Quotes About Comparison

It is instructive to compare the Meditations with another famous book, the Imitation of Christ. There is the same ideal of self-control in both. It should be a man's task, says the Imitation, 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.

Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another.

4?]??I have often wondered how it is that everyone loves himself more than anyone else, but rates his own judgement of himself below that of others.

What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad- as terrible a blindness as the kind that can't tell white from black.

A note of caution: We can never achieve goals that envy sets for us. Looking at your friends and wishing you had what they had is a waste of precious energy. Because we are all unique, what makes another happy may do the opposite for you. That's why advice is nice but often disappointing when heeded.

Metaphorical language is intrinsically nonliteral. It simultaneously affirms and negates: x is y, and x is not y. The statement "My love is a red, red rose" affirms that my beloved is a rose even as it negates it. My beloved is not a rose, unless I am literally in love with a flower. Rather, there is something about my beloved that is like a rose.

Elephanto beluarum nulla prudentior: at figura quae vastior? De bestiis loquor: quid, inter ipsos homines nonne et simillimis formis dispares mores et moribus simillimis figura dissimilis? (1.97 De Natura Deorum)

An analogy says that A is to B as C is to D. A metaphor says that A is B, or substitutes B for A. A simile says that A is like B.

The American Heritage Dictionary definition says a metaphor is "an implicit comparison." This unusual term is used for one reason, and one reason only: to distinguish it from a simile, which makes an explicit—or direct—comparison.

If a metaphor says A is B and a simile says A is like B, then an analogy says A is to B as C is to D.

You are rich in every way, and I am nothing but the reflection I see in your eyes.

Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.

They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.

Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here. Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women? Some form of unbuttoning, some split-crotch routine, just as casual. A doglike sniffing.

My own view of myself was that I was small and innocuous, a marshmallow compared to the others. I was a poor shot with a 22, for instance, and not very good with an ax. It took me a long time to figure out that the youngest in a family of dragons is still a dragon from the point of view of those who find dragons alarming.

They are as happy as they can be, given who they are. Though if they'd been different people they might have been happier.

I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?

How dare she show herself to be everything he was so annoyed with her for not being?

I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve?...Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women?

How dare she be anything he was annoyed with her for not being?

Human beings- I've observed- are hot-wired for score keeping, and since they like to win, they're always going one better than the other fellow.

She was a more charitable person than I was; I admired her in that, but I could not emulate her.

Though at that time men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.