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Comparing   /kəmpˈɛrɪŋ/   Listen
Comparing

noun
1.
The act of examining resemblances.  Synonym: comparison.  "The fractions selected for comparison must require pupils to consider both numerator and denominator"






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"Comparing" Quotes from Famous Books



... at noon about the fact that he and Shakespeare's father were in wool, and he had annoyed a few modest Americans by comparing the petty amount of the elder Shakespeare's trade with the vast total pouring from his own innumerable looms driven with the electricity that the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... three protagonists live and move before our eyes. The sixth book may be said to be the heart of the whole poem. The extreme intellectual subtlety of Guido's plea stands quite unrivalled in poetic literature. In comparing it, for its poetic beauty, with other sections, the reader must bear in mind that in a poem of a dramatic nature the dramatic proprieties must be dominant. It would be obviously inappropriate to make Count Guido Franceschini speak with the dignity of the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... made, to what standard of a just discipline is it that these writers would be understood as appealing? Is it to some ideal, or to some existing and known reality? Would they have England suppose that they are here comparing the actual Oxford with some possible hypothetic or imaginable Oxford,—with some ideal case, that is to say, about which great discussions would arise as to its feasibility,—or that they are comparing it with some known standard of discipline ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... long puzzled him and his fellow-servants was explained. On comparing notes, they recollected that whenever the bell sounded, Dash was not to be seen; and there could now be no doubt that immediately he observed them closing their eyes, he had hastened off to the parlour, the bell-rope of which he could easily reach, in ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... serious. It is happy for a nation when mere fashions are a topic that can employ its attention; for, though dissipation may lead to graver moments, it commences with ease and tranquillity: and they at least who live before the scene shifts are fortunate, considering and comparing themselves with the various regions who enjoy no parallel felicity. I confess my reflections are couleur de rose at present. I did not much expect to live to see peace, without far more extensive ruin than has fallen ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... of the moon from a neighbouring star. For example, he may see that the moon is three degrees from the star Regulus. In the Nautical Almanac he finds the Greenwich time at which the moon was three degrees from Regulus. Comparing this with the indications of the chronometer, he finds the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... When comparing the Tinguian versions of these fables with those of the Ilocano, one is impressed with the fact that while the incidents upon which they are founded are often identical, the stories themselves have frequently been moulded and changed by the tellers, who have introduced ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... Thereupon they began comparing memories and recollections,—to find, however, that they had by no means data enough. One thing was clear to me—that nothing would be too bad for them to ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... more that we could do for him, we found that he had fallen asleep, which was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to him. We therefore left him to finish his nap and fell to pacing the weather side of the deck, between the main rigging and the taffrail, comparing notes as to our experiences; and while we were still thus engaged we became aware of two things. The first of these was that the gale was breaking, while the second was that the dawn was at hand, for far away to leeward of us the sky was paling, down to a certain point, beneath which the ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... readily detected with the fingers by the bulging ridge of the bone outside and along the lower edge of the molar teeth. A thickening of the lower jawbone may likewise be identified by feeling on both sides of each branch at the same time and comparing it with the thinness of this bone in a normal horse. As a result mastication becomes difficult or impossible and the teeth become loose and painful. The imperfect chewing which follows causes balls of feed to form which ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... relieve our selection of them from the odium of imprudence from the beginning; in which case if there is a mutual response, well, it is pure chance. We are always forming attachments without sufficient circumspection, hence I am not wrong in comparing love to an appetite which one sometimes feels for one kind of food rather than for another, without being able to give the reason. I am very cruel to thus dissipate the phantoms of your self love, but I am telling you the truth. You ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... an unfairness which descended to the second generation and would descend through the years until the equalizing forces of character and will—or the lack of them—brought later generations to the same level of condition. Markham could not help comparing Hermia Challoner with her less fortunate sister—Hermia Challoner, the courted, the fted, who had but to wish for a thing to have it granted, with Dorothy Herrick, the neglected and forgotten, who was bartering ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... metric system. But there is still another potent reason. After the United States government legalized the metric system in 1866, all the school books on arithmetic began presenting the topic of the metric system, and, quite naturally, they did it by comparing its units with those of our system and calling for cross reductions from one system to the other. No better means of sickening the American children with the metric system could have been devised. Multitudes of the young formed a strong