Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Comparisons
How God ever brings like to like.
Aristotle—Ethics Mag. 2. 11. Also Politics. VIII. Ch. II. 12. “One pin drives out another,” as trans. by Congreve. Aristophanes—Pluto. 32. Euripides—Hecuba. 993. Homer—Odyssey. 17. 218.
Defining night by darkness, death by dust.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. Water and Wood.
’Tis light translateth night; ’tis inspiration
Expounds experience; ’tis the west explains
The east; ’tis time unfolds Eternity.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. A Ruined Temple.
Glass antique! ’twixt thee and Nell
Draw we here a parallel!
She, like thee, was forced to bear
All reflections, foul or fair.
Thou art deep and bright within,
Depths as bright belong’d to Gwynne;
Thou art very frail as well,
Frail as flesh is,—so was Nell.
L. Blanchard—Nell Gwynne’e Looking Glass. St. 1.
Comparisons are odious.
Archbishop Boiardo—Orlando Innamorato. Ch. VI. St. 4. Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. III. Sec. III. Memb. 1. Subsec. 2. Carew—Describing Mount Edgcumbe. (About 1590). Donne—Elegy. VIII. (1619). Fortescue—De Laudibus Leg. Angliæ. Ch. 19. Gabriel Harvey—rchaica. Vol. II. P. 23. (1592). Herbert—Jacula Prudentum. Heywood—Woman Killed with Kindness. Act I. Sc. 2. Lodowich—Lloyd Marrow of History. P. 19. (1653)—Much Ado About Nothing. Act III. Sc. 5. 1. 19. has odorous. W. P. in Pasquine in a Traunce. Folio 4. (1549). Whitgift—Defence of the Answer to the Administration. (1574). Parker Society’s Whitgift. Vol. II. P. 434.
Not worthy to carry the buckler unto him.
Sir Thomas Browne—Religio Medici. Pt. I. Sec. 21.
It’s wiser being good than bad;
It’s safer being meek than fierce:
It’s fitter being sane than mad.
My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That, after Last, returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best, can’t end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.
Robert Browning—Apparent Failure. VII.
It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
Burke—Prior’s Life of Burke.
To liken them to your auld-warld squad,
I must needs say comparisons are odd.
Burns—Brigs of Ayr. L. 177.
Some say, that Seignior Bononchini
Compar’d to Handel’s a mere Ninny;
Others aver, to him, that Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.
Strange! that such high Disputes shou’d be
’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
John Byrom—Epigram on the Feuds between Handel and Banoncini. As given in the London Journal, June 5, 1725.
Some say, compared to Bononcini,
That Mynheer Handel’s but a ninny;
Others aver, that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle:
Strange all this difference should be,
’Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!
John Byrom’s Epigram as published later, probably changed by himself. Not fit to hold a candle to him. From the Roman Catholic custom of holding candles before shrines, in processions.
Is it possible your pragmatical worship should not know that the comparisons made between wit and wit, courage and courage, beauty and beauty, birth and birth, are always odious and ill taken?
Cervantes—Don Quixote. Pt. II. Ch. I.
At whose sight, like the sun,
All others with diminish’d lustre shone.
Cicero—Tusculan Disp. Bk. III. Div. 18. Yonge’s trans.
Similem habent labra lactucam.
Like lips like lettuce (i. e. like has met its like).
Crassus. See Cicero—De Finibus. V. 30. 92.
About a donkey’s taste why need we fret us?
To lips like his a thistle is a lettuce.
Free trans. by Wm. Ewart of the witticism that made Crassus laugh for the only time, on seeing an ass eat thistles. Quoted by Facciolati (Bailey’s ed.) and by Moore in his Diary (Lord John Russell’s ed.).
Like to like.
Gascoigne—Complaynt of Philomene.
Everything is twice as large, measured on a three-year-old’s three-foot scale as on a thirty-year-old’s six-foot scale.
Holmes—Poet at the Breakfast Table. I.
Too great refinement is false delicacy, and true delicacy is solid refinement.
La Rochefoucauld—Maxims. No. 131.
And but two ways are offered to our will,
Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace,
The problem still for us and all of human race.
Lowell—Under the Old Elm. Pt. VII. St. 3.
Comparisons do ofttime great grievance.
John Lydgate—Bochas. Bk. III. Ch. VIII.
Who wer as lyke as one pease is to another.
Lyly—Euphues. P. 215.
Hoc ego, tuque sumus: sed quod sum, non potes esse:
Tu quod es, e populo quilibet esse potest.
Such are thou and I: but what I am thou canst not be; what thou art any one of the multitude may be.
Martial—Epigrams. V. 13. 9.
Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura.
Some are good, some are middling, the most are bad.
Martial—Epigrams. I. 17. 1.
L’ape e la serpe spesso
Suggon l’istesso umore;
The bee and the serpent often sip from the selfsame flower.
Metastasio—Morte d’Abele. I.
II y a fagots et fagots.
There are fagots and fagots.
Molière—Le Médecin Malgré lui. I. 6.
The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould.***The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes.
Montaigne—Apology for Raimond de Sebond. Bk. II. Ch. XII.
A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them.
Montaigne—Essays. Of Solitude.
We are nearer neighbours to ourselves than whiteness to snow, or weight to stones.
Montaigne—Essays. Bk. II. Ch. XII.
No more like together than is chalke to coles.
Sir Thos. More—Works. P. 674.
Everye white will have its blacke,
And everye sweet its soure.
Thos. Percy—Reliques. Sir Curline.
Another yet the same.
Pope—Dunciad. Bk. III. L. 90.
The rose and thorn, the treasure and dragon, joy and sorrow, all mingle into one.
Saadi—The Gulistan. Ch. VII. Apologue 21. Ross’ trans.
Einem ist sie die hohe, die himmlische Göttin, dem andern
Eine tüchtige Kuh, die ihn mit Butter versorgt.
To one it is a mighty heavenly goddess, to the other an excellent cow that furnishes him with butter.
Schiller—Wissenschaft.
Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the court.
As You Like It. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 46.
Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace.
Cymbeline. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 27.
Hyperion to a satyr.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 140.
No more like my father
Than I to Hercules.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 152.
O, the more angel she,
And you the blacker devil!
Othello. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 130.
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.
Passionate Pilgrim. Pt. XII.
What, is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?
Or is the adder better than the eel,
Because his painted skin contents the eye?
Taming of the Shrew. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 177.
Here and there a cotter’s babe is royal—born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.
Tennyson—Locksley Hall. Sixty Years After. St. 63.
Duo quum idem faciunt, sæpe ut possis dicere,
Hoc licet impune facere huic, illi non licet:
Non quod dissimilis res sit, sed quod is sit.
When two persons do the self-same thing, it oftentimes falls out that in the one it is criminal, in the other it is not so; not that the thing itself is different, but he who does it.
Terence—Adelphi. V. III. 37.
Sic canibus catulos similes, sic matribus hædos
Noram; sic parvis componere magna solebam.
Thus I knew that pups are like dogs, and kids like goats; so I used to compare great things with small.
Vergil—Eclogæ. I. 23.
Qui n’est que juste est dur, qui n’est que sage est triste.
He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.
Voltaire—Epître au Roi de Prusse. (1740).
The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.
Voltaire—A Philosophical Dictionary. Essay. Contrast.
For like to like, the proverb saith.
Thos. Wyatt—The Lover Complaineth.
For as saith a proverb notable,
Each thing seeketh his semblable.
Thos. Wyatt—The Re-cured Lover.