Topic

Preference

Shaw defines love as the gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else — which is either a critique or a precise description of what makes preference possible. Blake on the best wine being oldest, the best water newest. Rousseau: liberty with danger over peace with slavery. Kafka: in the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world. Diogenes on the privilege of wanting little as the closest a person can come to godliness. Chekhov's preference for electricity and steam over chastity and vegetarianism as the more genuinely loving choice. The collection examines preference as a form of value judgment: what you choose over what you could have chosen, and what that reveals about you.

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Quotes

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It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one

Source: Letter to Harriot Washington (Oct. 30, 1791)

Good company will always be found much less expensive than bad

Source: Letter to George Steptoe Washington (Mar. 23, 1789)

Immigrant: An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another

Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.

Source: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-1793)

Saving is a fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you.

We all are worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm

A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one

Which death is preferably to every other? – The unexpected

For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.