“Base Envy withers at another’s joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach.”

— James Thomson (poet) , The Seasons

Source: The Seasons (1726-1730), Spring (1728), l. 283.

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James Thomson (poet) 50

Scottish writer (1700-1748) 1700–1748

Lugalbanda

In Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE). http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.1#

“I envy what I fear and hate what I envy.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

“To hate excellence is to hate the gods.”

Mary Renault book The Persian Boy

Source: The Persian Boy (1972), p. 400

“No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.”

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Austrian composer

“Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Time and Tide, letter V (1867).

“Reverence for greatness dies out, and is succeeded by base envy of greatness.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. III : The Master, p. 67
Context: Reverence for greatness dies out, and is succeeded by base envy of greatness. Every man is in the way of many, either in the path to popularity or wealth. There is a general feeling of satisfaction when a great statesman is displaced, or a general, who has been for his brief hour the popular idol, is unfortunate and sinks from his high estate. It becomes a misfortune, if not a crime, to be above the popular level.
We should naturally suppose that a nation in distress would take counsel with the wisest of its sons. But, on the contrary, great men seem never so scarce as when they are most needed, and small men never so bold to insist on infesting place, as when mediocrity and incapable pretence and sophomoric greenness, and showy and sprightly incompetency are most dangerous.