Top 100 Flattery's Quotes
#1. 'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
Jonathan Swift
#2. Flattery's fire is hidden. Its sweet taste is apparent, but the smoke is bound to come out at last.
Rumi
#3. Do you know what that's like? How good it feels? For once in my life, someone wants me.
Brynna Gabrielson
#4. Said I was beautiful, did he? He's being paid for treatment, not flattery.
Lillie Langtry
#5. ...The "democratic spirit"... [or the campaign to make everyone the same] leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first hint of criticism.
C.S. Lewis
#6. Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.
Edmund Burke
#7. Hypocrisy can plunge the mind of a man into a dark abyss, when he believes his own self-flattery instead of God's verdict.
John Calvin
#8. It's been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.
Jane Austen
#9. Gossip involves saying behind a person's back what you would never say to his or her face. Flattery means saying to a person's face what you would never say behind his or her back.
R. Kent Hughes
#10. The world's flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel:
eat less of it, for it is full of fire.
Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest,
but its smoke becomes visible in the end.
Rumi
#11. Because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the addition of other men's praises is most perilous.
Walter Raleigh
#12. Imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery - it's plagiarism.
Red Skelton
#13. I know imitation is the highest form of flattery, but stealing one's identity is totally different.
AnnaLynne McCord
#14. The firmest purpose of a woman's heart to well-timed, artful flattery may yield.
George Lillo
#15. Then, in the spirit of benevolence, "Your face is well balanced." She slapped him encouragingly on the back, "You have very long eyelashes. Like a cow.
C.S. Pacat
#16. Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?
Thomas Gray
#17. What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s
Samuel Johnson
#18. Flattery was one of Kissinger's principal tools in winning over Nixon, and a tool he employed shamelessly.
Robert Dallek
#19. A world without any lies at all is not a good world, because it's artless and because there are no white lies, no flattery.
Ricky Gervais
#20. Never was flattery lost on a poet's ear; a simple race, they waste their toil for the vain tribute of a smile.
Walter Scott
#22. If solitude deprives of the benefit of advice, it also excludes from the mischief of flattery. But the absence of others' applause is generally supplied by the flattery of one's own breast.
William Benton Clulow
#23. I'll lock thy heaven from thee.
O, that men's ears should be
To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!
William Shakespeare
#24. The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.
Richard Steele
#25. Marvelous," she said. "Tell me about this tapestry."
Arachne's lips curled over her mandibles. "Why do you care? You're about to die."
"Well, yes," Annabeth said. "But the way you captured the light is amazing. Did you use real gold thread for the sunbeams?
Rick Riordan
#26. Ahh, flattery. It will get you everywhere." "Yeah, it's how I put up with Logan. Tell him he's hot and he rolls right over.
Ella Frank
#27. 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.
Maria Mitchell
#28. Morris read through the letter. Was it a shade too fulsome? No, that was another law of academic life: it is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one's peers.
David Lodge
#29. The saying 'flattery gets you everywhere' appalls me. If you're going to pay someone a compliment make sure it's 100% genuine or not at all.-Flattery is deception and who wants to be lied to?
Miya Yamanouchi
#30. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, than Christians have become pop culture's most devoted admirers.
Skye Jethani
#31. [Samuel] Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young child's mouth!
Hester Lynch Piozzi
#32. They say copying is a form of flattery, I say it's lack of originality.
Elizabeth Blade
#33. Next day at the review the Tsar asked Prince Andrey where he desired to serve; and Bolkonsky ruined his chances for ever in the court world by asking to be sent to the front, instead of begging for a post in attendance on the Tsar's person.
Leo Tolstoy
#34. Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one's own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people's, preserve dignity.
Doug Stanhope
#35. When you're appeasing too much, you might be egotistically over-estimating everyone's need for your approval.
Criss Jami
#36. Whenever somebody folds, say, 'Good laydown.' It encourages them to fold on a later hand because it makes them feel like you had the best hand even if you were bluffing. It's an odd form of flattery that seems to work at the poker table.
Cheryl Hines
#37. When will the public cease to insult the teacher's calling with empty flattery? When will men who would never for a moment encourage their own sons to enter the work of the public schools cease to tell us that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?
William Bagley
#38. The hippie chick giggled the same little giggle of any lady who receives a sweet little spoonful of a woman's favorite drug; flattery.
Jesse from Stilettos and Steel
Jeri Estes
#39. I don't think imitation is the highest form of flattery, I think it's annoying.
Pink
#40. All this faux flattery. It's not enough to make me forget he's a dick. Admittedly, though, he's sort of a charismatic dick.
Kendare Blake
#41. Never divulge secrets to acquaintances.
Never betray old friends for new ones.
Never mistake flattery for praise.
Never rely on dishonorable people.
Never trust your enemy's friends.
Never mistake someone's kindness for weakness.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#42. Lokeij whistled. "Make the king's warriors vanish if
they come ... what a deceitful turtledove you are."
Aly smiled at the sky. "Oh, don't,"she replied in the
tones of a flirtatious court lady. "Stop, I insist. Your
flattery makes me blush.
Tamora Pierce
#43. I don't believe in classes where students criticize each other's manuscripts. Such criticism is generally composed in equal parts of ignorance, flattery, and spite. It's the blind leading the blind, and it can be dangerous. A teacher who tries to impose a way of writing on you can be dangerous, too.
Flannery O'Connor
#44. True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe's conceit.
Honore De Balzac
#45. for self-love is no more than the soothing of a man's self, which, done to another, is flattery. And
Erasmus
#46. A woman's flattery may inflate a man's head a little; but her criticism goes straight to his heart, and contracts it so that it can never again hold quite as much love for her.
Helen Rowland
#47. There's two things that you don't listen to: flattery, which can't help you, and abuse, which can't hurt you. You have to look at the facts.
