"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."

"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."

"Confess debt, and beg days. Confessing a fault makes half amends for it."

"It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution."

"There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession."

"Proximum ab innocentia tenet locum verecunda peccati confessio."

"Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy."

"I own the soft impeachment."

"Confess thee freely of thy sin; For to deny each article with oath Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception That I do groan withal."

"Confess yourself to heaven; Repent what's past; avoid what is to come."

"That old hereditary bore, The steward."

"He that filches from me my good name, Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed."

"A good name is better than precious ointment."

"His reputation is his property, and, if possible, more valuable than other property."

"Why are libels against individuals prosecuted? Because they have a tendency to provoke the party to whom they are sent to a breach of the peace."

"Libelling against a private man is a moral offence; but when it is against a government, it tends to the destruction of it."

"It was the rule of Holt, Chief Justice, to make words actionable whenever they sound to the disreputation of the person of whom they were spoken; and this was also Hale's and Twieden's rule; and I think it a very good rule."

"It is not the truth or falsehood that makes a libel, but the temper with which it is published."

"Everything printed or written, which reflects on the character of another, and is published without lawful justification or excuse, is a libel, whatever the intention may have been."

"There are calumnies against which even innocence loses courage."

"A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state favorite."

"Calumny is only the noise of madmen."

"Nihil est autem tam volucre, quam maledictum; nihil facilius emittitur; nihil citius excipitur, latius dissipatur."

"Soft-buzzing Slander; silly moths that eat An honest name."

"Homines qui gestant, quique auscultant crimina, Si meo arbitratu liceat, omnes pendeant, Gestores linguis, auditores auribus."

"For enemies carry about slander not in the form in which it took its rise. * * * The scandal of men is everlasting; even then does it survive when you would suppose it to be dead."

"Cut Men's throats with whisperings."

"Where it concerns himself, Who's angry at a slander, makes it true."

"If slander be a snake, it is a winged one—it flies as well as creeps."

"There are * * * robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer."

"An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth—a fact that is recognized by the law of libel."

"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you."

"The eyes of the slanderer always move around as shiftily as a spindle. You should never remain in his presence; his intentions should not be allowed to have an effect on you."

"Silence to man and prayer to God are the best cures for the evil of slander."

"The breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it."

"Calumny will sear Virtue itself;—these shrugs, these hums, and ha's."

"With ridiculous and awkward action, Which, slanderer, he imitation calls."

"If I can do it By aught that I can speak in his dispraise, She shall not long continue love to him."

"That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, For slander's mark was ever yet the fair; * * * * So thou be good, slander doth but approve Thy worth the greater."

"I am disgrac'd, impeach'd and baffled here,— Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear."

"I will be hang'd, if some eternal villain, Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, Have not devis'd this slander."

"Done to death by slanderous tongues, Was the Hero that here lies."

"Slander'd to death by villains, That dare as well answer a man indeed As I dare take a serpent by the tongue: Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops!"

"One doth not know How much an ill word may empoison liking."

"No might nor greatness in mortality Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong, Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?"

"King: So haply slander- Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, As level as the cannon to his blank, Transports his poisoned shot- may miss our name And hit the woundless air.- O, come away! My soul is full of discord and dismay."

"Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny."