Flathead people

“ Flatterwell prevailed on the rest of the robbers to make no public attack on the castle that night. "My brethren," said he, "you now and then fail in your schemes, because you are for violent beginnings; while my soothing, insinuating measures hardly ever miss. You come blustering and roaring, and frighten people, and set them on their guard. You inspire them with terror of you, while my whole scheme is to make them think well of themselves, and ill of their master. ”

“ Flattery may be considered as a mode of companionship, degrading but profitable to him who flatters.
The Flatterer is a person who will say as he walks with another, ‘Do you observe how people are looking at you? This happens to no man in Athens but you. ”

“ This book contains no flattery.
We are flattered too much—by cunning people.
Flattery confuses most people. Flattery blinds us, and that is why business men and their unarmed guardsmen flatter the working people. ”

“ for this is slavish, and for this reason all flatterers are servile and people lacking in self-respect are flatterers. ”

“ But let it be granted, that the generality of people are not of such restless, fickle tempers as Flatus; the difference is only this, Flatus is continually changing and trying something new, but others are content with some one state; they do not leave gaming, and then fall to hunting; but they have so much steadiness in their tempers, that some seek after no other happiness, but that of heaping up riches; others grow old in the sports of the field; and others are content to drink themselves to death, without the least enquiry after any other happiness. ”

“ Flattery is, in itself, an offence against politeness. It is oftenest administered to people who are already suffering the intoxication of vanity. When I see this, I wish that I could enforce a prohibitory ordinance against it, and prosecute those who use it mostly to serve their own selfish purposes. But people can be trained never to offer nor to receive this dangerous drug of flattery, and I think that, in all society which can be called good, it becomes less and less the mode to flavor one's dishes with it. ”

“ Only never (or at least very rarely) flatter when other people, besides the one to be flattered, are by; in that case you offend the rest, and you make even your intended dupe ashamed to be pleased.
"In general, weak minds think only of others, and yet seem only occupied with themselves; you, on the contrary, must appear wholly engrossed with those about you, and yet never have a single idea which does not terminate in yourself: a fool, my dear Henry, flatters himself—a wise man flatters the fool. ”

“ For in thus attributing a special and startling degree of intellect and conversational or controversial power to the upper classes, we are attributing something which is not especially their virtue or even especially their aim. We are, in the words of Disraeli (who, being a genius and not a gentleman, has perhaps primarily to answer for the introduction of this method of flattering the gentry) , we are performing the essential function of flattery which is flattering the people for the qualities they have not got. ”

“ Do not officiously offer assistance or advice in general society. Nobody will thank you for it.
Ridicule and practical joking are both marks of a vulgar mind and low breeding.
Avoid flattery. A delicate compliment is permissible in conversation, but flattery is broad, coarse, and to sensible people, disgusting. If you flatter your superiors, they will distrust you, thinking you have some selfish end; if you flatter ladies, they will despise you, thinking you have no other conversation. ”

“ So too when Ptolemy seemed to desire to become learned, his flatterers used to spin out the time till midnight, disputing about some word or line or history, but not one of them all objected to his cruelty and outrages, his torturing and beating people to death.416 Just as if, when a man has tumours and fistulas, one were to cut his hair and nails with a surgeon's knife, so flatterers use outspokenness only in cases where it gives no pain or distress. ”

“ But of all mankind, there are none so shocking as these injudicious civil people. They ordinarily begin upon something that they know must be a satisfaction; but then, for fear of the imputation of flattery, they follow it with the last thing in the world of which you would be reminded. It is this that perplexes civil persons. The reason that there is such a general outcry among us against flatterers is that there are so very few good ones. ”

“ And hereupon it is that this sort of people who make profession of flattery, take up ordinarily the first and highest seats, as well at sermons and public orations whither men flock to hear, as at the theatres and shew places, not that they think themselves worthy of such places, but because they may rise and make room for better and richer persons as they come, and thereby flatter them kindly. ”

“ For which reason flatterers are in repute in both these: the demagogue in the democracy, for he is the proper flatterer of the people; among tyrants, he who will servilely adapt himself to their humours; for this is the business of [1314a] flatterers. And for this reason tyrants always love the worst of wretches, for they rejoice in being flattered, which no man of a liberal spirit will submit to; for they love the virtuous, but flatter none. Bad men too are fit for bad purposes ”

“ It is by these and similar exploits, wherein the finger of God is visible, that the Flat Heads have acquired such a reputation for valor, that notwithstanding their inferior [Pg 354] numbers, they are feared much more than they on their side dread their bitterest enemies. ”

“ But we will speak of this anon.414 But the flatterer first exhibits himself as disagreeable and passionate and unforgiving in his dealings with others. For he is harsh to his servants, and a terrible fellow to attack and ferret out the faults of his kinsmen and friends, and to look up to and respect nobody who is a stranger, but to look down upon them, and is relentless and mischief-making in making people provoked with others, hunting after the reputation of hating vice, as one not likely knowingly to mince matters with the vicious, or ingratiate himself with them either in word or deed. ”

“ The Flatterer is a lurking foe, a dangerous friend, a subtle destroyer. “A flattering mouth worketh ruin.” “He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail.” “A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet.” The melancholy results of flattery are patent before the world, both on the page of history and in the experience of mankind. How many thousand young men who once stood in the uprightness of virtue are now debased and ruined through the flattery of the “strange woman,” so graphically described by Solomon in Prov. ”

“ Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. ”

“ Perhaps she is aware, that half the flattering speeches are but the usages of a flowery language, the custom of the country; she has to do the same when she, in her turn, visits her neighbours, although she may be convinced that all her arrangements, her household, and her cuisine are superior to those of every other mortal in the world. Still flattery is pleasant to listen to, when one is convinced that, in any case, it falls far beneath the reality. ”

“ The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander. ”

“ It is a splendid method, as it gives the flatterer an opportunity of talking about something else besides the subject of the flattery, and it gives the subject of the flattery a rich, if somewhat bewildered, mental glow, as of one who has somehow gone through agonies of philosophical choice of which he was previously unaware. It is a splendid method; but I wish it were applied sometimes to charwomen rather than only to millionaires.
There is another way of flattering important people which has become very common, I notice, among writers in the newspapers and elsewhere. ”

“ I see by my power of Sight Recognition——" "Oh, I have no patience with your Sight Recognition," replied she, "'Feeling is believing' and 'A Straight Line to the touch is worth a Circle to the sight'"—two Proverbs, very common with the Frailer Sex in Flatland.
"Well," said I, for I was afraid of irritating her, "if it must be so, demand an introduction." Assuming her most gracious manner, my Wife advanced towards the Stranger, "Permit me, Madam, to feel and be felt by——" then, suddenly recoiling, "Oh! it is not a Woman, and there are no angles either, not a trace of one. ”

“ The loss of a few sides in a highly-developed Polygon is not easily noticed, and is sometimes compensated by a successful operation in the Neo-Therapeutic Gymnasium, as I have described above; and the Circles are too much disposed to acquiesce in infecundity as a law of the superior development. Yet, if this evil be not arrested, the gradual diminution of the Circular class may soon become more rapid, and the time may not be far distant when, the race being no longer able to produce a Chief Circle, the Constitution of Flatland must fall. ”

“ Can a flatterer be flattered? Does he instinctively recognize the commodity in which he deals? And if he does so recognize it, does he enjoy or dislike the application of it to his own case? These questions are suggested to my mind by the ungrudging tributes paid in my last chapter to Lord Beaconsfield's pre-eminence in the art of flattery. ”

“ But the size of our sides is not under consideration. I am speaking of the equality of sides, and it does not need much reflection to see that the whole of the social life in Flatland rests upon the fundamental fact that Nature wills all Figures to have their sides equal.
If our sides were unequal our angles might be unequal. Instead of its being sufficient to feel, or estimate by sight, a single angle in order to determine the form of an individual, it would be necessary to ascertain each angle by the experiment of Feeling. But life would be too short for such a tedious groping. ”

“ It is a truth which has become proverbial in the mountains, that one Flat Head, or one of the Ear Rings, is worth four Black Feet. If the band of the latter meets a detachment of Flat Heads, of equal or superior numbers, they forthwith appear disposed for peace, unfurl a standard, and present a pipe, in token of friendship. The Flat Heads always accept these tokens of amity; but they take care to make their enemies sensible that the motives which influence their conduct on such occasions are fully understood. ”

“ When it was objected that Priests and Women had no sides, they retorted that Nature and Expediency concurred in dictating that the front half of every human being (that is to say, the half containing his eye and mouth) should be distinguishable from his hinder half. They therefore brought before a general and extraordinary Assembly of all the States of Flatland a Bill proposing that in every Woman the half containing the eye and mouth should be coloured red, and the other half green. ”

“ As I before mentioned, the only prevailing vice that I found amongst the Flat Heads was a passion for games of chance—it has since been unanimously abolished. On the other hand, they are scrupulously honest in buying and selling. They have never been accused of stealing. Whenever any lost article is found, it is immediately given to the chief, who informs the tribe of the fact, and restores it to the lawful owner. Detraction is a vice unknown even amongst the women ”

“ Flattery is cruel, and gives bloody counsels; and flatterers are constant and merciless calumniators: Every word which they do not like, is a libel; every action that displeases them, is treason or sedition: Where there are no faults, they create them. ”

“ SIR, Flattery is a poisonous and pernicious weed, which grows and prevails every where, but most where it does most harm; I mean in courts. If few dare speak the truth to their superiors, how shall he who has no superiors ever come to know the truth? Perhaps there never was an instance in the world, where a prince was told the sincere truth in every thing which concerned him to know, by any servant of his. Truth is of a plain, unalterable nature, and cannot be moulded into fashionable shapes ”

“ But they always repelled these overtures with respectful politeness, as they were persuaded that the rich and powerful seek the society of persons in an inferior station only for the sake of surrounding themselves with flatterers, and that every flatterer must applaud alike all the actions of his patron, whether good or bad. ”

“ What girl of seventeen, tinctured with the natural romance which a life in a country of such sublimity as Wales almost necessarily produces in an ardent mind and feeling heart, but might be led by the voice of flattery to believe herself superior to the mere common employments of domestic life; yet if the flatterer mean to substitute no higher line of occupation in their stead, is it not probable that unhappiness, if not a dereliction from virtue, may be the consequence? ”

“ Doubtless, the life of an Irregular is hard; but the interests of the Greater Number require that it shall be hard. If a man with a triangular front and a polygonal back were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more Irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life? Are the houses and doors and churches in Flatland to be altered in order to accommodate such monsters? Are our ticket-collectors to be required to measure every man's perimeter before they allow him to enter a theatre or to take his place in a lecture room? ”