Rival Quotes & Sayings

They glanced at one another like tigers taking measure of a menacing new rival. But in this kind of jungle you could never be sure where the real danger lurked. — Erich Segal

The biggest rival I had in my career was me. I couldn't control Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson or Lee Trevino. The only person I could control was me. — Jack Nicklaus

The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle- making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. — O. Henry

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.' Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure. — Kathleen Parker

Learn to spot and avoid "writer groupies." The writer's self-sufficiency and our love for our work tend to attract insecure people who never can get enough love. They grow jealous of our work and come to regard it as a rival. These people can destroy you, so kick them out of your life or don't admit them in the first place. — Florence King

Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, and his school of negative thinkers, and England (or rather Scotland) had the profoundest negative thinker on record, David Hume: a man, the peculiarities of whose mind qualified him to detect failure of proof, and want of logical consistency, at a depth which French skeptics, with their comparatively feeble powers of analysis and abstractions stop far short of, and which German subtlety alone could thoroughly appreciate, or hope to rival. — John Stuart Mill

Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival. — Man Ray

When rival worldviews are in play, it is not adaptation that is called for but confrontation: confrontation — John Piper

No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man ... it is simply incredible to think that ... he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. — Thomas Huxley

Nothing so lowers a lover in a virile maiden's estimation, than for him to be 'whipped' in a personal encounter with a rival. — Arthur Desmond

For him, the writer should be the very devil, a disturber of dreams and wrecker of fatuous utopias, the bringer-in of reality, and rival of God in his wish to make worlds. — Hanif Kureishi

In short, the oppressor and the oppressed, instead of fighting it out within the city, directed their aggression toward a common goal-an attack on a rival city. Thus the greater the tensions and the harsher the daily repressions of civilization, the more useful war became as a safety valve. Finally, war performed another function that was even more indispensable, if my hypothetical connection between anxiety, human sacrifice, and war prove defensible. War provided its own justification, by displacing neurotic anxiety with rational fear in the face of real danger. Once war broke out, there was solid reason for apprehension, terror, and compensatory displays of courage. — Lewis Mumford

Sometimes it is good to lose in a game to make the rival happy; when you see the happiness on the face of your rival, you become the winner of your own game! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

For all that people have tried to abuse it and disown it. "feminism" is still the word we need. No other word will do. And let's face it, there has been no other word, save "Girl Power"
which makes you sound like you're into some branch of Scientology owned by Geri Halliwell. That "Girl Power" has been the sole rival to the word "feminism" in the last 50 years is a cause for much sorrow on behalf of the women. After all, P. Diddy has had four different names, and he's just one man. — Caitlin Moran

Your relationship with your brother will be, in many ways, the most complex and bewildering of all the interpersonal connections you will form. An older brother is both authority and peer, friend and bitter enemy, partner and rival, and will play these contradictory roles to varying degrees throughout your life. At this point the rivalry is most prominent, owing to the difference in age and the resentment your brother feels toward you monopolizing your mother's attention. Try to remember, in the face of the poor treatment you receive at his hands, that more than a pure desire to cause you harm or pain, this is an effort on his part to win back some of that attention, even if it's only through being scolded and punished. — Ron Currie Jr.

The United States is pushing as policy division of the world into rival currency camps - the dollar area on the one hand, and the Russia-Chinese-Shanghai Cooperation Organization group on the other, especially now that the IMF has changed its rules. People think that if there are rival currency groupings and national currencies are going bust, we might as well use gold as a safe haven. — Michael Hudson

With respect to ingenious subconsciousness, I think, philosophers might well rival poets. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together — Joseph Addison

I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge, or a vigour of spring, as well as an infinite variety of colour that no artefact I have seen in the last sixty years can rival ... each day, as I look, I wonder where my eyes were yesterday. — Bernard Berenson

In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The net effect is to prevent women's identification with the issues. If the public women is stigmatized as too 'pretty,' she's a threat, a rival
or simply not serious; if derided as too 'ugly,' one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda. — Naomi Wolf

Rare is the man who suffers no remorse as he passes from the state of confidant to that of rival. — Honore De Balzac

Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. — Stephen Jay Gould

Darwin's great gift to science was simplifying all life to pure mathematics: your one and only goal on earth is multiplication. Everything you do, every instinct you have, is an evolutionary urge to make babies and leave behind as many copies of yourself as possible. From that perspective, heroism makes no sense. Why risk the grave for someone else if there's no guarantee of a biological payoff? Dying for your own kids: smart. Dying for a rival's? Genetic suicide. — Christopher McDougall

The supposition that it was possible for any woman to be so mean-spirited as not at least to wish to tear out her rival's eyes was too hard for the digestion of the Cry. — Sarah Fielding

