Comparison Quotes - Page 18

• Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison to imagination applied to a detail.

  Wallace Stevens

  Imagination, Vapid, Details

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.256, Vintage

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• To put it in a nutshell, the Central and South American high cultures of antiquity were entirely worthy of comparison with what the Old World had achieved by the time of the Han, the Gupta, and the Hellenistic age. The fact is that the Amerindian high cultures were a human modality of their own, and those Spaniards who came among them first would have had the sensation, if they had ever heard of such literature, of treading in a world of imaginative science fiction. But it was real, and the Amerindian achievements deserve all our sympathy and praise.

  Joseph Needham

  Real, Aztec, Achievement

  Joseph Needham, Gwei-Djen Lu (1985). “Trans-Pacific Echoes and Resonances: Listening Once Again”, p.64, World Scientific

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• These dilemmas present perhaps the most enduring conundrum of human history: can people derive their identity primarily by positive association or does life's meaning also require negative comparison to others?

  William J. Clinton

  People, Religion, Identity

  "My vision for peace" by Bill Clinton, www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2002.

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• Let your observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of domination and power, the parent of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism, which places man upon a level with his fellow tenants of the woods.

  Abigail Adams

  Ignorance, Men, Parent

  Abigail Adams, John Adams (1840). “Letters of Mrs. Adams: The Wife of John Adams”, p.197

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• The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Love Is, Fever, Duration

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• The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.

  Colin Wilson

  Discovery, Illumination, World

  "The Outsider". Book by Colin Wilson, p. 231, 1956.

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• To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves... The modern world in comparison, ignores it.

  C. S. Lewis

  World, Modern, Humans

  C. S. Lewis (1971). “The Four Loves”, p.69, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Every little bit, every atom inside the universe, is in a constant state of change and motion, but the universe as a whole is unchangeable, because motion or change is a relative thing; we can only think of something in motion in comparison with something which is not moving.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Moving, Thinking, Atoms

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Practical Vedanta Philosophy”, p.33, editionNEXT.com

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• Victory does not feel so good as losing feels bad. When you have a son, you are happy. But it's no comparison to the sadness you feel losing a son.

  Toni Nadal

  Sadness, Son, Victory

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• Books aren't made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids. There's some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it's back-breaking, sweaty, time consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands there in the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Baby, Block, Book

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• Your problems pale in comparison with those of the millions of people in the world who do not have enough to eat.

  Michael Johnson

  Inspirational, People, World

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• Directors don't get to see other directors at work - they're the only one on the set. I've met directors who've asked me what another filmmaker is like. So, there's probably nobody better placed to make all the comparisons and to pick up stuff than an actor.

  Colin Firth

  Directors, Actors, Stuff

  "Then She Found Me - Colin Firth interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• es, I spend a lot of time in Reading because we live in Oxfordshire and so we're always just in and out of each other's houses. It's very much the family that it always has been. But there's no comparison with Hollywood as such.

  Kate Winslet

  Reading, House, Hollywood

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• President Obama compared himself to Gandhi and Nelson Mandela in the struggle to bring about change. The comparison is flawed. They spent years in jail before taking political power, while politicians from Chicago do it the other way around.

  Argus Hamilton

  Struggle, Years, Jail

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• I would pale in comparison to rock and rollers with my haircut. I would be a lightweight.

  Bart Chilton

  Rocks, Would Be, Pale

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• The singular man is singular in comparison to other men, but a companion of Heaven. So it is said, the petty man of Heaven is a gentleman among men; the gentleman among men is the petty man of Heaven.

  Burton Watson

  Men, Heaven, Gentleman

  Zhuangzi, Burton Watson, Columbia College (Columbia University) (1968). “The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu”, p.87, Columbia University Press

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• I read a quote the other day that said comparison is a brutal assault upon one's self. And what happens is that you're saying that you're not good enough.

  Cameron Diaz

  Self, Assault, Brutal

  "New Day" with Paul Begala, Kate Bolduan, John Berman, Chris Cuomo and Carol Costello, edition.cnn.com. January 14, 2014.

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• I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.

  John Adams

  Atheist, Believe, Fate

  Letter to F. A. Van der Kemp, February 16, 1808.

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• Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities, superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world; and, whatever apparent disadvantages he may suffer in the comparison with others, he has some invisible distinctions, some latent reserve of excellence, which he throws into the balance, and by which he generally fancies that it is turned in his favour.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Suffering, Excellence

  Samuel Johnson, Peter Martin (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.178, Harvard University Press

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• Did it ever strike you that goodness is not merely a beautiful thing, but by far the most beautiful thing in the whole world? So that nothing is to be compared for value with goodness; that riches, honor, power, pleasure, learning, the whole world and all in it, are not worth having in comparison with being good; and the utterly best thing for a person is to be good, even though they were never to be rewarded for it.

  Charles Kingsley

  Beautiful, Honor, World

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• Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Inspiration, Sight, Documentation

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• Success and excellence are not the same. Excellence grows within a person, is largely within that person's control, and its meaning lasts. Success is measured externally, by comparison to others, is often outside our control, and is perishable.

  Joe Paterno

  Sports, Excellence, Lasts

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• Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Quality, Term, Expressive

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• Bill Maher does something amazing in Religulous. He makes Michael Moore look incredibly likable in comparison.

  Mick LaSalle

  Doe, Looks, Bills

  "Film review: 'Religulous' - comic on a crusade" by Mick LaSalle, www.sfgate.com. October 3, 2008.

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• I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed dawn to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Kindness, Home

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