Comparison Quotes - Page 25

• I don't know anything about anything. The only difference between then and now is this: I may know more than I used to but my wisdom pales in comparison to that which I have yet to learn

  Megan McCafferty

  Differences, May, Used

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• But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?

  Sidney Lanier

  Believe, Musician, World

  Sidney Lanier (1999). “Poems of Sidney Lanier”, p.14, University of Georgia Press

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• The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.

  George Santayana

  Travel, Character, May

  George Santayana (1953). “Persons and Places: My host the world”

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• The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Reading, Thinking

  Samuel Johnson (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.398, Harvard University Press

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• I can't help comparing what I have with Gale to what I'm pretending to have with Peeta. How I never question Gale's motives while I do nothing but doubt the latter's. It's not a fair comparison really. Gale and I were thrown together by a mutual need to survive. Peeta and I know the other's survival means our own death. How do you sidestep that?

  Suzanne Collins

  Mean, Doubt, Survival

  Suzanne Collins (2009). “The Hunger Games”, p.107, Scholastic Inc.

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• You should be careful, tossing descriptors like that around in a situation like this. My ‘problem’ isn’t little. Unless you’re drawing some pretty wild comparisons. Please tell me you’re not drawing wild comparisons. Or blood-relative comparisons.

  Rachel Vincent

  Blood, Drawing, Littles

  Rachel Vincent (2013). “Soul Screamers Volume Three: If I Die\Never to Sleep\Before I Wake”, p.281, Harlequin

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• I worry hope will crush me, the way love has so many times before. Are they so different, hope and love? O & E in the same place, half of the other in each word. Both swimming in unknowns. I’ve been through the big changes. These ones should seem easier in comparison, I should be more prepared, but they don’t and I’m not. Sometimes I feel like a broken-wing butterfly, clinging to a window screen. Afraid to let go. Afraid to stay. Wondering how much wing is enough to fly.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Crush, Letting Go, Butterfly

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• By comparison with a night-club, churches are positively gay.

  Aldous Huxley

  Gay, Night, Church

  Aldous Huxley (1932). “Rotunda: a selection from the works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Education in our family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'etre ... In this family of accomplished scholars, I was to become the academic black sheep. I performed adequately at high school, but in comparison to my older brother, who set the record for the highest cumulative average for our high school, my performance was decidedly mediocre.

  Steven Chu

  Brother, School, Sheep

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• A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.

  E. M. Forster

  Dog, Flower, Gun

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• Practice being gentle, respectful and loving toward the life force in all things. Remind yourself that your efforts do make a difference, even if you think they are miniscule in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.

  Wayne Dyer

  Thinking, Practice, Differences

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• Even granting that the genius subjected to the test of critical inspection emerges free from all error, we should consider that everything he has discovered in a given domain is almost nothing in comparison with what is left to be discovered.

  Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  Errors, Discovery, Genius

  Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1951). “Precepts and counsels on scientific investigation: stimulants of the spirit”

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• The group Bananarama has such a light, cutesy-pie sound that they make The Go-Go's sound like Led Zeppelin by comparison.

  Casey Kasem

  Light, Pie, Sound

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• How would you compare Polanski or Kubrick? I try not to do any comparisons.

  Tim Roth

  Trying, Compare

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• Steve Forman is a brutally funny writer. His no-nonsense, unadorned style begs comparison to Dashiell Hammett, but Hammett's humor at its darkest never hit home this hard. Reading of Eddie Perlmutter's exploits is like rolling in an aisle paved with broken glass and wanting to do it all over again two minutes later.

  Loren D. Estleman

  Reading, Home, Two

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• The worst excesses of the Congress of the 1980s pale in comparison with what is going on in Washington today.

  Marty Meehan

  Excess, Today, Congress

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• Merely watching a romantic comedy causes relationship satisfaction to plummet. Apparently, the bitter realization that maybe it could happen to us, but it obviously hasn't and it probably never will, makes our lives seem unbearably grim in comparison.

  Jenna McCarthy

  Motivation, Inspiration, Realization

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• I am, as far as I can tell, about a month behind Lord Byron. In every town we stop at we discover innkeepers, postillions, officials, burghers, potboys, and all kinds and sorts of ladies whose brains still seem somewhat deranged from their brief exposure to his lordship. And though my companions are careful to tell people that I am that dreadful being, an English magician, I am clearly nothing in comparison to an English poet and everywhere I go I enjoy the reputation- quite new to me, I assure you- of the quiet, good Englishman, who makes no noise and is no trouble to any one.

  Susanna Clarke

  People, Brain, Noise

  Susanna Clarke (2005). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.599, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• A red traffic light loomed, and Cecilia slammed her foot on the brake. The fact that Polly no longer wanted a pirate party was breathtakingly insignificant in comparison to that poor man (thirty!) crashing to the ground for the freedom that Cecilia took for granted, but right now, she couldn’t pause to honor his memory, because a last-minute change of party theme was unacceptable. That’s what happened when you had freedom. You lost your mind over a pirate party.

  Liane Moriarty

  Memories, Party, Men

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• Our focus reflects our love and admiration for you. . . . We want you to live lives of spiritual maturity and fulfillment, free of unrealistic comparisons.

  Elaine L. Jack

  Life, Spiritual, Maturity

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• Parents of handicapped children are occasionally embarrassed or hurt by others who awkwardly express sympathy but cannot know or appreciate the depth of the parents love for a handicapped child. Perhaps there is some comparison in the fact that there is no less love in families for the helpless infant who must be fed, bathed, and diapered than for the older but still dependent members. We love those we serve and who need us.

  James E. Faust

  Hurt, Children, Inspiration

  James E. Faust (1990). “Reach Up for the Light”, Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book Company

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• Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city or those who choose to go to a front line, are obviously asking themselves to what extent they are cowards. But the tests they set themselves - there is a dead body, can you bear to look at it? - are nothing in comparison with the tests that are sprung on them. It is not the obvious tests that matter (do you go to pieces in a mortar attack?) but the unexpected ones (here is a man on the run, seeking your help - can you face him honestly?).

  James Fenton

  Running, War, Fall

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• He that compares what he has done with what he has left undone, will feel the effect which must always follow the comparison of imagination with reality; he will look with contempt on his own unimportance, and wonder to what purpose he came into the world; he will repine that he shall leave behind him no evidence of his having been, that he has added nothing to the system of life, but has glided from youth to age among the crowd, without any effort for distinction.

  Samuel Johnson

  Reality, Imagination, Effort

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “Works”, p.355

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• Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks it own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds.

  Charles Babbage

  Knowledge, Science, Progress

  "The Exposition of 1851; or, Views of the industry, the science, and the government of England".

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• Mathematics is concerned only with the enumeration and comparison of relations.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Math, Relation, Concerned

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