To achieve these Jeffersonian ends, Alexander Hamilton - Jefferson's philosophical rival - devised an ingenious strategy that entailed a strong manufacturing base, a national banking system, a centralized federal government, and an export-led economic scheme protected by the U.S. Navy. — Patrick Mendis

Tavish could tell he was being sized up. And by the narrowing of Joseph's eyes, he recognized Tavish's intent as well. They stood, eyeing one another for several long and silent moments. Tavish had not intended to pursue Katie in the least. Now, it seemed, he had a rival. Joseph Archer was infuriatingly difficult to read. Was it confidence that kept him so at ease? Joseph did have the advantage. Katie lived in his house. He could see her, talk to her every day. Joseph was wealthy, with the air of class and money about him. Tavish had none of those things. And though Katie had warmed to him a bit, he didn't yet feel she'd entirely shed her wariness of him. — Sarah M. Eden

The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances. — Joseph McCabe

As African economies boom and businesses are created, one of the big questions this growth raises is that of third-level education: how can Africa develop a knowledge infrastructure to rival that of the west, a sort of Harvard University in Africa? — Richard Attias

When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality. — George William Russell

Andre Agassi was my rival in the '90s, and I think as we got older we sort of transcended the game. He was probably the best player I ever played over my career. There's a list of players that were tough, but Andre, certainly, he was the most unique. — Pete Sampras

Leviticus 18 doesn't tell us everything we need to know about sex, but it gives us the basic rules: incest is bad (vv. 6-27); taking a rival wife is bad (v 18) ... adultery is bad (v 20); killing our children is bad (v 21); homosexuality activity is bad (v 22); and bestiality is bad (v 23). — Kevin DeYoung

The only real rival of love is Art, for that in itself is a deep personal passion, its function an act of creation, fed by some mysterious perversion of sex, and demanding all the imagination's activities. — Gertrude Atherton

Japan is our rival, not our enemy. Japan is a competitor ... Bashing a Toyota won't make a better car. — Ross Perot

I don't want to give anyone an edge in my mind. Every time I walk out on the court, I have to feel I'm the best so I can compete well. A lot of times, my chief rival is just me. — Venus Williams

A good rival is almost like a friend, isn't she? You make me try harder. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

The art of diplomacy is the luck of knowing more of your rival's secrets than he knows of yours. — Robin Hobb

And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery to him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now — Upton Sinclair

The spirit of quarrelsome comradeship which he had observed lately in his rival had not seduced Stephen from his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the turbulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood. — James Joyce

Urge to come to terms with the "Outside," by absorbing, interiorizing it. I won't come out, you must come in to me. Into my womb-garden where I peer out. Where I can construct a universe within the skull, to rival the real. — Jim Morrison

Maybe it's my ego. Maybe I crave someone who will never be my rival. — Sylvia Plath

TO FORM GROUPS, drawing visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship, and to defend the group enthusiastically against rival groups - these are among the absolute universals of human nature and hence of culture. — Edward O. Wilson

Just as Hitler had predicted, it was rival empires more than indigenous nationalists who propelled the process of decolonization forward. — Niall Ferguson

Empires won by conquest have always fallen either by revolt within or by defeat by a rival. — John Boyd Orr

The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome. — Orestes Brownson

What? You don't think I'm perfect?" I can't resist, because he gets so riled whenever I bring it up. "I can run up to thirty miles without stopping. I can jump six feet in the air. There is not a material in this world sharp enough to pierce my skin. I cannot drown or suffocate. I am immune to every illness known to man. I have perfect memory. My senses are more acute that anyone else's. My reflexes rival those of a cat. I will never grow old" - my voice falls, all smugness gone -"and I will never die. — Jessica Khoury

More of Thy presence, Lord, impart, More of Thine image let me bear; Construct Thy throne within my heart, And reign without a rival there. - John Newton — Robert J. Morgan

Bosh. I find a rival - but no, I won't flatter myself that Tecumseh Fox would consider himself a rival of Dol Bonner - I find an eminent detective in your apartment, and that alone is enough, without adding that he is concealed in your bedroom while I am discussing my business with you ... — Rex Stout

W-what are you?"
Selena looked down at her rival. "What you should have been and never were. The Queen of the Witches. — Anne Bishop

It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached. — Imre Lakatos

Dream the dreams of other men, you'll be no ones rival. — Eddie Vedder

Public concern for the environment cannot be addressed by placing the blame on growth without spelling out the causes of growth. Nor can an explanation be exhausted by citing "consumerism" while ignoring the sinister role played by rival producers in shaping public taste and guiding public purchasing power. Aside from the costs involved, most people quite rightly do not want to "live simply." They do not want to diminish their freedom to travel or their access to culture, or to scale down needs that often serve to enrich human personality and sensitivity. — Murray Bookchin

