Best 221 quotes in «flattery quotes» category

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.

No adulation; 'tis the death of virtue; Who flatters, is of all mankind the lowest Save he who courts the flattery.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

No man flatters the woman he truly loves.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.

Nothing is harder to resist than a bit of flattery.

Now flattery can never do good; twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be.

No visor does become black villainy so well as soft and tender flattery.

O Beauty, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of thy mirror.

No wonder, Sir, that he is vain; a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.

Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, And the puff a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to displease, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.

Oh, flatter me; for love delights in praises.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.

One can also be undignified and flattering toward a virtue.

The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor but the highest form of flattery.

Slander, in the strict meaning of the term, comes under the head of lying; but it is a kind of lying which, like its antithesis flattery, ought to be set apart for special censure.

Perfumed and gallant words make our ears belch.

Persons who discover a flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications.

Praise to the undeserving is severe satire.

Praise a stranger with a few nice words and he becomes a stranger that calls you a friend.

Probably one of the reasons why gushing is so unattractive is that it leaves nothing for the listener to do.

The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or antechamber.

The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us.

The love of one's own sex is precious, for it is neither provoked by vanity nor retained by flattery; it is genuine and sincere.

The most subtle flattery that a woman can receive is by actions, not by words.

The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.

The most that can be said of flattery is that it is sometimes a cheap psychological trick with which charlatans and dishonest people lull others into a state of carelessness while they pick their pockets.

There is flattery in friendship.

There can hardly, I believe, be imagined a more desirable pleasure than that of praise unmixed with any possibility of flattery.

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.

There is no food more satiating than milk and honey; and just as such foods produce disgust for the palate, so perfumed and gallant words make our ears belch.

The same man cannot be both Friend and Flatterer.

There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.

To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.

They say one of the greatest forms of flattery is for your son to follow in your footsteps. And so I enjoy that greatest form of flattery, without a doubt.

To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them; for they prove, at least, our power, and show that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood.

The skilful class of flatterers praise the discourse of an ignorant friend and the face of a deformed one.

They told me I was everything. 'Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.

Women have, in general, but ne object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow.

Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.

Were there no fools, there would be no flatterers.

When fortune flatters, she does it to betray.

When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves. Now, if we stop thinking about ourselves for a while and begin to think of the other person's good points, we won't have to resort to flattery so cheap and false that it can be spotted almost before it is out of the mouth.

We must define flattery and praise; they are distinct. Trajan was encouraged to virtue by the panegyric Pliny; Tiberius became obstinate in vice from the flattery of his senators.

We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.

What valor cannot win, flattery may.

When the world frowns, we can face it; but let it smile, and we are undone.

Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.