Flattery

“ 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. ”

“ Dear little souls, they hate flattery, so they tell you; and when you say, "Ah, darling, it isn't flattery in your case, it's plain, sober truth; you really are, without exaggeration, the most beautiful, the most good, the most charming, the most divine, the most perfect human creature that ever trod this earth," they will smile a quiet, approving smile, and, leaning against your manly shoulder, murmur that you are a dear good fellow after all. ”

“ Flattery is praise without foundation. To tell a person with heavy, dull gray eyes, that her eyes are of a bright and beautiful blue; to talk of her golden locks to a woman with positive red hair of the tint called carroty; to tell a long, thin, stoop-shouldered girl, that she possesses the light and airy form of a sylph; or a short-necked, fat one that her figure has the dignity of an empress; to assure a faded matron that she looks like a young girl; to fall into raptures on listening to bad music, or when viewing a drawing that depicts nothing intelligible ”

“ Than whispering foplings, or than witlings loud --
Commenced (from such slight things will great commence)
To feel that flattery which attracts the proud
Rather by deference than compliment,
And wins even by a delicate dissent. ”

“ Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. ”

“ A novice in life, he who knows little of mankind, but what he collects from books, lays it down as a maxim, that most men love flattery; in order therefore to please, he will flatter: but, how? Without regard either to circumstances or occasions. Instead of those delicate touches, those soft tints, that serve to heighten the piece, he lays on his colours with a heavy hand, and daubs where he means to adorn: in other words, he will flatter so unseasonably, and, at the same time, so grossly, that while he wishes to please he puts out of countenance and is sure to offend. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the domestic circle, constant flattery kept her in good-humor; but when out, she was frequently chagrined at seeing women, infinitely below her in rank and fortune, more noticed than herself.
At the ball she supposed she should have appeared as little less, at least, than a demi-goddess. Art and fashion were exhausted in adorning her, and she entered the room with all the insolence of conscious rank and affectation of beauty. ”

“ I have said enough to shew the vileness and mischief of flattery; a vice which has finally ruined many nations, and many princes, and one time or other hurt all. Let us be thankful that we are not at the cruel mercy of flatterers, and have a prince who we firmly believe will never be led or perverted by them ”

“ You seem to me wanting in truth and earnestness; you think people are to be pleased by flattery. You flatter Sir Oswald, you flatter Miss Hastings, you flatter me. Being agreeable is all very well, but an honest man does not need to flatter—does not think of it, in fact. ”

“ We have learned that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So long as this imitation is of sterling value, let us all become flatterers. Let us flatter Love, which lightens labor. Let us flatter Care by crowning and beautifying its rugged and repellant features. ”

“ To-night, what would you have done in my place?"
"Hailed a gentleman exactly like myself."
[Pg 34]
She dallied with a rose, brushing it across her lips. "I do not know why I desire your good opinion. Perhaps it's the novelty of sitting beside a man who does not believe in flattery."
"Flattery is a truth that is not true. I think you are charming, beautiful, engaging, enchanting, mystifying. I can think of no other adjectives."
"If flattery is a truth that is not true, then all your pretty adjectives mean nothing." ”

“ Flattery is carried to a shameless extent; and the habit of flattery almost inevitably introduces a false taste into composition. Its language is made up of hyperbolical common-places,—offensive from their triteness,—still more offensive from their extravagance. ”

“ And, not to instance in every particular, you see, I conceive, how much satisfaction this Self-love, who has a sister also not unlike herself called Flattery, begets everywhere; for self-love is no more than the soothing of a man's self, which, done to another, is flattery. And though perhaps at this day it may be thought infamous, yet it is so only with them that are more taken with words than things. They think truth is inconsistent with flattery, but that it is much otherwise we may learn from the examples of true beasts. What more fawning than a dog? ”

“ In history, nothing fabulous can be agreeable; and flattery is disgusting to all readers, except the very dregs of the people; good judges look with the eyes of Argus on every part, reject everything that is false and adulterated, and will admit nothing but what is true, clear, and well expressed. These are the men you are to have a regard to when you write, rather than the vulgar, though your flattery should delight them ever so much. ”

“ For assuredly no one would ever charge me with flattery, when I say this, if he were to look at my age and your life: for grey hairs are out of season for flattery, and old age is ill-suited for complaisance, and as for you, even if you are ever in season for flattery, yet praise would not fall under the suspicion of flattery, as your life shows forth your praise before words. ”

“ By flattery and caresses you lift men up to the height of your riches and pleasures and then hurtle them into the abyss of all their misery and calamities, and their depths are as low as your favors were high. ”

“ Your methods of flattery are always effective. At one moment you discuss the weightiest matters with me—which argues I have brains—and then you grow gloomy over my going and would seem to mean that I am charming, which I don't think is quite true. ”

