comparisons Quotes

“The only person you need to be better than is the person you were yesterday.”

“Yes, well, in that respect and many others, American high schools do rather resemble prisons.”

“For years now I’ve kind of operated under an informal shopping cycle. A bit like a farmer’s crop rotation system. Except, instead of wheat, maize, barley, and fallow, mine pretty much goes clothes, makeup shoes, and clothes (I don’t bother with fallow). Shopping is actually very similar to farming a field. You can’t keep buying the same thing, you have to have a bit of variety. Otherwise you get bored and stop enjoying yourself.”

“The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel, but I didn’t move. Not being bullet proof is an idea I had had to get used to.”

“This isn’t a war… It never was a war, any more than there’s war between men and ants.”

“Compared with the Egyptians, the Greeks are childish mathematicians.”

“Well, the matter is, sir, that you can’t take a girl up like that as if you were picking up a pebble on the beach.”

“I’d like to kill you, you selfish brute. Why didn’t you leave me where you picked me out of—in the gutter? You thank God it’s all over, and that now you can throw me back again there, do you?”

“i will no longer compare my path to others -i refuse to do a disservice to my life”

“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.”

“One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.”

“If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting both for us and for her.”

“She did not look at things from the proper feminine angle. The society of such women was about as relaxing as going from your work to teach the second form, instead of reclining in a paradise with sweet laughs for bird-notes, and blue eyes for a heaven.”

“She was not a woman to be spoken of as other women are.”

“Language is a finer medium.”

“I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.”

“We tend to stack ourselves up against everyone else and pick ourselves apart based on what other people are doing. This practice does nothing to make us better”

“You should also know that whatever your gift is, nobody can do it quite like you. One of the biggest traps we fall into as women is the comparison trap, the ‘she’s got it all’ trap, the ‘she has more fans’ trap, or the ‘she’s making more money’ trap.”

“His talent was as natural as the pattern ... made by ... dust on a butterfly’s wings.”

“…The Bible teaches us there is no such thing as real peace until we are delivered from the need to compete with others.”

“In the immensity of this future that she conjured for herself, nothing specific stood out: the days ... were as near alike as waves are.”

″[Charles] seemed to her contemptible, weak and insignificant, a poor man in every sense of the word. How could she get rid of him? What an endless evening! She felt numb, as though she had been overcome by opium fumes.”

“Mother, when you’re disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of Jesus’ mother in the museum.”

“Love is great when you’re with someone. It’s better when it’s reciprocated.”

“Tessa Kelly is a man-eater. She’s like Medusa, but without the whole “freezing to stone” bit. Because that’s not her style. That’s not painful enough for her. She’d much rather draw you in with her blinding beauty, and then rip your heart out and eat it in front of you. And then she’ll stand over you and watch you slowly die at her feet.”

“And I am far more terrible than you, sister.”

“The drive of unliving things is stronger than the drive of living things.”

“Compare one idea with another; adjust truths and facts; form them into one whole, or notice the obstacles which occur in doing so.”

“Making comparisons can spoil your happiness.”

“As above, so below; as below, so above.”

″‘Oh, your nephew!’ Shrugging her shoulders, Madame Aubain resumed her pacing, as if to say, ‘I’d forgotten all about him! And why should I care anyway? A ship’s boy, a rogue, so what? Whereas my daughter… Think of that!’ ”

“A rotten Big Boy hitting the target is a memorable sound. Like a fat man doing a bellyflop, and followed by a whoop and a yell from the tomatoee.”

“Problems are like top trumps. I have a pretty good card: Adulterous Mum. But Jordana’s is still better: Tumour Mother.”

“That beaky anorexic and that toupeed Chihuahua. It’s beyond grotesque. Their children wouldn’t know whether to peck or bark.”

“And he wasn’t just plain weird like Hector.”

“He wasn’t big like Eleanor.”

“He didn’t have 1,642 teeth, like Tony.”

“I have not always done the right thing. When I was younger...I did worse things than Jack. Worse than any of them. I was the monster, then, Bod, and worse than any monster.”

“How Hell could be a worse place than Huangling on that terrible night, she couldn’t imagine.”

“I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”

“If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you.”

“That friend of yours is smarter than a cornered fox.”

″‘Never thought to tell him the gate. Shrimp like Will, to try a place like that!’ ‘Couldn’t stop, I reckon. No more strength than a girl. Not like young Mark.‘”