip Roth, The Human Stain (2000)

Friends’ Jealousy Quotes & When Friends Talk Behind Your Back

1. “A true friend stabs you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde

2. “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” – William Blake

3. “False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces, but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.” – Richard Burton

4. “Some people are going to leave, but that’s not the end of your story. That’s the end of their part in your story.” – Faraaz Kazi

5. “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” – Alice Walker

6. “Jealousy among friends is a signal to reassess the bond, not your worth.” – Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

7. “Jealousy in friendship is like a crack in a mirror—once it’s there, you can’t unsee it.” – Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

8. “A friend who gossips about you is no friend, but a lesson in disguise.” – Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter (2008)

9. “Envy is the ulcer of the soul, and in friendship, it festers fastest.” – Socrates, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius in Lives of Eminent Philosophers (3rd century CE)

10. “Some friends are like shadows, only there when the sun shines.” – Zadie Smith, Swing Time (2016)

11. “The worst betrayal is when a friend’s envy turns their words into weapons.” – Robin Williams

Humorous Jealousy Quotes & Witty Talking Behind Your Back Quips

1. “I’ve had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me, and the second one didn’t.” – Patrick Murray

2. “The best way to appreciate your peace is to imagine yourself mired in their gossip.” – Oscar Wilde, Inspired

3. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde

4. “Jealousy is just a way of saying, ‘I care… too much… and I’m a little crazy.’” – Ellen DeGeneres

5. “Some people get so jealous, they’d unplug your life support just to charge their phone.” – Kevin Hart

6. “Jealousy is just love and hate having a really awkward brunch together.” – Tina Fey

7. “I don’t have haters, just fans in denial.” – Nicki Minaj

8. “Some people are so jealous, they’d sell their own kids to buy your spotlight.” – Eddie Murphy

9. “If people are talking behind your back, it’s probably because you’re ahead of them.” – Dolly Parton

Relationship Jealousy Quotes & Navigating Backbiting in Love

1. “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” – William Shakespeare, Othello

2. “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

3. “The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.” – William Penn

4. “In jealousy there is more self-love than love.” – François de La Rochefoucauld

5. “Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive.” – Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex

6. “Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read; it merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.” – Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies

7. “Love is patient, but jealousy is a tyrant.” – Rumi, The Masnavi (13th century)

8. “In love, jealousy is a fire that consumes both the lover and the beloved.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

9. “Gossip in love is a dagger cloaked in whispers, cutting deeper than any truth.” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

Short, Sharp & Shareable Jealousy Quotes & Captions

1. “The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” – John Green

2. “Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.” – François de La Rochefoucauld

3. “Jealousy is a dog’s bark, which attracts thieves.” – Karl Kraus

4. “Focus on your path, not the jealous voices that try to distract you.” – Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show (2005)

5. “The best revenge is no revenge. Move on, and let them stew in their own jealousy.” – Denzel Washington

6. “Jealousy is the shadow of greed.” – Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

7. “Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

8. “Jealousy is love’s clumsy shadow.” – Toni Morrison, from Jazz (1992)

9. “Don’t let someone’s envy dim your shine.” – Beyoncé

10. “Jealousy is a mirror held up to our own flaws.” – C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (1964)

These timeless quotes on jealousy, envy, and backbiting are universal truths about betrayal and the human aspiration for authenticity, validating our feelings and healing our souls. They empower us by demonstrating how great minds have navigated these human struggles.

Such words of wisdom help us understand why negativity exists and equip us with the tools to respond with grace, building resilience by acknowledging but not absorbing such negativity. Thus, focus on your path, cultivate self-awareness, practice gratitude, and set boundaries to avoid sinking into the world of gossip and envy, ultimately relegating such negativity to a footnote in your extraordinary life’s journey.

Change your perspective and leave behind those who talk about you; start turning these challenges into strengths.