dislike for the foreign ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... By comparing the observation of General Caffarelli with what has been previously stated respecting the project of the expedition to Egypt and Malta, an idea may be formed of the value of Bonaparte's assertion ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... entering the text (manually) twice, once from the first printing (1906) and once from the second printing (no date), and comparing the two. There were some slight ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... their services to knowledge. He does full justice to Alexandria, not only for its astronomy and geometry, but for that peculiar studiousness 'which exercises itself less on things than on books; whose strength lies less in producing and discovering, than in collecting and comparing and estimating what has been produced and discovered; which does not press forward, but gazes backward along the road that has already been traversed. The studies that require most genius, are not always ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... galloping before the "little Chinese darlings" could satisfy themselves and each other that they had the very finest bullocks procurable in their mob. A hundred times they changed their minds: rejecting chosen bullocks, recalling rejected bullocks, and comparing every bullock accepted with every bullock rejected. Bulk was what they searched for—plenty for their money, as they judged it, and finally gathered together a mob of coarse, wide-horned, great-framed beasts, rolling in fat that ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... right, Mr. Leach, for getting married; and mind you don't fall into the same abuse of your opportunities," he said, with an air of self-satisfaction, while comparing three or four cigars in the palm of his hand doubtful which of the fragrant plump rolls to put into his mouth. "Getting married, Mr. Blunt, commonly makes a man a fit subject for nausea, and nothing is easier than to set the stomach-pump in motion in one of your bridegrooms; ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... authorities; searchers tracing personal residences or deaths in old directories or newspapers; querists seeking for the words of some half-remembered passage in poetry or prose, or the original author of one of the myriad proverbs which have no father; architects or builders of houses comparing hundreds of designs and models; teachers perusing works on education or comparing text-books new or old; readers absorbing the great poems of the world; writers in pursuit of new or curious themes among books of antiquities or folk-lore; students of all the questions ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... In "comparing notes" with a travelled friend, I glean from his stock of information, gathered South-west, a few incidents in the life of a somewhat extensively famed Boston panoramic artist—one of which incidents, at least, is worth rehearsing. Some years ago, the South-west ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... not long in doing, as their host was able to inform them at once that it had left the capital several months before, and on comparing dates they found that its departure had followed within a day or two that of ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... of them were well versed in theology. They were stationed usually eight miles apart, right along the coast, and their ordinary duty was to meet each other half-way and exchange despatches. This gave the religious section opportunities of comparing experiences and discussing the faith that was in them. I knew one who spoke and taught French and Latin, another who could make an accurate abstract of Bishop Butler's Analogy from cover to cover, and another who became possessed ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... Erma, if I must go on," resumed the well-coaxed Stixon, "if my duty to the family driveth me to an 'arrowing subjeck, no words can more justly tell what come to pass than my language to my wife. She were alive then, the poor dear hangel, and the mother of seven children, which made me, by your leave comparing humble roofs with grandeur, a little stiff to him up stairs, as come in on the top of seven. For I said to my wife when I went home—sleeping out of the house, you see, miss, till the Lord was pleased to dissolve matrimony—'Polly,' I said, when I took home my supper, 'you may take my word for it ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... compliance with truth, it must be said, that he was guilty of no falsification; for the printed copy agrees accurately with the manuscripts of the four secretaries, which are still extant; but they would not believe this in Basel or Bern, without comparing the documents, on account of the violent assertions contained in other writings which he then published. Among these, everything else was eclipsed by the so-called Libel Almanac, whose appearance, with its vulgar wit, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... congratulated himself on the 18th Brumaire, and attributed to himself the future political advantages of this change. The moderate constitutionalists believed that definitive liberty would be established; the royalists fed themselves with hope by inappropriately comparing this epoch of our revolution with the epoch of 1660 in the English revolution, with the hope that Bonaparte was assuming the part of Monk, and that he would soon restore the monarchy of the Bourbons; the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... high!" murmured the young man, eagerly comparing the likeness of Louis with his own countenance reflected ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... for release; but the indicative, praising God for His mercy. The other chief thoughts of this short Hymn are that Jesus is God's Salvation—before the face of all people—a Light to Gentiles—and the glory of Israel. Comparing these with the Hymn of Zacharias, we shall be struck with the correspondence ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson

