George Santayana

[Americans have] the habit of thinking in terms of comparison, of perpetual competition; either a thing must be the biggest and best in the world, or you must blush for it. But only ways and means are good comparatively and on a single scale of values. Anything good intrinsically, anything loved for its own sake, is its own standard, and sufficient as it is. The habit of always comparing it with something else is impertinent and shallow. It betrays a mind that possesses nothing, loves nothing, and is nothing.