flattery Quotes

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.

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 other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you.”

“Outside of these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls into contempt.”

“Nature has so made us, that we all love to be flattered and to please ourselves with our own notions: the old crow loves his young, and the ape her cubs.”

“Taking a bribe, letting yourself be bought off, accepting flattery in exchange for some sort of loyalty, is sabotage. Refusing to confront an issue because if you keep quiet you’ll get a promotion or be made an elder or keep your job corrupts you down deep.”

“June Star didn’t think it was any good. She said she wouldn’t marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out.”

“But there’s a better way. You show her she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands against her body. It’s hard, very hard, but when she truly believes you...Suddenly the story she tells herself in her own head changes. She transforms. She isn’t seen as beautiful. She is beautiful, seen.”

“I had never been able to admit to myself how happy Oliver had made me the day he’d swallowed my peach. Of course, it had moved me, but it had flattered me as well”

“Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do.”

“He asked you quite openly to flatter him, to admire him, his little dodges deceived nobody. What she disliked was his narrowness, his blindness, she said, looking after him.”

“Such women as you a hundred men always covet—your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing fancy for you—you can only marry one of that many.”

“You don’t know how to flatter.”

“Never again shall you with your flattery get me to sing with my eyes closed. For he who closes his eyes when he should watch, God let him never prosper.”

″ ‘See’, said the widow as the fox slunk into the grove, ‘that is the result of trusting in flattery.’ ”

“Peter was by no means perturbed. On the contrary he felt flattered; proud. He realized that the bush boy had never seen anything like him before.”

″‘I like you, Ma.’ ‘You and them hounds and all the rest o’ the stock,′ she said. ‘Mighty lovin’ on an empty belly and me with a dish in my hand.′ ‘That’s the way you’re purtiest,’ he said, and grinned.”

“Bless you, my darling children! Now you are united and happy; and now you see what I said from the first, that a little misfortune has done you both good. YOU, Giglio, had you been bred in prosperity, would scarcely have learned to read or write - you would have been idle and extravagant, and could not have been a good king as now you will be. You, Rosalba, would have been so flattered, that your little head might have been turned like Angelica’s, who thought herself too good for Giglio.”

I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine, that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.

Madame Danglars received a most flattering epistle from the count, in which he entreated her to receive back her favorite “dappled grays,” protesting that he could not endure the idea of making his entry into the Parisian world of fashion with the knowledge that his splendid equipage had been obtained at the price of a lovely woman’s regrets.

“I know you have treated me infernally—infernally! Do you hear? And if you flatter yourself that I don’t perceive it, you are a fool; and if you think I can be consoled by sweet words, you are an idiot: and if you fancy I’ll suffer unrevenged, I’ll convince you of the contrary, in a very little while!”