So many answers flew through her mind that she didn't know which to pick, aside from the obvious truth that "my drug dealers enforcer and his rival who I used to fuck" was definitely not it. — Stacia Kane

Look carefully at any region of the world where you find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups today. I cannot guarantee that you'll find religions as the dominant labels for in-groups and out-groups. But it's a good bet. — Richard Dawkins

In particular, I argue that in both evolution and creation we have rival religious responses to a crisis of faith-rival stories of origins, rival judgments about he meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologians call rival eschatologies-pictures of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind. — Michael Ruse

The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives - and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century. — Al Gore

China is not only formidable, it is also aggressively building its own economic infrastructure. Just a few years from now, China will rival the U.S. and the European Union in global market power. It already has surpassed us in population. — Jo Ann Emerson

As a dancer I couldn't outdance Ginger Rogers or Eleanor Powell. As a singer I'm no rival to Doris Day. As an actress I don't take myself seriously ... I'm the girl the truck drivers love. — Betty Grable

An old man in poor health, like my rival, could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as a young actor in the prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis, and working within this definite limitation, he couldn't be so jolly paralytic as I was. — Anonymous

THE VIOLENCE OF early modernity was expressed nowhere more purely or on a grander scale than in the international and internecine conflicts of the period, which custom dictates should be called "the wars of religion." Given, though, the lines of coalition that defined these conflicts, and given their ultimate consequences, they ought really to be remembered as the first wars of the modern nation-state, whose principal purpose was to establish the supremacy of secular state authority over every rival power, most especially the power of the church. — David Bentley Hart

She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; — Edgar Allan Poe

The near-term attacks ... will either rival or exceed the 9/11 attacks ... And it's pretty clear that the nation's capital and New York city would be on any list ... — Tom Ridge

No society can survive if it allows its members to behave toward one another in the same way in which it encourages them to behave as a group toward other groups; internal cooperation is the first law of external competition. The struggle for existence is not ended by mutual aid, it is incorporated, or transferred to the group. Other things equal, the ability to compete with rival groups will be proportionate to the ability of the individual members and families to combine with one another.
Hence every society inculcates a moral code, and builds up in the heart of the individual, as its secret allies and aides, social dispositions that mitigate the natural war of life; it encourages by calling them virtues those qualities or habits in the individual which redound to the advantage of the group, and discourages contrary qualities by calling them vices.
In this way the individual is in some outward measure socialized, and the animal becomes a citizen. — Will Durant

No matter how strong the rival, the just will always win. — Mas Oyama

She wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson ... " "No, living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rival factor being what it is, for a contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway - a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe - all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender Is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?" With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it. — Truman Capote

The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man. This — Thomas Hardy

He learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. — Upton Sinclair

Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival. — Helen Fisher

The reputation of a Don Juan gives to a man the most dangerous power. Wise virgins resist it, but foolish virgins frequently yield to the desire to take a celebrated lover from a rival - even from a friend. This emotion is a complex one, mad up of vanity, respect for another woman's taste, and the need to establish self-assurance by winning a difficult victory. Don Juan chose his first mistresses; later he was chosen. — Andre Maurois

When a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him passage. You. Speaker - ever since I first learned Stark and read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, I waited for you. I said many times to my father, Rooter, of all humans he is the one who will understand us. Then Rooter told me when your starship came, that it was you and the hive queen aboard that ship, and I knew then that you had come to give me passage, if only I did well."
"You did well, Human. — Orson Scott Card

This uncovered a number of basic features of our thought processes: that the mind deploys a set of rival frames that can construe even the most plodding everyday event in more than one way; that a frame for thinking about a change of location in real space can be metaphorically extended to conceptualize a change of state as motion in state-space; and that when the mind conceives of an entity as being somewhere or going somewhere, it tends to melt it down to a holistic blob. — Steven Pinker

If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution. — Wallace Stevens

People would say bad things about you, because it is the only way their insignificant self can feel better than you. — Dennis E. Adonis

Most of the states of Europe had no prospect of social transformation, and thus little ability to rival or counter the Nazis and the Soviets. — Timothy Snyder

Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous ... — Thomas Paine

Paris Hilton isn't my rival. I met her one or two times and she's making out there's this big rivalry between us and there so isn't. — Mischa Barton

The artist envies what the arties gains, The bard the rival bard's successful strains. — Hesiod

Justice, humanity, or political wisdom, are qualities they are too little acquainted with in themselves, to appreciate them in others. Valor will acquire their esteem, and liberality will purchase their suffrage; but the first of these merits is often lodged in the most savage breasts; the latter can only exert itself at the expense of the public; and both may be turned against the possessor of the throne, by the ambition of a daring rival. — Edward Gibbon

For it is the business and duty of historians to be exact, truthful, and wholly free from passion, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and warning for the future. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

stepped into the witness box to be examined. The defense wanted jurors who empathized with Muybridge - a married man who had a runaway wife, on the one hand, and a man who confronted a sexual rival, on the other. — Edward Ball

