quotations about flattery
Adroit observers will find that some who affect to dislike flattery, may yet be flattered indirectly, by a well seasoned abuse and ridicule of their rivals.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Nothing is so delightful as flattery. To hear and believe pleasant fictions about oneself is a temptation too seductive for weak mortals to resist, as the typical legends of all mythologies and the private histories of most individuals show; in consequence of which, home truths, to one used to ideal portraiture, come like draughts of 'bitter cup' to the dram-drinker. And flattery is dram-drinking; and yet not quite without good uses to balance its undeniable evil, if it be only exaggeration and not wholly falsehood; that is, if it assumes as a matter of course the presence of virtues potential to your character but not always active, and praises you for what you might be if you chose to live up to your best. Many a weak brother and weaker sister, and all children, can be heartened into goodness by a little dash of judicious praise or flattery where ponderous exhortation and grave reproof would fail; just as a heavily-laden horse can be coaxed up-hill when the whip and spur would lead to untimely jibbing. If, on the contrary, the flattery is of a kind that makes you believe yourself an exceptionally fine when you are only 'mean trash'--a king of men when you are nothing better nor nobler than a moral nigger--making you satisfied with yourself when at your worst--then it is an unmitigated evil; for it then becomes dram-drinking of a very poisonous kind, which sooner or later does for your soul what unlimited blue ruin does for your body. But this is what we generally mean when we speak of flattery; and this is the kind which has such a deservedly bad name from moralists of all ages.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
"Flattery", The Girl of the Period and Other Social Essays
So powerful is flattery, that men receive with pleasure the praises of many, whose opinion they would not take in anything but their own favor.
GEORGES EDMOND HOWARD
Apothegms and Maxims for the Good Conduct of Life
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"Dead Men's Dialogue", Dreamtigers
Flattery is like poison, but of all others requires the finest infusion.
GEORGES EDMOND HOWARD
Apothegms and Maxims for the Good Conduct of Life
From early on, one of the senses of flattery is that it is somehow illegitimate, that it is deceptive, illicit. Truth is the gold standard, so flattery is alchemy.
RICHARD STENGEL
You're Too Kind
Unmerited compliments are the keenest reproaches.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
If we look at flattery from a purely utilitarian perspective--that is, from the philosophical point of view that anything that boosts happiness is good and anything that detracts from it is bad--flattery is a good. When it works properly, flattery makes the subject of the flattery a little happier and it makes the flatterer a little happier. And that is true even when the flatteree is wise to the flatterer.
RICHARD STENGEL
You're Too Kind
Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when they are no longer of any use; but flatterers blind the eyes of the souls of the living.
GEORGES EDMOND HOWARD
Apothegms and Maxims for the Good Conduct of Life
Flattery is counterfeit, and like counterfeit money, it will eventually get you into trouble if you pass it to someone else.
DALE CARNEGIE
How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job
There are also those sweet, humble, caressing women who flatter you with every word and look, but whose flattery is nothing but a pretty dress put on for show and taken off when the show is done with.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
"Flattery", The Girl of the Period and Other Social Essays
The flattery met with in society is not often very harmful save to coarse or specially simple natures. You must be either one or the other to be able to believe it.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
"Flattery", The Girl of the Period and Other Social Essays
It is worth thought what kind of mind or condition or disposition is open to flattery; for poison would not be spread if the rats ate it not.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
"Of Flattery", Essays
Were we not accustomed to flatter ourselves, the flattery of others would seldom deceive us.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
It is the folly of weak-minded people, to imagine they are what flattery or conceit represents them; and that it is useless for them to be what they are not, since they seem already to have acquired the reputation of it.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
To ask advice is in nine cases out of ten to tout for flattery.
JOHN CHURTON COLLINS
Maxims and Reflections
We would seldom be deceived by flattery, did our own conceit not promote the delusion.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
We never slam the door on flattery, we nudge it shut like a man rejecting his mistress: if she nudges back, we're delighted – and if she breaks it down, we rejoice.
WALTER WANGERIN JR.
Paul
Flattery has many grades. There are fine kinds and coarse. There is skill at it, and again bungling and clownish performance. An insidious delicacy of flattery is found which, like poison drowned in wine, will overthrow the greatest strength, except one above appetite for any drink
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays