250 Comparison Quotes

How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comfort of one's neighbors.

Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.

I think the original, 'They're the next Jane's Addiction' things that people said about us in the beginning have been pretty much wiped out.

While the collateral consequences of drugs such as cocaine are indisputably severe, they are not unlike those which flow from the misuse of other, legal, substances.

Remember when we was young, everybody used to have these arguments about who's better, Michael Jackson or Prince? Prince won!

I, for one, will not have [the Vietcong] insulted by any comparison to the forces of Zarqawi, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the criminal underworld now arrayed against us. These depraved elements are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge.

The entire 'my art is better than your art' thing really gets under my skin. The fact of the matter is: Your art IS better than my art... at being what it is. So what? It just so happens that my art is better than your art, at being what it is.

The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.

A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune.

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt.

I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

I don't know why you're talking about Sweden. They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.

Hitler is lonely. So is God. Hitler is like God.

The Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility.

People have criticized me because my security detail is larger than the president's. But you must ask yourself: are there more people who want to kill me than who want to kill the president? I can assure you there are.

I am clearly more popular than Reagan. I am in my third term. Where's Reagan? Gone after two! Defeated by George Bush and Michael Dukakis no less.

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own.

It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.

Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there's nothing exactly like it.

Those Russians. They did worse things when they entered Pomerania than we ever did in Russia.

One of the challenges you will face is finding a job in our depressed economy, ... In fact, the chances of finding a job are about as good as finding weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi desert -- slim and none, and slim just left the building.

Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether?

The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.

Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed').

'If someone says, 'Hey, I ran 100 miles this week. How far did you run?' Ignore him! What the hell difference does it make? The magic is in the man, not the 100 miles.'

Through Plato Aristotle came to believe in God, but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him, but Aristotle thought God through logically and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.

A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

Hamlet is egotism as it appears to itself, and Don Quixote is egotism as it appears to the detached observer.

Dicko said that he thinks Mark has a problem with her and thinks she doesn't have a recordable voice. Mark agreed but said if David Hasselhoff can sell records so can Hayley.

Thus for ane Dow of Dunbar drew I this Dyte, Dowit with ane Dowglass, and boith war thei dowis.

On being compared to fellow Kentwoodian and singer Britney Spears.

I can't play [guitar] like Segovia. The flip side of that is that Segovia could probably never have played like me. (1994)

In his way, he was the closest equivalent this decade and this generation of rock fans had to a John Lennon, and I don't make that comparison easily or impulsively.

Vermont: See New Hampshire

He is terribly rare. He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled

He's a genius...a classical dancer like I never saw in my life

If I was black and blue, it was Gene. If I didn't have a scratch it was Fred

As one of the handful of girls who worked with both of those dance geniuses, I think I can give an honest comparison. In my opinion, Kelly is the more inventive choreographer of the two. Astaire, with Hermes Pan's help, creates fabulous numbers - for himself and his partner. But Kelly can create an entire number for somebody else... I think, however, that Astaire's coordination is better than Kelly's... his sense of rhythm is uncanny. Kelly, on the other hand, is the stronger of the two. When he lifts you, he lifts you!... To sum it up, I'd say they were the two greatest dancing personalities who were ever on screen. But it's like comparing apples and oranges. They're both delicious.

Fred taught me a step because I said I can't let this experience be over without my learning something. He taught me the most wonderful Fred Astaire-like step, with an umbrella. It was a complete throwaway; it was almost invisible. It was in the way he walked. As he moved along, he bounced the umbrella on the floor to the beat and then he grabbed it. It was effortless and invisible. As a matter of fact, a few years later I was photographing Gene Kelly and told him that Fred Astaire had taught me this trick with an umbrella. And Kelly said, 'Oh I'll teach you one,' and he did, and the two tricks with the umbrella in some way define the difference between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and, in my view, demonstrate who is the greater of the two artists. With Gene Kelly, he threw the umbrella way up into the air, and then he moved to catch it, very slowly, grabbing it behind his back. It was a big, grandstand play, about nothing.

