“Never compare one person with another: comparisons are odious.”
Maxim 44, p. 259
Maxims for Her Nuns (1963)
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Teresa of Ávila 55
Roman Catholic saint 1515–1582Related quotes
De laudibus legum Angliae (c. 1470), ch. xix, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Lust's Dominion (c. 1600), Act iii. scene 4. The first edition attributed the authorship of this play to Marlowe, though this attribution has been recognized as spurious by critics and scholars for nearly two centuries. See Logan and Smith, Predecessors of Shakespeare, p. 32. But compare: "Comparisons are odious", John Fortescue, De Laudibus Leg. Angliæ, Chapter xix.
Misattributed
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 23.
“714. Comparisons are odious.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“1134. Comparisons are odious.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“She, and comparisons are odious.”
No. 8, The Comparison, line 54. Compare: "Comparisons are odious", John Fortescue, De Laudibus Leg. Angliæ, Chap. xix; "Comparisons are odorous", William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, act iii, scene v
Elegies
The Evolution of Physics (1938) (co-written with Leopold Infeld) <!-- later published by Simon & Schuster (1967) -->
1930s
Context: Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.
Rolling Stone magazine, May 2008
On being proclaimed the new Mariah
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 19