Quotes about Comparison

The cankered passion of envy is nothing akin to the silly envy of the ass.L'Estrange,Fab.xxxviii.

Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?BibleProv.xxvii. 4.

Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.

For so blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one thinks he has a good reason for exalting himself and despising all others in comparison.

Each of us thinks we have just cause for elevating ourselves and despising all others in comparison to ourselves—our self-love ruins us with such blindness. If, in fact, God has gifted us with something that is good in itself, we immediately make it the basis for praising ourselves to such a degree that we not only swell up but almost burst with pride.

When the same qualities which we admire in ourselves are seen in others, even though they be superior, maliciously lower and carp at them.

Yet we flatter our strength unduly when we compare it even to a reed stick! For whatever vain men devise and babble concerning these matters is but smoke. Therefore Augustine with good reason often repeats the famous statement that free will is by its defenders more trampled down than strengthened.

As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.

But it is evident that the servants of Christ are treated with less humanity than adulterers, robbers, and other malefactors of their kind.

Thus our arrogance grows as we seek to exalt ourselves above others, as if we were different from them. Truly, there's no one who does not flippantly and boldly disregard and despise others as inferiors.

We are all so blinded and upset by self-love that everyone imagines he has a just right to exalt himself and to undervalue all others in comparison to self.

As soon as there was two there was pride