“ It is indeed one of the purposes of flattery to make men worse; it gains by corruption, and lives upon credulity, folly, and vice. It is particularly at perpetual enmity with truth; and flatterers are like liars, not to be believed even when they speak truth. I have somewhere heard flatterers compared to thieves, who break into houses by night; the first thing that they do, is to extinguish the lights: So flatterers, when they have beset a prince, or any other great man, never fail to keep far from him all light and information. ”

“ Of me,—of me, the vain, the scheming, the proud, the unfeminine cherishes of bitter thoughts, of stern designs,—of me, on the other hand, how flattering is the picture you have drawn! In that flattery is my sure disguise ”

“ for flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not. ”

“ The power of flattery may be derived from several sources. It may be, that the person flattered, finding himself gratified, and conscious that it is to the flatterer that he is indebted for this gratification, feels an obligation to him, without inquiring the reason; or it may be, that imagining ourselves to stand high in the good opinion of the one that praises us, We comply with what he desires, rather than forfeit that esteem: or, finally, flattery may be only a marked politeness, and we submit ourselves to the control of the flatterer rather than be guilty of the rudeness of opposing him. ”

“ If you say more in a person’s praise than is deserved, you not only say what is false, but you make others doubt the wisdom of your judgment. Open, palpable flattery will be regarded by those to whom it is addressed as an insult. In your intercourse with ladies, you will find that the delicate compliment of seeking their society, showing your pleasure in it, and choosing for subjects of conversation, other themes than the weather, dress, or the opera, will be more appreciated by women of sense, than the more awkward compliment of open words or gestures of admiration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So easily can flatterers make one and the same man a god or devil; and so true is it that flatterers love no man, and only court the fortunes of men. Flattery is venal, and always goes to the best bidder ”

“ They thoroughly examined all the strength and frailties of our nature, and observing that none were either so savage as not to be charmed with praise, or so despicable as patiently to bear contempt, justly concluded, that flattery must be the most powerful argument that could be used to human creatures. ”

“ In this manner my life passed like a continual triumph, amidst acclamations, and envy, and courtship, and caresses: to please Melissa was the general ambition, and every stratagem of artful flattery was practised upon me. 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. ”

“ But above all that is genuine in common-place, the kind of flattery generally adopted by men, when they mean to address themselves pleasantly to women, deserves the credit of pre-eminence. Indeed, so deficient, for the most part, is this flattery, in point, originality, and adaptation, that I have known sensible women, who felt more really flattered by the most humiliating truths, even plainly spoken ”

“ There must be something terribly insidious in the effects of flattery, for—to you I must confess all—though I have often thought the praises lavished upon me must be exaggerated, I wondered why it should be that so many different people should be so unanimous in praising everything I said and did. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us.—Madame Swetchine.
Though flattery blossoms like friendship, yet there is a great difference in the fruit.—Socrates. [Pg 90]
The coin that is most current among mankind is flattery; the only benefit of which is that by hearing what we are not we may be instructed what we ought to be.—Swift. ”

“ 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. Praise may be gigantic and insane without having any quality of flattery so long as it is praise of something that is noticeably in existence. A man may say that a giraffe's head strikes the stars, or that a whale fills the German Ocean, and still be only in a rather excited state about a favourite animal. ”

“ But flattery, if its operation be nearly examined, will be found to owe its acceptance, not to our ignorance, but knowledge of our failures, and to delight us rather as it consoles our wants than displays our possessions. He that shall solicit the favour of his patron by praising him for qualities which he can find in himself, will be defeated by the more daring panegyrist who enriches him with adscititious excellence. Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present. ”

“ Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none, if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest. ”

“ Flattery is of course a slough in which many poets have wallowed; and a little grovelling was held to be even more commendable in poets in that earlier age; but we see the pinion beginning to droop, and the bright eye growing sickly and dull. ”

“ Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary.
If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years past, I am in some concern for future ages, how any man will be learned, or any man a lawyer. ”

“ Ay, ay, vanity is truly the motive-power that moves humanity, and it is flattery that greases the wheels. If you want to win affection and respect in this world, you must flatter people. Flatter high and low, and rich and poor, and silly and wise. You will get on famously. Praise this man's virtues and that man's vices. Compliment everybody upon everything, and especially upon what they haven't got. Admire guys for their beauty, fools for their wit, and boors for their breeding. ”

“ When obtained, however, it will prevent the ill effects of flattery, by which you will doubtless be endangered, as you advance into the scenes of fashionable life. It will enable you to distinguish flattery from that generous praise which is the effusion of a feeling heart, affected by the perception of real merit. A young lady, unskilled in the deceitful arts of a giddy world, is very apt to be misled by the adulation which is offered at the shrine of vanity. She is considered as a mark for the wit of every coxcomb, who wishes to display his gallantry. ”