Quotes about Comparison

It is only when we recognize our inferiority that we become superior to others.

Protestant commentaries, I discovered, were also particularly interesting because Protestants have spent more time on Scripture than most of us.

I don't know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

The Old Testament God is a person with body parts and passions. The Church of England God has neither body, parts nor passions, and is therefore not a person.

there seemed to be a higher code of ethics and sisterliness among those prostitutes than among numerous ladies of the church who have more men for kicks than the prostitutes have for pay.

All I had was to improve on their strategy [...] anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business—you know they're doing something that you aren't.

It is instructive to compare the Meditations with another famous book, the Imitation of Christ. There is the same ideal of self-control in both. It should be a man's task, says the Imitation, 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.

I often wonder how it is that most people value their own lives above others, yet value other's opinions of them over their own self-opinions.

Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here. Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women? Some form of unbuttoning, some split-crotch routine, just as casual. A doglike sniffing.

He's a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman

You think I didn't hate their pity, their forced kindness? And knowing that no matter what I did, how virtuous I was, or hardworking, I would never be beautiful. Not like her, the one who merely had to sit there to be adored. You wonder why I stabbed the blue eyes of my dolls with pins and pulled their hair out until they were bald? Life isn't fair. Why should I be?