The businessman who wishes to gain a market by throttling a superior competitor, the worker who wants a share of his employer's wealth, the artist who envies a rival's higher talent - they're all wishing facts out of existence and destruction is the only means of their wish. If they pursue it, they will not achieve a market, a fortune, or an immortal fame - they will merely destroy production — Ayn Rand

Liberalism is really piecemeal socialism, and socialism always attacks three basic social institutions: religion, the family, and private property. Religion, because it offers a rival authority to the state; the family, because it means a rival loyalty to the state; and property, because it means material independence of the state. — Joseph Sobran

IMPOSTOR n. A rival aspirant to public honors. — Ambrose Bierce

I thought how wise he was to lure his rival out into the woods, where every fight's fair. — Peter Geye

If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it. — Jean Baudrillard

be fair, when I was young, the elections could not have been less interesting; the mediocrity of the 'political offerings' was almost surprising. A centre-left candidate would be elected, serve either one or two terms, depending how charismatic he was, then for obscure reasons he would fail to complete a third. When people got tired of that candidate, and the centre-left in general, we'd witness the phenomenon of democratic change, and the voters would install a candidate of the centre-right, also for one or two terms, depending on his personal appeal. Western nations took a strange pride in this system, though it amounted to little more than a power-sharing deal between two rival gangs, and they would even go to war to impose it on nations that failed to share their enthusiasm. — Michel Houellebecq

The most noble criticism is that in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author. — Isaac D'Israeli

A rival may raise your game in the short-term. An Ally will raise your game for the long-term. — Morag Barrett

Herlia, goddess of justice, weeping as she passes her first judgement (...) She fell in love with a mortal man, but his passion for her drove him to commit a terrible crime and so she judged him, consigning him to the depths of the earth, chained to a rock, where his flesh is eternally eaten by vermin (...) Indeed, he stole a magic sword and with it slew a god, thinking him a rival for her affections. In fact he was her brother, Ixtus, god of dreams. now, whenever we suffer nightmares it is the shade of the fallen god taking his revenge on mortal kind. — Anthony Ryan

Look out for each other. I think the more we support each other as a community, the more successful we will be. I'm a part of Film Fatales, a collective of women directors who meet to share advice and provide support for each other's projects. I think the more we can build an old girls' network to rival the old boys' network, the better off we will be. — Sian Heder

I've never revved my car at a light for an attractive woman or an auto-rival, not even as a joke. — Penn Jillette

The ideal revolutionary command should effectively direct all planning and implementation. It must not allow the growth of any other rival center of power. There must be one command pooling and directing the subsequent governmental departments, including the armed forces. — Saddam Hussein

I can say that Thiago Silva has no rival in his position. He is by far the best defender in the world. It's a compliment for me to be compared to him. — Paolo Maldini

Thus in the right place, at the right time, and in right degree, anger is not only appropriate
but may be indispensable. It serves to deter from dangerous behaviour, to drive off a rival, or to coerce a partner. In each case the aim of the angry behaviour is the same - to protect a relationship which is of very special value to the angry person. — John Bowlby

His ministrations were tender, his eyes hooded as he seemed to withhold certain emotions from her. She allowed him his secrets, and took what he gave with a greed that shocked her with its intensity. But he never had to know. He never had to glimpse how deeply she felt for him, or discover the secret she had always suspected and finally admitted to herself.
She loved him.
Completely. Every part of him, good and bad, her friend and lover and partner and rival. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, giving him everything, even though she knew he didn't want her. She crammed the knowledge to a secret place in- side. Then realized she'd take whatever he gave, even though it would never be enough. — Jennifer Probst

As all the colours blend into one resplendent rainbow, so all the glories of heaven and earth meet in thee, and unite so wondrously, that there is none like thee in all things; nay, if all the virtues of the most excellent were bound in one bundle, they could not rival thee, thou mirror of all perfection. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

She wanted to be someone's muse - to be worshipped and adored, body and soul. She wanted to play Beatrice to a dashing and noble Dante and to inhabit Paradise with him forever. And to live a life that would rival the beauty of Botticelli's illustrations. — Sylvain Reynard

We have a big opportunity in China. We think the number of stores here can rival the number in North America. — Howard Schultz

When I rose up the queen was looking toward me, not as if I were a rival, but as if I were still her favorite little maid in waiting who might bring her some comfort. She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men. George — Philippa Gregory

What is needed is a form of tax which not only spares the small man at the expense of his wealthier rival, but actually subsidizes the small man where subsidy is necessary. — Hilaire Belloc

Stephanie has walls around her that could rival Fort Knox. She's determined not to let me in, but I'm going to do my damnedest to get inside. — Nina D'Angelo