In Berlin, Comfort was influenced by meetings and studies with the philosopher Friedrich Kaulbach, Carl Richard Lepsius (curator of Egyptology at the Berlin Museum), Gemäldegalerie director Gustav Waagen, Leopold von Ranke, among others.

[1][2] Comfort helped found the American Philological Association, whose first meeting he organized in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1869.

In the same year, he was also a prime mover in New York City for the foundation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1872, he was appointed professor of aesthetics and modern languages at the newly founded Syracuse University.

In 1891, he was elected the president of the Southern College of Fine Arts in LaPorte, Texas.