Absolute Comparative
A number of fixed expressions use a comparative form where no comparison is being asserted, such as higher education or younger generation.
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Famous quotes containing the words absolute and/or comparative:
“There is an inner world; and a spiritual faculty of discerning it with absolute clearness, nay, with the most minute and brilliant distinctness. But it is part of our earthly lot that it is the outer world, in which we are encased, which is the lever that brings that spiritual faculty into play.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
“That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.”
—Herman Melville (18191891)