... Isis in Germany! This shows, how far the Romans went in comparing the gods of different nations. Gr. Ritter identifies this goddess with the Nertha of chap. 40, the Egyptian Isis and Nertha being both equivalent to Mother Earth, the Terra or Tellus of ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... already two girls in the room. One was evidently a caller. The other, a girl with a sweet, kindly, German face, was obviously one of the "nice" daughters. His arrival checked the flow of conversation somewhat, but they went on comparing their summer experiences. When the butler came back and said aloud, "Mr. Bohlmann will see you in the library, Mr. Stirling," Peter noticed that both girls turned impulsively to look at him, and that the daughter ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... good reasons for being proud of their concerts, for except in Berlin there are perhaps no audiences in Europe which have the advantage of us in this respect. This can be seen by comparing our programmes with those offered in continental cities, as recorded every week in the Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik, published at Leipsic. I have repeatedly seen paragraphs in leading German papers calling attention to Mr. Thomas's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... In comparing the extremes of human society, the riches of a Solomon with the poverty of a Bartimeus, it becomes us to recognize the hand of a mysterious though wise Providence. He who fixed the stars of the firmament in their proper ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... entering the town, seeing the time of year and the great number of our soldiers who were in it. The Emperor asked what men they were who were dying, and whether they were gentlemen and men of mark; answer was made to him "They were all poor soldiers." Then said he, "It was no great loss if they died," comparing them to caterpillars, grasshoppers, and cockchafers, which eat up the buds and other good things of the earth; and if they were men of any worth they would not be in his camp at six livres the month, and therefore it was no great harm if they died. Moreover, he said he would never depart from the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... interest (fancy!) in Plato and Aristotle. They were presented to me as merely school books; not as the great effort of the cultivated heathen mind to solve the riddle of man's being; and I, in those days, never thought of comparing the heathen and Christian ethics, and the great writers had no charm ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... would like to take issue with those who believe that it is the monotonous intonations of the therapist that cause the subject to lapse from the deeply relaxed state into true sleep. I have observed many times, by comparing verbalization with silence, that the former gives the subject's mind a focal point of attention which prevents him from entering a sleep state where hypnotherapy is impossible. Like the man who cannot sleep because of an active mind, sleep and ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... that can be gathered and by confronting the first pronouncement by others fetched from every quarter of experience, has power to minimise the error and reach a practically just estimate of absent values. This achieved rightness can be tested by comparing two experiences, each when it is present, with the same conventional permanent object chosen to be their expression. A love-song, for instance, can be pronounced adequate or false by various lovers; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... and the Major, with red eyes and shaking hands, wandered into endless reminiscences of the long friendship. To Betty these trivial anecdotes were only a fresh torture, but Mrs. Ambler followed them eagerly, comparing her recollections with the Major's, and repeating in a low voice to herself characteristic stories which she had ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... our steps, eager to sell us genuine relics of the field, which are likely to increase in number as long as there is a demand for them. George, of course, was in his element, and he did little but plant the different sites in his memory, for the purpose of comparing notes, by and by, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... returned Dick, comparing the two. "That rascal, whoever he is, must have had the key made for the sole purpose of ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield

... is bookkeeper for the state, audits accounts against it, and draws warrants upon the state treasurer for their payment. [Footnote: No money can be paid out except on appropriation by the legislature.] The state auditor, also, comparing the legislative appropriations with the assessed value of the property of the state, computes the rate of the state tax and reports ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... and confuse 'great,' which has no meaning whatever, with 'good,' which means salvation. Look at this great wreath: it'll be dead tomorrow. Look at that good flower: it'll come up again next year. Now for the other metaphor. To compare the world to Cambridge is like comparing the outsides of houses with the inside of a house. No intellectual effort is needed, no moral result is attained. You only have to say, 'Oh, what a difference!' and then come indoors again and exhibit your ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... general is an important one, then. It can only be tested by making accurate catalogues of the relative brilliance of stars at various times, and by comparing these. No such general catalogue existed before HERSCHEL'S time, and led by the discrepancies in isolated cases, which he found between his own estimates and those of his predecessors, he made from observation a series ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... for a little while, pretending you are my grandmother? Sallie has one and Julia and Leonora each two, and they were all comparing them tonight. I can't think of anything I'd rather have; it's such a respectable relationship. So, if you really don't object—When I went into town yesterday, I saw the sweetest cap of Cluny lace trimmed with lavender ribbon. I am going to make ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... true necessity of discipline no more forcibly than by comparing society to a grand organ upon which the Creator sounds his mighty fugue of years. We are the pipes—some the colossal columns which shake the world, and others the tiny tubes which make a feeble cry, almost unheard. No one of ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... we are comparing two shades of colour, one blue and one green. We can be quite sure they are different shades of colour; but if the green colour is gradually altered to be more and more like the blue, becoming first a blue-green, then a ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... AND GEOGRAPHY.