Best Flattery Quotes & Sayings

In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning. — Leo Tolstoy

Flattery is a challenge. The proper turning away from it, undercutting, diminishing it without offense or vehemence, is a social grace sweeter even than the swift determination to keep ahead in the race of hospitality. — Elizabeth Hardwick

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not. — Baruch Spinoza

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel. — Alan Bradley

Flattery has a short battery life, but reminding people they are amazing and precious and wanted and works of art can truly change their lives. — Donald Miller

Yes, Boss?'
Dorcas, the last twenty or thirty years I've been a worthless, no-good parasite.'
She yawned again. 'Everybody knows that.'
Nevermind the flattery. There comes a time in every man's life when he has to stop being sensible
a time to stand up and be counted
strike a blow for liberty
smite the wicked.'
Ummm ... '
So quit yawning, the time has come.'
She glanced down. 'Maybe I had better get dressed. — Robert A. Heinlein

I'll read enough
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that's myself.
Give me that glass and therein will I read.
No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine
And made no deeper wounds?
O flattering glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity
Thou dost beguile me! — William Shakespeare

If any man flatters me, I'll flatter him again; tho' he were my best Friend. — Benjamin Franklin

We live today amid ritualized anithumanisms. Among those intelligent enough to feel despair, some seek salvation in the literary artist. Artists love flattery; and the scam doesn't work without mystifying the process.

The weather is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Wall Street is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Writing is unpredictable, (like street and sky, there are too many variables.) Its mystery vanishes, like a shadow, the moment the light aimed at your characters turns back upon yourself. — Doran Larson

There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you. — Niccolo Machiavelli

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

Inexperienced girls flatter themselves with the notion that it is in their power to make a man happy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present. — Samuel Johnson

No adulation; 'tis the death of virtue; Who flatters, is of all mankind the lowest Save he who courts the flattery. — Hannah More

That will be your married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ask, thing, - out with it?" "There, you are less than civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery. I had rather be a thing than an angel. This is what I have to ask, - Why did you take such pains to make me believe you wished to marry Miss Ingram?" "Is that all? Thank God it is no worse!" And now he unknit his black brows; looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if well pleased at seeing a danger averted. "I think I may confess," he continued, "even although I should make you a little indignant, Jane - and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant. You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet, by-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer. — Charlotte Bronte

Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted,
Their heads being turned with praise and flattery;
And that is why their lovers are afraid
To tell them a plain story. — William Butler Yeats

It is worth thought what kind of mind or condition or disposition is open to flattery; for poison would not be spread if the rats ate it not. — James Vila Blake

Victor wrapped his fingers over my hand, pressing his face against my palm. "You're the bravest girl I've ever met. I'm so incredibly proud of you."
"Who knew that one day the word someone would use to describe me is brave. Life is very unpredictable." I chuckled.
"There are many other words I could think of to describe you but I'm not really good at flattery. — A.B. Whelan

Sometimes we think we dislike flattery, but it is only the way it is done that we dislike. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

[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

What I like is bottomless flattery. — Peter O'Toole

Flattery succeeds best on minds previously occupied by conceit. — Norm MacDonald

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

The best form of flattery is to be admired, imitated or respected. I've always felt proud our fans look up to us or feel we are inspirational. — Cheryl James

Incredible that the best route to winning friends
is not necessarily kindness or flattery,
but letting them know you won't
tolerate their bullshit. — Sarah Miller

Flattery was the best medicine, but even I gag on medicine. — Jemima Pett

Imitation is the best form of flattery. — Marie Dubuque

At its best, flattery is truth well dressed, and it is best dressed with fine see-through fabrics. Honest flattery can caress a lover, cover up a gaffe, and muffle aggression. — Willis Regier

The qualities of character can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and last qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a virtue or an excellence. So between cowardice and rashness is courage; between stinginess and extravagance is liberality; between sloth and greed is ambition; between humility and pride is modesty; between secrecy and loquacity, honesty; between moroseness and buffoonery, good humor; between quarrelsomeness and flattery, friendship; between Hamlet's indecisiveness and Quixote's impulsiveness is self-control.49 "Right," then, in ethics or conduct, is not different from "right" in mathematics or engineering; it means correct, fit, what works best to the best result. The — Will Durant

Flattery makes fools of the best of us. — Dorothy Salisbury Davis

The god-who-serves-ME requires flattery, not worship. — Tom Wells

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

In Hollywood, imitation is the most profitable form of flattery. That is the only plausible explanation ... — Desson Thomson

This so-called animisn that not so much the Fan Nannies but everybody else around here subscribes to. can we really just write it off as primitive superstition run amok? Do only human beings have souls, or is that a narcissistic, chauvinistic piece of self-flattery? I mean, can't we look at that great old teak tree over there or at this gulch, and see as much of the divine in them as in some ol' anthropomorphic Sunday school Boom Daddy with imaginary long gray whiskers and a platinum bathrobe? Are we capable of entertaining the possibility that there may have been a holy entity in the cross as well as on it? — Tom Robbins

Advertising - A judicious mixture of flattery and threats. — Stephen Leacock

What valor cannot win, flattery may. — Publilius Syrus

Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery. — Richard Steele

Adroit observers will find that some who affect to dislike flattery, may yet be flattered indirectly, by a well seasoned abuse and ridicule of their rivals. — Charles Caleb Colton

The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing. — Jorge Luis Borges

Flattery is a foolish suicide; she destroys herself with her own hands. — Edward Gibbon

You have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world. My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered them. I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The flattery is nice, but awards don't add up to writing quality songs. — Chantal Kreviazuk

Whitney: You black-hearted, treacherous, conniving scoundrel.
Clayton: Your flattery warms my heart — Judith McNaught

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

Flattery will get you everywhere," Sam says, "Except, apparently, off a roof. — Holly Black

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the rise of a trout to the tied fly, is the purest form of flattering nature with art. — R.E. Long

Flattery is like friendship in show, but not in fruit. — Socrates

Katherine Anne [Porter] treated them like favored nephews; she even cooked meals for them. Unfortunately, however, beneath Christopher's deference and flattery, there was a steadily growing aggression. By her implicit claim to be the equal of Katherine Mansfield and even Virginia Woolf, Katherine Anne had stirred up Christopher's basic literary snobbery. How dare she, he began to mutter to himself, this vain old frump, this dressed-up cook in her arty finery, how dare she presume like this! And he imagined a grotesque scene in which he had to introduce her and somehow explain her to Virginia, Morgan [Forster] and the others . . . [t]hus Katherine Anne became the first of an oddly assorted collection of people who, for various reasons, made up their minds that they would never see Christopher again. The others: Charlie Chaplin, Benjamin Britten, Cole Porter, Lincoln Kirstein. — Christopher Isherwood

I'm not a nostalgic person for the glory days of 8-track sales at the local K-Mart. But there's a little bit of flattery and a little bit of horror. It's a mixture. It's like sublime shock and awe, but also terror. That's always the way I feel about how music flows through those types of networks. I'm mostly cool with it, but I definitely appreciate when people support the work. — Tim Hecker

When I was first at court and he was the young husband of a beautiful wife, he was a golden king. They called him the handsomest prince in Christendom, and that was not flattery. Mary Boleyn was in love with him, Anne was in love with him, I was in love with him. There was not one girl at court, nor one girl in the country, who could resist him. Then he turned against his wife, Queen Katherine, a good woman, and Anne taught him how to be cruel. — Philippa Gregory

Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good! — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Flattery has to overcome my mistrust, and it does. — Mason Cooley

Projecting yourself until everything is talking about you is, of course, a self-flattering form of self-pity — Aleksandar Hemon

The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional. — Walter Savage Landor