Comparisons

"Comparisons are odious."

"Is it possible your pragmatical worship should not know that the comparisons made between wit and wit, courage and courage, beauty and beauty, birth and birth, are always odious and ill taken?"

"Great things with small."

"It is important to recognize that comparison is not a method or even an academic technique; rather, it is a discursive strategy. There are a few important points to bear in mind when one wants to make a comparison. First of all, one has to decide, in any given work, whether one is mainly after similarities or differences. It is very difficult, for example, to say, let alone prove, that Japan and China or Korea are basically similar or basically different. Either case could be made, depending on one’s angle of vision, one’s framework, and the conclusions towards which one intends to move. (In the jingoist years on the eve of the First World War, when Germans and Frenchmen were encouraged to hate each other, the great Austro-Marxist theoretician Otto Bauer enjoyed baiting both sides by saying that contemporary Parisians and Berliners had far more in common than either had with their respective medieval ancestors.) Here I have tried, as perhaps offering a useful example, to show how the comparative works I wrote between the early 1970s and the 2000s reflected, in their real difference, changing perspectives, framings and (political) intentions."

"THE same, yet not the same — her face Has still that Grecian line ; The sculptured perfectness whose grace Has long been held divine."

"How God ever brings like to like."

"Defining night by darkness, death by dust."

"'Tis light translateth night; 'tis inspiration Expounds experience; 'tis the west explains The east; 'tis time unfolds Eternity."

"Glass antique! 'twixt thee and Nell Draw we here a parallel! She, like thee, was forced to bear All reflections, foul or fair. Thou art deep and bright within, Depths as bright belong'd to Gwynne; Thou art very frail as well, Frail as flesh is,—so was Nell."

"Not worthy to carry the buckler unto him."

"It's wiser being good than bad; It's safer being meek than fierce: It's fitter being sane than mad. My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best, can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."

"It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration."

"To liken them to your auld-warld squad, I must needs say comparisons are odd."

"Some say, that Seignior Bononchini Compar'd to Handel's a mere Ninny; Others aver, to him, that Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle. Strange! that such high Disputes shou'd be 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee."

"Some say, compared to Bononcini, That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny; Others aver, that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle: Strange all this difference should be, 'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!"

"At whose sight, like the sun, All others with diminish'd lustre shone."

"Similem habent labra lactucam."

"About a donkey's taste why need we fret us? To lips like his a thistle is a lettuce."

"Like to like."

"Everything is twice as large, measured on a three-year-old's three-foot scale as on a thirty-year-old's six-foot scale."

"Too great refinement is false delicacy, and true delicacy is solid refinement."

"And but two ways are offered to our will, Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, The problem still for us and all of human race."

"Comparisons do ofttime great grievance."

"Who wer as lyke as one pease is to another."

"Hoc ego, tuque sumus: sed quod sum, non potes esse: Tu quod es, e populo quilibet esse potest."

"Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura."

"L'ape e la serpe spesso Suggon l'istesso umore;"

"II y a fagots et fagots."

"The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould. * * * The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes."

"A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them."

"We are nearer neighbours to ourselves than whiteness to snow, or weight to stones."

"No more like together than is chalke to coles."

"Everye white will have its blacke, And everye sweet its soure."

"Another yet the same."

"The rose and thorn, the treasure and dragon, joy and sorrow, all mingle into one."

"Einem ist sie die hohe, die himmlische Göttin, dem andern Eine tüchtige Kuh, die ihn mit Butter versorgt."

"Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the court."

"Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace."

"Hyperion to a satyr."

"No more like my father Than I to Hercules."

"O, the more angel she, And you the blacker devil!"

"Crabbed age and youth cannot live together."

"What, is the jay more precious than the lark, Because his feathers are more beautiful? Or is the adder better than the eel, Because his painted skin contents the eye?"

"Here and there a cotter's babe is royal—born by right divine; Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine."

"Duo quum idem faciunt, sæpe ut possis dicere, Hoc licet impune facere huic, illi non licet: Non quod dissimilis res sit, sed quod is sit."

"Sic canibus catulos similes, sic matribus hædos Noram; sic parvis componere magna solebam."

"Qui n'est que juste est dur, qui n'est que sage est triste."

"The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it."

"For like to like, the proverb saith."

"For as saith a proverb notable, Each thing seeketh his semblable."