—Comparing the scientific development of the Chinese with that of the Western world, it may be said that they have made little progress in any branch of science. There are, however, to be found in almost every department some works of no indifferent merit. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Comparing the two fleets, Frobisher came to the conclusion that, despite the preponderance possessed by China in her two powerful battleships, Japan's was the stronger, since she possessed more ships, while several of her smaller cruisers were ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... the author is constantly reminding us of the qualities of mind and character on which he rests their claims to favor, without causing them to appear naturally and unconsciously in the course of the narrative. The defect we are adverting to may be illustrated by comparing such personages of this class as Cooper has delineated with Colonel Talbot, in "Waverley," Colonel Mannering and Counsellor Pleydell, in "Guy Mannering," Monkbarns, in "The Antiquary," and old Osbaldistone, in "Rob ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... and princess were thus laid together, all the while asleep, there rose a great contest between the genius and the fairy about the preference of beauty. They were some time admiring and comparing them; but at length Danhasch broke silence, and said to Maimoune, You see, and I have already told you, my princess was handsomer than your prince; now, I hope, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... FLORA'S betrothal had grown out of the soothing of Mr. POTTS'S last year of mental disorder by Mr. DROOD, an old partner in the grocery business, who, too, was a widower from his wife's use of arsenic and lead for her complexion. The two bereaved friends, after comparing tears and looking mournfully at each other's tongues, had talked themselves to death over the fluctuations in sugar; willing their respective children to marry in future for the sake of keeping up ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... governors who would meet in consultation would be the real political leaders of their several states; and they should meet, not so much for the purpose of agreeing upon any single group of reforming measures, as for the purpose of comparing notes obtained under widely different conditions and as the result of different legislative experiments. Just in so far as this mixture of generous competition and candid cooeperation was seeking to accomplish constructive social purposes, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... money, and the constant pressure of the demand for it, may be realized by comparing its utility with that of any other force that contributes ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... complexion, and had married him, a Moor, which showed unnatural in her, and proved her to have a headstrong will; and when her better judgment returned, how probable it was she should fall upon comparing Othello with the fine forms and clear white complexions of the young Italians her countrymen. He concluded with advising Othello to put off his reconcilement with Cassio a little longer, and in the meanwhile to note with what earnestness Desdemona should intercede in his behalf; for that ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood, and that all that time happily, he died, having lived the number of nine hundred and fifty years. But let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument, that neither ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... excellent specimen of the business man of action, who had ideas out of the common but was not so much given to deep and quiet thinking as to prompt doing of things quickly decided on. He glanced from one to the other, mentally comparing them. Bent was a tall, handsome man, blonde, blue-eyed, ready of word and laugh; Brereton, a medium-sized, compact fellow, dark of hair and eye, with an olive complexion that almost suggested foreign origin: the sort, decided Cotherstone, that thought a lot ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... interruptions the summer of 1885 was upon me before I was ready for the compositors to make a beginning with my work. In revising my proofs very rarely indeed have I contented myself in verifying my quotations with comparing them merely with my own manuscript. In almost all instances I have once more examined the originals. 'Diligence and accuracy,' writes Gibbon, 'are the only merits which an historical writer may ascribe to himself; if any merit indeed can be assumed from the performance of an indispensable duty[4].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... engag'd himself in a War against the Allies, meerly upon a Religious Motive, to re-establish King James, who was dethron'd upon no other Account but because he was a Roman Catholick. But I have since found by comparing Matters, that the Revolution in England was not the Occasion, but the Consequence of the War between the French and the Allies; for the Emperor, &c. understanding that King James II. was drawn into a Scrape by the French ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... were all in the French style, as I afterwards, by comparing my garb with that of others, discovered. They were fitted to my shape with the nicest precision. I bedecked myself with all my care. I remembered the style of dress used by my beloved Clavering. My locks were of shining auburn, flowing and smooth like his. Having wrung the wet from them, and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... the mate, smiling, "because I know it to keep good time. It has the Greenwich time; and, as