“Comparisons are odious.”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 23.
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Miguel de Cervantes 178
Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright 1547–1616Related 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
“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
“Never compare one person with another: comparisons are odious.”
Maxim 44, p. 259
Maxims for Her Nuns (1963)
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
As quoted in Becoming a Great School (2013) by Cooper, Gustafson and Salah, p. ix
Disputed