'Cricket,'said Raffles,'like everything else, is a good enough sport until you discover a better. As a source of excitement it isn't in it with other things you wot of Bunny, and theinvoluntarycomparison becomes a bore. What's the satisfaction of taking a man's wicket when you want his spoons?' 414

-Hornung, E(rnest) W(illiam)
  The Amateur Cracksman.

To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehood of his assertions, issurely to discover great ignorance of human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on experience and comparison, judgement is always to some degree subject to affection.Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
^81 Lives of the English Poets,'Halifax'.

There is no manner of doubt that a town surrounded by water is a very fine sight; but a town surrounded by land is much finer.Can there be any comparison in point of beauty, between the dull monotony of a watery surface, and the delightful variety of gardens, meadows, hills and woods ?

-Moore,John
c.1780  A View of Society and Manners in Italy.

Qu'est-ce que l'homme dans la nature? Un ne¤  ant a' l'e¤  gard de l'infini, un tout a'   l'e¤  gard du ne¤  ant, un milieu entre rien et tout. What is man in nature? Nothing in comparison to the infinite, all in comparison to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.

-Pascal, Blaise
c.1654^1662  Pense¤  es, pt.2, no.72.

  He read partly for information, partly for comparison, partly for insight, partly for the sheer joy of felicitous statement.He delighted particularly inquotationswhich distilled the essence of an argument.

-Schlesinger, Arthur M(eier),Jr
  Of John F Kennedy. AThousand Days.