Quotes About Comparison

He must be living a life free of worries. But viewed from his perspective, looking at me from his side of the valley, I might appear to also be living a life of ease and leisure. From a distance, most things look beautiful.

Compared to them I'm pretty used to losing. There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat. Not to brag, but these girls probably don't know as much as I do about pain. And, quite naturally, there might not be a need for them to know it. These random thoughts come to me as I watch their proud ponytails swinging back and forth, their aggressive strides. Keeping to my own leisurely pace, I continue my run down along the Charles.

Throwing up was no big deal. It was a lot less painful than hemorrhoids or tooth decay, and more refined than diarrhea

Whether they learn it from their family, school, or athletics, many people establish an identity by comparing themselves with others. When they see others gain power, information, money, or recognition, for instance, they experience what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called "a feeling of deficiency"—a sense that something is being taken from them. That makes it hard for them to be genuinely happy about the success of others—even of their loved ones.

He's no John Walton.

When we say that men are taller than women, the words -on average- are implied. Pointing to the existence of your friend Rhonda, who really is quite tall, does not negate the statistical truth that, on average, men are still taller than women.

You feel as if everybody has been given an instruction manual on how to be likable, but you didn't get it. And they all sold out now. And if you are what you eat, then you must have surely spent the last few years of your life eating dog food and cat shit. Because when you look in the mirror, it is all that you see.

it doesn't count, like time spent in Brooklyn

I am no longer a divine biped. I am no longer the freest German after Goethe, as Ruge named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. 1 enjoyed the title of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man.

Jude: Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer? Not with slightly bigger breasts or slightly smaller nose? Bridget: No. Shazzer: Well, fuck me. Tom: This is someone you hate right? Bridget: Yes, yes, I hate him.

I began to think I quite liked her really. It's always so nice to meet someone more badly behaved than oneself.

he picked me up in his arms, as if I was as light as a feather, which I am not, unless it was a very heavy feather, maybe from a giant prehistoric dinosaur-type bird...

We've been texting for weeks. Surely it's rather like in Jane Austen's day when they did letter-writing for months and months and then just, like, immediately got married?' 'Bridget. Sleeping with a twenty-nine-year-old off Twitter on the second date is not rather like Jane Austen's day.

Bridget. Sleeping with a twenty-nine year old off Twitter on the second date is not 'rather like in Jane Austen's day'. (Talitha)

it's a bit like if we were on a planet where all the space creatures were short, green and fat. Except a very few of them were tall, thin and yellow. And all the advertising was of the tall, yellow ones, airbrushed to make them even taller and yellower. So all the little green space creatures spent their whole time feeling sad because they weren't tall, thin and yellow.

The world you're about to enter will be a different sea, with so much to do with how many likes you get on Facebook or who knows what ; where everyone is showing off rather than sharing their sadnesses and fears and what they really feel;

We do not want to be seduced," Mrs. Ballard had once said, "into seeing who can bake the richest cake.")

Ramona was, to the world at large, a far more important person than the Señora herself. The Señora was of the past, Ramona was of the present.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

Virgil is serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.

My writing is sort of 'Sidney Sheldon meets Anne Tyler.'

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.

More and more, you're seeing television shows that are better than 99% of the movies out there. I mean, you watch something like the last couple of seasons of 'The Sopranos,' which is some of the most sophisticated writing I've ever seen filmed and some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen - and it's a TV show.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people's children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.