PRAISE QUOTES III
quotations about praise
There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
I want to fill a jar with a lot of clapping, and sell my applause next to the applesauce in a grocery store. You can eat the praise you didn't earn, but did pay for.
JAROD KINTZ
This Book Is Not For Sale
Or who would ever care to do brave deed,
Or strive in virtue others to excel,
If none should yield him his deserved meed,
Due praise, that is the spur of doing well?
EDMUND SPENSER
"The Tears of the Muses"
Praise
Is the reflection doth from virtue rise;
These fair encomiums do virtue raise
To higher acts: to praise is to advise.
Telling men what they are, we let them see,
And represent to them what they should be.
CHARLES ALEYN
The Battaile Of Poictiers
There's no weapon that slays
Its victim so surely (if well aimed) as praise.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
"Lucile"
Praise is like ambergrease: a little whiff of it, and by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to your nose, it is a stink, and strikes you down.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Maxims
He who is indifferent to praise is generally dead to shame.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Praise is ever attendant on great wealth.
ROMAN PROVERB
Praise is rebuke to the man whose conscience alloweth it not.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Praise the young and they will blossom.
YIDDISH PROVERB
None of us are so much praised or censured as we think; and most men would be thoroughly cured of their self-importance, if they would only rehearse their own funeral, and walk abroad incognito, the very day after that on which they were supposed to have been buried.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The praise of fools is censure in disguise.
DUTCH PROVERB
He who praises every body, praises nobody.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
"Johnsoniana", The European Magazine and London Review, January 1785
We are too apt to love praise, but not to deserve it.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
To praise a man's self, cannot be decent, except it be in rare cases; but to praise a man's office or profession, he may do it with good grace, and with a kind of magnanimity.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Praise", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Join voices, all ye living souls: ye birds,
That singing up to heaven-gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers. I, on the contrary, maintain that they ought to be praised in their lifetime if they merit it; but jealousy and calumny, roused against their virtue or their talent, labour to degrade them if any one ventures to bear testimony to them. It is unjust criticism that they should fear to hazard, not sincere praise.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
It is more or less rude to scorn indiscriminately all kinds of praise; we ought to be proud of that which comes from honest men, who praise sincerely those things in us which are really commendable.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
Praise, like sunlight, helps all things to grow.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers