Quotes About Comparison

when you think categorically, you have trouble seeing how similar or different two things are. If you pay lots of attention to where boundaries are, you pay less attention to complete pictures.

Thus there's dopaminergic activation during schadenfreude—gloating over an envied person's fall from grace.

if some octopus moved in next door, I would feel hostile superiority because I have a spine and it didn't, but that animosity might melt into a sense of kinship when I discovered that the octopus, like me, loved playing Twister as a kid.

The biologies of strong love and strong hate are similar in many ways, as we'll see.

The human olfactory system is atrophied; roughly 40 percent of a rat's brain is devoted to olfactory processing, versus 3 percent in us.

US/THEM-ING TYPICALLY involves inflating the merits of Us concerning core values—we are more correct, wise, moral, and worthy when it comes to knowing what the gods want/running the economy/raising kids/fighting this war. Us-ness also involves inflating the merits of our arbitrary markers, and that can take some work—rationalizing why our food is tastier, our music more moving, our language more logical or poetic.

Your feature work is as good as anything by Richard Harding Davis.

The past is always a rebuke to the present.

I don't care about anybody being handsome, she said, but I never did go for anybody that reminded me of a box of spilled spaghetti. All elbows and dry rattle.

It is not just that we want more but that we want more than others, who at the same time want more than us; this fuels an endless race.

When I ask the classes I teach, "How many of you can cook a better hamburger than McDonald's?" almost all the students raise their hands. I then ask, "So if most of you can cook a better hamburger, how come McDonald's makes more money than you?" The

People think that working hard for money and then buying things that make them look rich will make them rich. In most cases it doesn't. It only makes them more tired. They call it 'Keeping up with the Joneses.' And if you notice, the Joneses are exhausted.

Analyze the rental market as well as the purchase market.

their books do not sell as well as mine do.

The problem was that the rich man was not rich yet, and the poor man was not yet poor.

Wealth is the measure of the cash flow from the asset column compared with the expense column.

your car can be far more expensive than your boss's car, even though your car costs less.

he was about 20 years older than I was.

But I'd rather look like you than be pretty, she told Anne sincerely. Anne laughed, sipped honey from the tribute, and cast away the sting.

I have been reading three books Dean lent me this week. One was like a rose garden--very pleasant, but just a little too sweet. And one was like a pine wood on a mountain--full of balsam and tang--I loved it, and yet it filled me with a sort of despair. It was written so beautifully--I can never write like that, I feel sure. And one--it was just like a pig-sty. Dean gave me that one by mistake.

I'm afraid of those cows,' protested poor Dora, seeing a prospect of escape. 'The very idea of your being scared of those cows,' scoffed Davy. 'Why, they're both younger than you.

Strange, ain't it, how folks seem to resent anyone being born a mite cleverer than they be.

Folks say I'm good, he remarked whimsically upon one occasion, but I sometimes wish the Lord had made me only half as good and put the rest of it into looks. But there, I reckon He knew what He was about, as a good Captain should. Some of us have to be homely, or the purty ones—like Mistress Blythe here—wouldn't show up so well.

It isn't fair she should have everything and I nothing. She isn't better or cleverer or much prettier than me…only luckier.