Jim Tressel
#48. To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end.
David Foster Wallace
#49. Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a doting upon his own person.
Jeremy Collier
#50. The belief in the sanctity of one's idiosyncrasy - especially if it be a group idiosyncrasy, and therefore sustained and intensified by mutual flattery - is rapidly converted into a belief in its superiority. More
Ken Wilber
#51. Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.
George Bernard Shaw
#52. 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.
Pietro Aretino
#53. The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse - it will not submit to the mold of flattery.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#54. Nine times out of 10, the most charming thing to say in any given situation will be the exact opposite of what one really feels.
Geoff Dyer
#55. Am I the only person in the world who is shocked and amazed at the ongoing flattery of uebergeek Mark Zuckerberg?
Tom Hodgkinson
#56. I'm good at the real and the true and the beautiful and can do With some skill and With or without flattery the Place where all 3 meet ...
Ali Smith
#57. Don't be difficult, Denys," Nell chided. "All women like a little flattery from time to time." "What if they didn't? What if they simply liked themselves and no one needed to bend backwards to flatter them? Wouldn't it all be simpler then?
Paula McLain
#58. Fearing no insult, asking for no crown, receive with indifference both flattery and slander, and do not argue with a fool.
Alexander Pushkin
#59. As long as matters are really hopeful," wrote Chesterton, "hope is mere flattery or platitude. It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.
Eugene H. Peterson
#61. Flattery," Wendy told him, "is when your daddy says he likes my new yellow slacks even if he doesn't or when he says I don't need to take off five pounds." "Oh. Is it lying for fun?
Stephen King
#62. Money can buy a house, but not a home; a bed, but not rest; food, but not an appetite; medicine, but not health; information, but not wisdom; thrills, but not joy; associates, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; flattery, but not respect.
Pat Williams
#64. Being told that he was immune to flattery was the nicest thing he had heard someone say about him in a long time.
John C. Wright
#65. Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?
Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread,
By winding myrtle round your ruin'd shed?
George Crabbe
#66. Every man kills the things that he loves. Some with a look, some with flattery, the coward with a kiss.
Eric Jerome Dickey
#67. 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.
Washington Gladden
#68. No flattery can heal a bad conscience, so no slander can hurt a good one.
Thomas Watson
#71. Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
Benjamin Disraeli
#72. But even this piece of flattery couldn't distract me from the fact that I was in the center of the Fae realm, blind, stark naked, and without the slightest idea of what was going on.
Patrick Rothfuss
#75. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#76. When one looks truly at the good side of everyone, others come to love him very naturally, and he does not need even a speck of flattery.
Abraham Isaac Kook
#77. I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your efforts to believe it.
Wilson Mizner
#78. From every ancient source, we have testimony to Cleopatra's irresistible charm, as Plutarch has it, to her ability to speak many languages including, as he puts it, the language of flattery and essentially, to be able to turn people to her will - really a great political genius, in that respect.
Stacy Schiff
#79. There is no tongue that flatters like a lover's; and yet, in the exaggeration of his feelings, flattery seems to him commonplace. Strange and prodigal exuberance, which soon exhausts itself by flowing!
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#80. I can spot empty flattery and know exactly where I stand. In the end it's really only my own approval or disapproval that means anything.
Agnetha Faltskog
#81. It's love that makes the world go round - otherwise it would be flat.
Jay Woodman
#82. This flattery has been rather slow in coming. I think all of sudden late in life now I'm getting some credit for what I've done. Which is gratifying, but it's kind of a little late.
Jack Vance
#83. Is it ever acceptable to be angry at God? I would suggest that it is not only acceptable, it may be one of the hallmarks of a truly religious person. It puts honesty ahead of flattery.
Harold S. Kushner
#84. There's a certain balance between finding an opportunity to do what you really enjoy and getting caught up in the flattery of people wanting you to do things.
Jim Gaffigan
#85. Your flattery is as full of contempt as your insults were.
Mason Cooley
#86. Sure flattery never traveled so far as three thousand miles; it is now only for truth, which over takes all things, to reach you at this distance.
Alexander Pope
#87. How empty are the insincere words of people who, so easily, speak forth "love," "family" and "friendship" without meaning what they say even if their intentions are good albeit mere flattery.
Donna Lynn Hope
#88. Always try to grow in your garden some plant or plants out of the ordinary, something your neighbors never attempted. For you can receive no greater flattery than to have a gardener of equal intelligence stand before your plant and ask, "What is that?"
Richardson Wright
#89. L.A. runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy. I've heard people say there's a limit to the number of years you can stay in this city without going slightly mad. It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weather-wise, socially and professionally.
Hugh Laurie
#90. Most sound minds resent flattery, because they see the egotism behind the screen of altruism.
Fulton J. Sheen
#91. Praise a stranger with a few nice words and he becomes a stranger that calls you a friend.
Simon Cowell
#92. Because nothing says flattery like a gun to the head.
Jim Butcher
#94. Imitation is the highest from of flattery. Until it isn't.
Em Bailey
#95. Love of another is merely empty flattery and self-deception for one who cannot accept himself without pretense.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#96. Let me see the truth. Never let flattery or hatred blind me. This is my life and I will live it wisely. For me.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#97. Cooking is a form of flattery ... a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping ...
Plato
#98. Daughter of Bast, she replied, with a little bow. Cats liked to be reminded that they had once been worshiped. They pretended that they didn't, that they were above flattery, but of course, that only meant that they were all the more susceptible to it.
Anonymous
#99. Katherine Kenton remains among the generation of women who feel that the most sincere form of flattery is the male erection.
Chuck Palahniuk
#100. I live on shameless flattery ... and vodka ... but the two usually go hand in hand.
Vicktor Alexander