your watch has the New York time, by comparing them together, it is quite easy to find ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... wonderful!" said the young man, "it is truly wonderful!" He was thinking of the letters—long letters, full of sympathy, and a curious unworldly wisdom, which she had sent him in reply to his own, and he was comparing them with her youthful face, as one involuntarily compares a poet's appearance with his poetry—generally a disappointing thing to do, and always a ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... by her education and temper, from deviating into rigour and malevolence. Will you pardon me, therefore, if I defer commenting on your narrative till I have had an opportunity of reviewing it and comparing it with my knowledge of the lad, collected from himself ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... other simple preparations were quickly completed. Mrs. Eversley and Hope were mounted on the two donkeys; Brother John, whose hurt leg showed signs of renewed weakness, rode his white ox, which was now quite fat again; the wounded hero, Stephen, as I have said, was carried; and I walked, comparing notes with old Babemba on the Pongo, their manners, which I am bound to say were good, and their customs, that, as the saying goes, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... a good supply of water. Round the cove there are some fine warehouses and on one side a small fort. Coming from the Spanish settlements, where such magnificent care has generally been paid to the fortifications, the means of defence in these colonies appeared very contemptible. Comparing the town with Sydney, I was chiefly struck with the comparative fewness of the large houses, either built or building. Hobart Town, from the census of 1835, contained 13,826 inhabitants, and the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... much more than the study and the description of buildings and places of historical interest. His aim is first to study the way in which a city grows, always having due regard to its physical environment; secondly, by comparing like with like, as a naturalist compares the individuals of a species, or the species of a genus, to throw light on the laws which govern civic development, and thus to help ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... of a high type of the over-inhibited must do for the group. There is a related type who in ordinary speech find it "difficult to make up their minds,"—in other words, are unable to choose. Bleuler has used the term ambivalent, thus comparing these individuals to a chemical element having two bonds and impelled to unite with two substances. The ambivalent personalities are always brought to a place where they yearn for two opposing kinds of action or they fear to choose one affinity of action as against the other. They are ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... theological theory. Two or three examples out of many may serve as types. First of these may be named the teaching of Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the University of Tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value of comets by comparing the Almighty sending a comet, to the judge laying the executioner's sword on the table between himself and the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children. A little later we have ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... the interval in writing from recollection several of his poems for the press. Before his departure, he gave the pieces to a printer; and shortly after, he received intimation that a thousand copies were ready for delivery. On comparing the printed sheets with his MSS. at Ettrick, he had the mortification of discovering "many of the stanzas omitted, others misplaced, and typographical errors abounding in every page." The little brochure, imperfect as it was, sold rapidly in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... modern music is striving, which is now given the strong but obscure name of "unending melody," can be clearly understood by comparing it to one's feelings on entering the sea. Gradually one loses one's footing and one ultimately abandons oneself to the mercy or fury of the elements: one has to swim. In the solemn, or fiery, swinging movement, first slow and then quick, of old music—one had ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... with my comparing the face of the small Ethiop known to his household as "Tines" to a huckleberry with features. He also approved my parallel between a certain German blonde young maiden whom we passed in the street and the "Morris White" peach. But he was so good-humored at times, that, if one scratched a lucifer, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... which we contend, we ought not to be discouraged too soon: but on the other hand, considering the importance of not impairing and exhausting the radical strength of the country, there are limits beyond which we ought not to persist, and which we can determine only by estimating and comparing fairly, from time to time, the degree of security to be obtained by treaty, and the risk and disadvantage of continuing ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... of fascination. Laura would extend herself on a top berth beside the round-eyed Norwegian to whom it belonged, with the cropped head of the owner pillowed on her sisterly arm, and thus they passed hours, discussing conversions as medical students might discuss cases, relating, comparing. They talked a great deal about Colonel Markin. They said it was a beautiful life. More beautiful if possible had been the life of Mrs. Markin, who was his second wife, and who had been "promoted to glory" six months ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... not be thought that verse is simply an addition; something is lost as well as something gained; and there remains plainly traceable, in comparing the best prose with the best verse, a certain broad distinction of method in the web. Tight as the versifier may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the clerks, who was sorting gloves by the dozen, to another who was comparing prices on the tickets. "Lucky! the master has found out that Popinot is making eyes at Mademoiselle Cesarine, and, as the old fellow is pretty clever, he gets rid of Anselme; it would be difficult to refuse him point-blank, on account of his relations. