A dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

The COMPANY makes the feast

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  1653 I. WALTON Compleat Angler iii. Take this for a rule, you may pick out such times and such companies, that you may make yourselves merrier,.. for ‘tis the company and not the charge [expense] that makes the feast. 1911 F. W. HACK-WOOD Good Cheer xxxii. Epicurus maintained that you should rather have regard to the company with whom you eat.. than to what you eat. .. This has been crystallised into the terse English proverb, ‘The company makes the feast.’ 1981 ‘J. STURROCK’ Suicide most Foul vi. It is the company which makes the occasion, not the surroundings. "friends; hospitality
  

company see also MISERY loves company; TWO is company, but three is none.
COMPARISONS are odious
Cf. early 14th-cent. Fr. comparaisons sont hayneuses, comparisons are hateful.

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  c 1440 J. LYDGATE Minor Poems (EETS) 561 Odious of old been all comparisouns. 1456 Gilbert of Hay’s Prose MS (STS) 282 I will nocht here mak questioun.. quhy [why] that alwayis comparisoun is odious. c 1573 G. HARVEY Letter-Book (1884) 7 But thai wil sai, Comparisons ar odius: in deed, as it fals out, thai ar too odious. 1724 SWIFT Drapier’s Letters X. 82 A Judge.. checked the Prisoner.. taxing him with ‘reflecting on the court by such a Comparison, because Comparisons were odious’. 1939 G. MITCHELL Printer’s Error ii. ‘I will study the psychology of pigs instead of that of.. refugees.’ ‘Comparisons are odious,’ observed Carey. 2001 P. J. O’ROURKE CEO of Sofa v. 82 And poets? Comparisons being odious, only a comparison will do to illustrate the odium of modern poesy. "similarity and dissimilarity
  

He that COMPLIES against his will is of his own opinion still

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  1678 S. BUTLER Hudibras III. iii. He that complies against his Will, Is of his own Opinion still; Which he may adhere to, yet disown, For Reasons to himself best known. 1965 M. SPARK Mandelbaum Gate V. No one should submit their mind to another mind: He that complies against his will Is of his own opinion still—that’s my motto. I won’t be brainwashed. 1985 G. V. HIGGINS Penance for Jerry Kennedy xiii. But Ed Maguire did what he did against his own convictions. And what they say is true.. ‘A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.’ "free will and compulsion