Quotes About Comparison

Even at table she would bring her book, leafing through the pages while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Vicomte always recurred in her reading. She drew comparisons between him and the invented characters. But little by little the circle whose centre he occupied widened around him, and that halo of glory he wore, straying from his face, spread itself further off, to illuminate other dreams.

Rien n'est humiliant comme de voir les sots réussir dans les entreprises où l'on échoue.

Quand on se compare à ce qui vous entoure, on s'admire ; mais quand on lève les yeux plus haut, vers les maîtres, vers l'absolu, vers le rêve, comme on se méprise  !

Fins quan havia de durar aquella existència miseriosa? No se'n sortiria mai? Què tenien de més, que ella no posseís, aquelles que trobaven el consol de la felicitat? [...] Això li feia execrar la injustícia de Déu.

Would this misery last for ever? Was there no escape? Was she not quite as good as all the lucky women? She had seen duchesses at La Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways than she; she cursed the injustice of God. She propped her head against the wall and wept, for envy of those hectic lives, the shameless pleasure-seeking, the masked balls, and all the wild delights, unknown to her, that they must afford.

Ciom?giÈ›i-l pe s?racul care rîvneÈ™te la p?tura de pe spinarea m?garului, la mîncarea cîinelui, la cuibul p?s?rii, È™i care e foarte mîhnit c? alÈ›ii nu sînt la fel de nenorociÈ›i ca el.(Circoncelionii)

And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.

Institutionalised love always looks down on her more liberal sister

Ona, Bütün bu hayvanlar korkunç, dedim. Gülerek, Oh, hay?r! En korkuncu insan, dedi.

I should add, however, by way of justification of French politeness, that our fellow-countrymen are, when travelling, models of good manners in comparison with the abominable English, who seem to have been brought up in a stable, so careful are they not to discommode themselves in any way, while they always discommode their neighbors.

There was no insinuation (one very likely today) that she lacked the cultural values of India and exhibited the lax morals of Western women.

If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God....

Love is the mistaken belief that one woman differs from another.

The opera…is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.

A man's satisfaction with his salary depends on whether he makes more than his wife's sister's husband.

A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.

O amor é a ilusão de que uma mulher difere da outra

The most lovely moving picture actor, considered in the light of genuine aesthetic values, is no more than a piece of vulgarity; his like is to be found, not in the Uffizi gallery or among the harmonies of Brahms, but among the plush sofas, rococo clocks and hand-painted oil-paintings of a third-rate auction room.

You protest, and with justice, each time Hitler jails an opponent; but you forget that Stalin and company have jailed and murdered a thousand times as many. It seems to me, and indeed the evidence is plain, that compared to the Moscow brigands and assassins, Hitler is hardly more than a common Ku Kluxer and Mussolini almost a philanthropist. [In an open letter to Upton Sinclair, printed in The American Mercury, June 1936]

I'd rather have written any symphony of Brahms' than any play of Ibsen's.

The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman.

They were large, even for the mus decumanus, which sometimes measures fifteen inches in length

I admired him more than anyone but I didn't wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wanted to be him. I coveted his talents, face, style. I wanted to wake up with them all transferred to me.