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... and comparing the actual number of those who were anxiously looking over the gunwale with the list of the ship's company, that vigilant functionary shook his head. One of the number was missing! An explanation was demanded. Captain Allen was embarrassed. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... that Macaulay says, comparing Cromwell with Napoleon, that Cromwell showed the greater military genius, if we consider that he never saw an army till he was forty; while Napoleon was educated from a boy in the best military schools in Europe. Cromwell manufactured his own ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... furrows in the field set apart for that purpose, and prayed at the altars of the spirits of the land and the grain, for an abundant year. Ka Hs says he does not know on what occasion it was intended to be used; but comparing it with the fourth ode of the second decade, he is inclined to rank it with that as an ode of thanksgiving. There is nothing in the piece itself to determine us in favour of either view. It brings before us a series of pleasing pictures of the husbandry of those early ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... neighbors were asking one another how they were bearing the fast, exhibiting their white tongues and generally comparing symptoms, the physical aspects of the Day of Atonement more or less completely diverting attention from the spiritual. Smelling-salts passed from hand to hand, and men explained to one another that, but for ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... latter, and that the Prophet speaks with a distinct reference to this supposition which he afterwards, in ver. 9, distinctly expresses. Hence, to a certain degree, a double sense takes place; and, in the main, J. H. Michaelis has hit the right by comparing, first, Gen. i. and Rom. viii., and then continuing: "Parabolically, however, by the wild beasts, wild and cruel nations are understood, which are to be converted to Christ; or violent men who, by the Spirit of Christ, are rendered meek and gentle, just ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... transverse lines. I believe that it is strictly homologous with the fold, over which the complemental male is attached in S. vulgare, but carried, for a special purpose, much further across the valve and rectangularly inwards, for in structure and position both are identical. In comparing the internal views of the scuta in S. vulgare and S. ornatum (Pl. V, fig. 15 a', and Pl. VI, fig. 1 c'), it must be borne in mind, that the latter should be compared, as clearly shown by the lines of growth, with that portion alone of the scutum in S. vulgare, which lies under the curved ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... to familiarize students with the constellations by comparing them with facsimiles on the lantern face. With seventeen ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... to bear a close relation to the degree of intelligence. The surface of the human brain is not smooth but covered with convolutions, with alternating grooves or sulci, which vastly increase its surface and thus make room for more gray matter. Says Gratiolett: "On comparing a series of human and simian brains we are immediately struck with the analogy exhibited in the cerebral forms in all these creatures. There is a cerebral form peculiar to man and the apes; and so in ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... riding in the dusty stagecoach, comparing as you go the canyons of the Yellowstone with memories of Colorado, Overland, and Stalheim, you, in your winter home, know all about fur as it enters your world with its beauty, its warmth, its price—its gauge of the wearer's pocket. Let me ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... had it so happened that our hero had succumbed to Vigors, the case would have been the very reverse. He then would have had to go through the ordeal to which most who enter the naval service are exposed, which cannot be better explained than by comparing it to the fagging carried to such an iniquitous ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... a little cry. Father looks from him to me, and from me to him, as if comparing our faces—for, upon my soul, Charley did not resemble himself at all. Nobody moved; and the poor fellow raises his big brown hands slowly to his throat, and with one single tug rips everything open—collar, shirt, waistcoat—a perfect wreck and ruin of a man. Father ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... and comparing with one another the great mass of terms by which we find any number expressed in different languages, and, while admitting the great diversity of method practised by different tribes, we observe certain resemblances ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant

... family. These Charts have been prepared by the aid of lists, papers, and other data, accessible to Mrs. Van Rensselaer only, and have been added to and corrected by members of the different families to whom they have been submitted, and the information thus gained has been verified by comparing it with marriage and death notices that have been published in the daily papers, of which this lady has kept a faithful record. The value and importance of these Charts will be recognized, not only by members of the families whose names appear in them, but by genealogists who require trustworthy ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... we must condemn her persecution both of Puritans and of Catholics alike, it is only fair, in comparing her with her predecessor, to remember that, in the five and forty years of her reign, the whole number of persons who suffered death as Catholics or as Anabaptists was considerably less than the number of the Martyrs in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... In comparing Queensland with the citrus-producing districts of Southern Europe, we have the advantage of better and cheaper land, absence of frost, more vigorous growth, earlier