Quotes About Comparison

A creature that could savor positive experiences indefinitely might stop striving, and hence be at a disadvantage relative to those who are less prone to stand pat. Some degree of unsettledness, anxiety, and ambition may be baked into the human condition. And much of this is connected to status—where you stand relative to others. I'm happy with my car, but then my neighbor gets a nicer one and my happiness goes away.

Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that when we think about our overall lives, we tend to compare ourselves with others—and when it comes to social comparison, the sky is the limit.

trials they were asked, "How happy are you right now?" The main predictor of reported short-term happiness wasn't how much the subjects were making; it was how much they were making relative to their expectations. Momentary pleasure and pain are, at least in part, relative experiences.

Stephen Prothero's God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World speaks directly to this issue. A professor at Boston University, Prothero observes that the claim that all religions are fundamentally the same is an insult to all religions, because they have different benchmarks and different goals and different frameworks and different worldviews.

A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.

Says the wolf in Æsop's fable: "Why is it right for you to eat the lamb, when for me it is supposed to be wrong?" Is not man in the same predicament as the wolf, and does not mankind slaughter more animals than all the wolves in the world ever ate?

I'd rather kiss a mad cow on the muzzle than a smoker on the mouth.

podemos decir que los "chulos bancarios" son tan despreciables como los proxenetas comunes.

But you can reassure children; you can tell them what's happening or going to happen. Can you get such reassurance across to a cat? I suppose it is that sort of anthropomorphism that bugs the hell out of researchers whose job is to experiment on nonhuman animals. If they permit themselves such a comparison, they might not sleep well at night.

Today you will envy the blessings of another, or you will bask in the wonder of the amazing grace you have been given.

Envy tempts you to crave what is temporary while you devalue what is eternal. This never leads you anywhere good.

because we are self-focused, we tend to be scorekeepers, constantly comparing our piles of stuff to the piles of others. It's a life of discontentment and envy. Envy is always selfish.

The world of envy no more mixes with the world of grace than oil does with water.

Envy is universal because sin is.

Envy denies grace. The assumption of envy is that we deserve what another has been given, when, in fact, you and I deserve nothing.

You're not aware of it, but your envy of others and the pain it produces lock you into a view of life that has a disastrous past and a painful present but is functionally without a future. It feels as if what is will always be.

It's hard to grasp, but try; there will be a day when you will look back at this huge and horrible thing, and it will look to you like a little thing. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16–17, "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

The Lord, like every woman I have ever known, was cold and distant.

Distinction bias is the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.

Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.

Generalizing grossly, what Buddhists mean by practice is more interior and personal, while what Christians mean is more external and social. Or as Aloysius Pieris puts it, in their practice Buddhists stress prajna or wisdom, and Christians stress agape or charity.

Compared with this problem, the original theory of relativity is childish. (Einstein to Sommerfeld on the gravitational problem)

You're the right colour for the Angel of Death, Mister Cale. But a little short.' 'I could cut your head off and stand on it. Then I'd be taller.

I'm not conceited. I'm just honest about being so much better than other people.