Backhanded Compliment Quotes

#1. I find it to be the ultimate backhanded compliment when you are compared against yourself.

Elvis Costello

#2. All the Utopias - Brook Farm, Robert Owen's sanctuary of chatter, Upton Sinclair's Helicon Hall - and their regulation end in scandal, feuds, poverty, griminess, disillusion.

Sinclair Lewis

#3. [I]f I suffered only one fool gladly, I assure you it would be you.

Iain M. Banks

#4. "Dark Fantasy" was my long, backhanded apology. You know how people give a backhanded compliment? It was a backhanded apology. It was like, all these raps, all these sonic acrobatics. I was like: "Let me show you guys what I can do, and please accept me back. You want to have me on your shelves."

Kanye West

#5. Find a scenius, pay attention to what others are sharing, and then start taking note of what they're not sharing.

Austin Kleon

#6. Misfortunes, blessings, I have no time to pick my words, I am in a hurry to be done. And yet no, I am in no hurry.

Samuel Beckett

#7. She isn't stupid. She's intelligent enough in a purely feminine way. Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvellous setting for her, or the old South if she hadn't made the mistake of being born a Negro.

Nella Larsen

#8. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture. . . . Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

Steven Garber

#9. Could you imagine me and the roasters taking on the GOP field? It would be the greatest show ever. Prove that you can take a joke. Prove that you're a man or woman of the people. Prove that you're not above criticism even in the form of a backhanded compliment.

Jeff Ross

#10. Even if you are a pompous ass with no respect for authority, you're worth fifty men, and I mean to see you in my army."
"That was an incredibly backhanded compliment."
"I meant every word.

Brian McClellan

#11. I believe that personal healing is a path to social transformation.

Daniel Beaty

#12. My whole life story is kind of a backhanded compliment.

Tori Spelling

#13. Evil, why do you infest the purest thoughts with hatred?

Stevie Wonder

#14. I can't think straight any more. It's as if the core of my body is coagulating.

Haruki Murakami

#15. When I was heavy, people would say to me - and it was such a backhanded compliment - they would say, 'You've got such a beautiful face,' in the way of, like, 'Oh, isn't it a shame that from the neck down you're questionable.'

Kate Winslet

#16. Most of my ribbons were for good sportsmanship, a backhanded compliment if ever there was one.

David Sedaris

#17. I don't want to privatise part of the parliament, like some people in Russia.

Victor Pinchuk

#18. When man listens, God speaks; when man obeys, God acts; when man prays, God empowers.

E. Stanley Jones

#19. only the failure to strategically control the contents of your consciousness keeps you from feeling the consistent internal charge of being fully alive, engaged, connected and fulfilled

Brendon Burchard

#20. And then there is the magnificent Thierry Henry - someone who has blistering pace and is unbelievable when he is finishing at his best.

Andy Gray

#21. Fingers of wind combed the lake into ridges - icy palm prints glistened wherever it rested

John Geddes

#22. Nonviolence cannot be learnt by staying at home.

Mahatma Gandhi

#23. Her eyelashes lay on her cheek, but they were not extraordinarily thick or long. Her eyebrows would benefit from plucking, but they were elegantly curved.

Jo Beverley

#24. Real life? Well, I just hope mine isn't investigated. They might find that I don't really exist - that I'm just a hologram.

Steven Wright

#25. I wonder if you have ever given someone a compliment that wasn't a backhanded insult.

I prefer not to, it gives people an unsettling impression of self-importance.

Rachel E. Carter