Quotes About Comparison

There's this saying: in an all-blue world, colour doesn't exist... If something seems strange, you question it; but if the outside world is too distant to use as a comparison then nothing seems strange.

Fred put away the phone, finished off his bourbon, and resumed watching the couple suck on the combined mass of their two tongues. He wasn't as drunk as them. Or as young. Or as stupid. He envied them on every score.

Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life. What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a few days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years.

I cannot make everybody else as rapid as myself.

WHEN Linacer, a distinguished physician, but bigoted Romanist, in the reign of Henry VIII., first fell in with the New Testament, after reading it for a while, he tossed it from him with impatience and a great oath, exclaiming, "Either this book is not true, or we are not Christians." He saw at once that the system of Rome and the system of the New Testament were directly opposed to one another; and no one who impartially compares the two systems can come to any other conclusion.

If the Hindu story exhibits its "god of gods" in such a degrading light, how much more honouring is the Papal story to the Son of the Blessed, when it represents Him as needing to be pacified by His mother exposing to Him "the breasts that He has sucked." All this is done only to exalt the Mother, as more gracious and more compassionate than her glorious Son.

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

He is the English Horace

With varying vanities, from ev'ry part,   They shift the moving Toyshop of their heart; 100   Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,   Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.

Our envy of others devours us most of all.

It is far more difficult to observe correctly than most men imagine; to behold is not necessarily to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails.

Because feeling like a fuck-up isn't about being a failure, it's about being made to feel like one. It's the pressure and the panic to tick all the boxes and reach all the goals . . . and what happens when you don't. When you find yourself on the outside. Because on some level, in some aspect of your life, it's so easy to feel like you're failing when everyone around you appears to be succeeding.

Because feeling like a fuck-up isn't about being a failure, it's about being made to feel like one.

Someone else's success is not your failure.

Jealousy is the art of injuring ourselves more than others.

When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.

Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.

It is one of the most effective attitudes of the neurotic to measure thumbs down, so to speak, a real person by an ideal, since in doing so he can depreciate him as much as he wishes.

Byron is not Shakespeare; for he lags considerably behind Shakespeare in Invention, Action, and Character, by dint of which, and in conjunction with which, the highest faculties of the poet are displayed. But a poet may lag considerably behind Shakespeare, and yet exhibit these in a conspicuous degree.

Vous êtes comme les roses du Bengale, Marianne, sans épines et sans parfum.

People have said to me 'I hope you won't let happen in Washington what is happening in Kansas.'

Napoleon was probably the equal at least of Washington in intellect, his superior in education. Both of them were successful in serving the state.

I was to Japanese visitors to Washington what the Mona Lisa is to Americans visiting Paris.