Quotes About Comparison

No one is better at not beating America than England.

I don't think twice about picking up my dog's poop, but if another dog's poop is next to it, I think, 'Eww, dog poop!

You're right, Margaret, absolutely right. Things have changed a lot, even since I've been here. It's a different place now. Better in some ways, worse in others. Better! she echoed, scornfully.

Deploring other people--their lack of perfection--had always been our sport.

It rankled her that people richer than she were so often less worthy and attractive. More slobbish and louty. Comfort could be found in being poorer than people who were smart and beautiful. But to be less affluent than these T-shirted, joke-cracking fatsos-

She'd seen enough of socialism to foresee its ultimate failure, she knew the Soviets to be thieves, rapists, and murderers, and she never got over the shock of discovering that my father was rich only in comparison to Jena, only the way most Americans were rich.

the difference between him and her was her capacity for self-deception.

A person accustoms himself to what he is, after all, and if he's lucky he learns to hold in somewhat lower esteem all other ways of being, so as not to spend life envying them.

You seem a little challenged in the entitlement department. I mean, compared to the others.

His life was much fuller than hers, and the breathing space this gave her was welcome.

He reminded me of a beaver, all uncorrected overbite and senseless industry.

The Astors and the Vanderbilts, their pleasure domes and money: she was sick of it. Sick of envying, sick of herself. She didn't understand antiques or architecture, she couldn't draw like Sylvia, she didn't read like Ted, she had few interests and no expertise. A paucity for love was the only true thing she'd ever had.

It had to be possible to do better than her parents, but she wasn't sure she would.

Sports is to war as pornography is to sex.

Blessings are just curses that other people envy.

There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive.

Lvov is a city like New York City in America. New York City, in truth, was designed on the model of Lvov.

Does it make you sad that we love the kids more than we love each other?" That exact line—those words in that order—had been in the script for months.

Antropocentrisme: de mens staat bovenaan in de evolutie, we zijn een geschikte maatstaf om het leven van andere dieren tegen af te zetten en de rechtmatige bezitter van al wat leeft.

He thought cucumbers were good enough, but pickles were delicious—so absolutely delicious, in fact, that he questioned whether they were, indeed, made from cucumbers, which were only good enough.

Everything she did reminded me of someone else.

All who hear should understand that no person's suffering can be measured against another person's suffering. It can be extremely damaging if anyone makes comparisons. Combat veterans frequently doubt that they are worthy of treatment, knowing other vets who are worse off now or went through worse than they did. Many survivors of trauma obstruct their own healing by placing themselves in "hierarchies of suffering", usually to their own disadvantage.

Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail.

Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.