maturity of the trees, and superior fruit; but with the advantage of cheaper ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... together, the more it became clear that this last statement explained some of his main defects. Of all distinguished men that I have ever met, Tolstoi seems to me most in need of that enlargement of view and healthful modification of opinion which come from meeting men and comparing views with them in different lands and under different conditions. This need is all the greater because in Russia there is no opportunity to discuss really important questions. Among the whole one hundred and twenty millions of people there is no public body in which the discussion of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... In comparing this poem with the original words of the air to which it is adapted, (Parnell's pretty lines, "My days have been so wondrous free,") it will be felt, at once, how wide is the difference between the cold and graceful effusions of taste, and the fervid bursts of real genius— between ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... she made an excuse, and left him. She found her sister in Mary's room: they were comparing notes. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... the correct attack for the head tone, or a tone taken in the upper register. Before I explain the registers to you I must tell you one of the funniest compliments I ever received. A very flattering person was comparing my voice to that of another high soprano whom I very ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authours. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place. The same ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... prove in frequent cases an almost identical tone of thought in Wesley and in Francis of Assisi or Francis de Sales. To most minds in our own days it will rather seem as if he were constantly dealing blows which only rebounded upon himself, in comparing his opponent to men whose deep piety and self-denying virtues, however much tinged by the errors of their time and order, worked wonders in the revival of earnest faith. On the whole Lavington proved his case successfully, but he only proved by what easy transitions the purest ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... after 1378 all the Popes except five, and since 1523 all, have been Italians; at the present day, thirty-five out of sixty-four cardinals are likewise Italians. The Roman stamp becomes still more evident on comparing the millions of Christians who are Catholics with the millions of Christians who are not. Among the primitive annexations and ulterior acquisitions of the Roman Church, several have separated from her, those of the countries whose Greek, Slavic and Germanic populations ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... continually contrasted Madame Recamier's beauty with her own plain appearance, her friend's power of fascination with her own lesser faculty of interesting, and she repeatedly declared that Madame Recamier was the most enviable of human beings. But in comparing the lives of the two, as they now appear to us, Madame de Stael seems the more fortunate. If her married life was uncongenial, she had children to love and cherish, to whom she was fondly attached. Madame Recamier was far more isolated. Years had made her entirely independent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... this happened I went to the house where Joseph Smith, Jr., lived, and where he and Harris were engaged in their translation of the book. Each of them had a written piece of paper which they were comparing, and some of the words were, I my servant seeketh a greater witness, but no greater witness can be given him.... I inquired whose words they were, and was informed by Joseph or Emma (I rather think it was the former), that they were the words of Jesus Christ. I told ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... look of blank astonishment expressed in every face: beginning with the officers, tracing it through all the passengers, and descending to the very stokers and furnacemen, who emerged from below, one by one, and clustered together in a smoky group about the hatchway of the engine-room, comparing notes in whispers. After throwing up a few rockets and firing signal guns in the hope of being hailed from the land, or at least of seeing a light - but without any other sight or sound presenting itself ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... enlisted him, and keeping a close watch upon Clarissa during the interval. What a gay butterfly creature she seemed to-night! He could scarcely fancy this was the same girl who had spoken so mournfully of her lost home in the library that afternoon. He looked from her to his daughter for a moment, comparing the two; Sophia resplendent in pink areophane and pearls, and showing herself not above the pleasures of a polka; eminently a fine young woman, but O, of what a different day from ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... Sunday that lay between the busy Saturday and Monday. "It is always so wherever Cousin Delight is," Leslie Goldthwaite said to herself, comparing it with other Sundays that had gone. Yet she too, for weeks before, by the truth that had come into her own life and gone out from it, had been helping to make these moments possible. She had been shone upon, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... child should feel a value in the problem. That is, his apprehension of the problem should carry with it a desire to secure a complete mastery of the problem from a sense of its intrinsic value. The difference in feeling which a pupil may have toward the worth of a problem would be noticed by comparing the attitude of a class in the study of a military biography or a pioneer adventure taken from Canadian or United States sources respectively. In the case of the former, the feeling of patriotism associated with the lesson problem will give it a value for the pupils entirely ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education



Words linked to "Comparing" :   examination, collation, confrontation, compare, analogy, likening, scrutiny, contrast



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