Even beyond their deaths, the two novelists stand in contrariety. Tolstoy, the foremost heir to the traditions of the epic; Dostoevsky, one of the major dramatic tempers after Shakespeare; Tolstoy, the mind intoxicated with reason and fact; Dostoevsky, the condemner of rationalism, the great lover of paradox; Tolstoy, the poet of the land, of the rural setting and pastoral mood; Dostoevsky, the arch-citizen, the master-builder of the modern metropolis in the province of language; Tolstoy, thirsting for the truth, destroying himself and those about him in excessive pursuit of it; Dostoevsky, rather against the truth than against Christ, suspicious of total understanding and on the side of mystery; Tolstoy, 'keeping at all times,' in Coleridge's phrase, 'in the high road of life'; Dostoevsky, advancing into the labyrinth of the unnatural, into the cellarage and morass of the soul; Tolstoy, like a colossus bestriding the palpable earth, evoking the realness, the tangibility, the sensible entirety of concrete experience; Dostoevsky, always on the verge of the hallucinatory, of the spectral, always vulnerable to daemonic intrusions into what might prove, in the end, to have been merely a tissue of dreams; Tolstoy, the embodiment of health and Olympian vitality; Dostoevsky, the sum of energies charged with illness and possession.

How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Picture the shagginess of Lawrence, his thick beard, his rough-cut clothes, his disdain for all the social and physical niceties. Recall his passionateness-his passion, so to say, for passion itself-his darkness, his gloom. Think back to his appeal to the primary instincts, his personal messianism, his refusal to deal with anything smaller than capital 'D' Destiny. Do not neglect his humorlessness, his distaste for all that otherwise passed for being civilized, his blood theories and manifold roiling hatreds. Have you, then, D.H. Lawrence firmly in mind? Splendid. Now reverse all of Lawrence's qualities and you will have a fair beginning notion of Max Beerbohm, who, after allowing that Lawrence was a man of 'unquestionable genius,' felt it necessary to add, 'he never realized, don't you know-he never suspected that to be stark, staring mad is somewhat of a handicap to a writer.'

Fourthly the Wind book. This book is not concerned with my Ichi school but with other schools of strategy. By Wind I mean old traditions, present-day traditions, and family traditions of strategy. Thus I clearly explain the strategies of the world. This is tradition. It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others. To all Ways there are side-tracks. If you study a Way daily, and your spirit diverges, you may think you are obeying a good way, but objectively it is not the true Way. If you are following the true Way and diverge a little, this will later become a large divergence. You must realise this. Other strategies have come to be thought of as mere sword-fencing, and it is not unreasonable that this should be so. The benefit of my strategy, although it includes sword-fencing, lies in a separate principle. I have explained what is commonly meant by strategy in other schools in the Wind book.

Of all the traitors who have ever lived, Lanik Mueller, there must be a special place in hell reserved for you I've been to hell. It's a better place than this

The only difference between them and me is that I'm so good at it

While discussing the merits of djbdns over BIND (2004):

I don't know why I'm even on this track/Y'all niggas ain't even on my level

We don't have a DaVon in this group,

I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.

You know what you look like to me with your good bag and your bad shoes? You look like a ruuube.

I found there was only one way to look thin. Hang out with fat people.

John Kerry with a tan.

And going for the clincher, a girl cries out in vain How Jesus lived 6 years longer than Kurt Cobain And Jesus' hair was longer, and Jesus' arms were stonger And Jesus's eyes were bluer, and Jesus' thoughts were truer

We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Mohammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That can be the historic future.

Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.

'I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.'

Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.

Don't compare me with Jesus. He is a great master, a great master...

Marx was fortunate to have been born eighty years before Walt Disney. Disney also promised a child's paradise and unlike Marx, delivered on his promise.

The fact that Fred and I were in no way similar - nor were we the best male dancers around never occurred to the public or the journalists who wrote about us...Fred and I got the cream of the publicity and naturally we were compared. And while I personally was proud of the comparison, because there was no-one to touch Fred when it came to 'popular' dance, we felt that people, especially film critics at the time, should have made an attempt to differentiate between our two styles. Fred and I both got a bit edgy after our names were mentioned in the same breath. I was the Marlon Brando of dancers, and he the Cary Grant. My approach was completely different from his, and we wanted the world to realise this, and not lump us together like peas in a pod. If there was any resentment on our behalf, it certainly wasn't with each other, but with people who talked about two highly individual dancers as if they were one person. For a start, the sort of wardrobe I wore - blue jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers - Fred wouldn't have been caught dead in. Fred always looked immaculate in rehearsals, I was always in an old shirt. Fred's steps were small, neat, graceful and intimate - mine were ballet-oriented and very athletic. The two of us couldn't have been more different, yet the public insisted on thinking of us as rivals...I persuaded him to put on his dancing shoes again, and replace me in Easter Parade after I'd broken my ankle. If we'd been rivals, I certainly wouldn't have encouraged him to make a comeback

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business

Saskatchewan is much like Texas - except it's more friendly to the United States.

There are several differences between a footballl game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also there are more injuries at a football game.

The smell of the ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable, though less so when it has newly fallen from the tree; for the moment it is ripe it falls of itself, and the only way to eat Durians in perfection is to get them as they fall. It would perhaps not be correct to say that the Durian is the best of all fruits, because it cannot supply the place of subacid juicy fruits such as the orange, grape, mango, and mangosteen, whose refreshing and cooling qualities are so grateful; but as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed. If I had to fix on two only as representing the perfection of the two classes, I should certainly choose the Durian and the Orange as the king and queen of fruits.

In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works.

Kant and Berkeley always seemed to be very deep thinkers, but, with Schopenhauer, you seem to be looking at the bottom straight away.

Charles Greville was the most conceited person with whom I have ever been brought in contact, though I have read Cicero and known Bulwer-Lytton.

Meeting Anna-Louise was like finding a stranger's shopping list on the mall flooor and realising there are other, more interesting diets than your own. It was the first time I ever felt incomplete.

I preferred Diana's direction to the Queen's direction. The Queen is very 'Grrr' and Diana was slightly more 'Oh!'

That which her slender waist confined Shall now my joyful temples bind; No monarch but would give his crown His arms might do what this has done.

I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine - If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years, as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have; the sea could be as readily contained in that house-trough, as her whole affection be monopolized by him - Tush! He is scarcely a degree nearer than her dog, or her horse - It is not in him to be loved like me, how can she love in him what he has not?

If you can make just one person laugh, then you are already doing better than Tony Danza.

If Rio Ferdinand is worth ?120,000 a week, Cannavaro is worth a hundred million a day.

I can't choose just one! Real Madrid only has great players. Raul, David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ronaldo... The one that impressed me the most after having actually played together is Cannavaro. He's sturdy and lithe and his attitude when he faces a match is exceptional too. I think he's the best center-back in the world.

Ce qui nous rend la vanite des autres insupportable, c'est qu'elle blesse la notre.

Christ goes deeper than I do, but I have had a wider experience.

Casanova! My dear man, Casanova is not worthy to untie my bootstrings!

[On Paul Gascoigne:] 'They say Paul Gascoigne is the new George Best but has he shagged three Miss Worlds?'

'The only thing I have in common with George Best is that we come from the same place, play for the same club and were discovered by the same man.' (Norman Whiteside)

That kid's so smart, he could be the fifth Marx Brother.

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

I am as sober as a judge.

One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.

I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Amerika, du hast es besser-als unser Kontinent, das alte.

She, and comparisons are odious.

No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one autumnal face.

What is there in Paradise Lost to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?

These are rotten, so you're the Queen Of all are living, or have been.