Ingratiating Quotes & Sayings

Even under more ingratiating conditions than rocket travel, this new conquest has already disclosed drawbacks quite as remarkable as its advantages. On a transcontinental flight by a jet plane approaching super-sonic speed, the actual trip is so cramped, so dull, so vacuous, that the only attraction the air lines dare to offer are those vulgar experiences one can have by walking to the nearest cabaret, restaurant, or cinema: liquor, food, motion pictures, luscious stewardesses. Only a lurking sense of fear and the possibility of a grisly death help restore the sense of reality. — Lewis Mumford

On first speaking to the man, his ingratiating smile, his flaxen hair, and his blue eyes would lead one to say, "What a pleasant, good-tempered fellow he seems!" yet during the next moment or two one would feel inclined to say nothing at all, and, during the third moment, only to say, "The devil alone knows what he is! — Nikolai Gogol

Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way - because it's had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you've got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side. — Christopher Hitchens

You can't be up the reader's ass, as many a writer I think is - cute as hell, ingratiating as hell. But that's not loving the reader in the right way. That's toadying to the reader. — Martin Amis

The most beautiful pieces of art come from the ugliest situations. — Andy Mineo

Don't worry about him. He's an old curmudgeon who hates women. I've heard tell it's because he can't satisfy one in bed, if you know what I mean. Some sort of old war injury." Barnaby cast Louisa an ingratiating smile that showed fine white teeth. "If it's a husband you're looking for, you'd be better off with me. All my parts are in fine working order." A chilly smile touched Louisa's lips as she snatched her arm away. "Are they, indeed? Then I suggest you find a wife who'd be happy to oil and pamper them and keep them in good working order. I'm afraid I'd be more likely to smash them to bits." With that, she lifted her skirts and hurried after Silas, leaving Barnaby to gape after her as he instinctively jerked his legs together. — Sabrina Jeffries

The worst form of snobbery is to deny information; to anyone at all. Always remember that. Bas as it is to look down on another human being: to act as censor? Unforgivable. — Matthew Blakstad

He [Johnny Cash] was so fragile. We invaded Iraq in March, and he died in September. And because his health was so fragile, he couldn't take the controversy of making a public statement against the war. He knew that people were rabid. They attacked me mercilessly after I did the press conference with Musicians United to Win Without War. He knew that he couldn't tolerate that. — Rosanne Cash

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex. — Samuel Johnson

True humility involves opposites. The truly humble work in silence. Because they do not speak of their accomplishments, credit for them can never be taken away. — Laozi

Jason McDermott can be the most ingratiating young man: a born politician. — Bill Dedman

It takes true strength of character to redefine your limits by pushing past them. — Katherine Reutter

We elevate the status of others with compliments, flattery, ingratiating comments, public roasts, awards, and outright praise and adoration. People around the world systematically use the tactics of politeness - hesitations, indirectness, apologies, formalities - when speaking with higher-status individuals. These subtle shifts in phrasing, syntax, and delivery convey the respect that the speaker feels toward the recipient. — Dacher Keltner

There was something theatrical about the protest, ingratiating even ... There was a shadow of transaction between the demonstrators and the state. The protest was a form of systemic hygiene, purging and lubricating. It attested again, for the ten thousandth time, to the market culture's innovative brilliance, its ability to shape itself to its own flexible ends, absorbing everything around it. — Don DeLillo

I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people. — Daniel Clowes

You have no idea what this country truly is, my carefree young mistress. You've only shed tears for another dress you could not get, another dance you were denied, another piece of jewelry you lost. Do you know what starvation can do to a proud soul? Do you know the thoughts that injustice can bring to the innermost parts of a person's mind? No. You avoid beggars on the street as if they are plagues - instead of humans who wish they could be born to your birth; you enjoy your winter ice cream by the fireplace while hundreds of those ones whom you call 'dregs' are freezing to death on the street; you enjoy the feeling of superiority you get from bestowing your charity on those who receive it in trade for their pride. You don't care to give a thought to their pain or frustration when they have to wear their ingratiating smile as a mask. This world judges people not by their deeds, their talents, or their morals - only by their birth and wealth. — Catherine Aerie

Manners or etiquette ('accessibility, affability, politeness, refinement, propriety, courtesy, and ingratiating and captivating behavior') call for no large measure of moral determination and cannot, therefore, be reckoned as virtues. Even though manners are no virtues, they are a means of developing virtue ... The more we refine the crude elements in our nature, the more we improve our humanity and the more capable it grows of feeling the driving force of virtuous principles. — Immanuel Kant

Clever talk, ingratiating looks, fawning reverence: Tso-ch'iu Ming found that shameful, and so do I. Friendly while harboring resentment: Tso-ch'iu Ming found that shameful, too, and so do I. — Confucius

Clever how the cosmos can, in a single portent, be ingratiating yet sadistic. — Julia Glass

Imagine that for hundreds of years your most formative traumas, your daily suffering and pain, the abuse you live through, the terror you live with, are unspeakable not the basis of literature. You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs ... You learn how to leave your body and create someone else who takes over when you cannot stand it any more. You develop a self who is ingratiating and obsequious and imitative and aggressively passive and silent you learn, in a word, femininity. — Catharine MacKinnon

Orwell's '1984' convinced me, rightly or wrongly, that Marxism was only a quantum leap away from tyranny. By contrast, Huxley's 'Brave New World' suggested that the totalitarian systems of the future might be subservient and ingratiating. — J.G. Ballard

A couple of days after the letter arrived, I was discharged from the hospital, in the custody, so to speak, of about three yards of adhesive tape around my ribs. Then began a very strenuous week's campaign to get permission to attend the wedding. I was finally able to do it by laboriously ingratiating myself with my company commander, a bookish man by his own confession, whose favorite author, as luck had it, happened to be my favorite author-L. Manning Vines. Or Hinds. Despite this spiritual bond between us, the most I could wangle out of him was a three-day pass, which would, at best, give me just enough time to travel by train to New York, see the wedding, bolt a dinner somewhere, and then return damply to Georgia. — J.D. Salinger

Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing. — Erik Larson

Honesty is seldom ingratiating and often discomfiting. — Tom Stoppard

The idea that everyone is strong enough to bear immediate contact with God is false, and conceivable only by an age that has forgotten what it means to stand in the direct ray of divine power, that substitutes sentimental religious 'experience' for the overwhelming reality of God's presence. To claim that everyone could and should be exposed to that reality is sacrilegious. — Romano Guardini

I had a good mind to discontinue permanently the supply of grain to the city, reliance on which had discouraged Italian agriculture, but refrained because some politician would be bound one day to revive the dole as a means of ingratiating himself with the people. — Augustus

Do you expect to learn anything at Shiz?" he asked. "I have already learned not to speak to strangers." "Then I will introduce myself and we will be strangers no longer. I am Dillamond." "I am disinclined to know you. — Gregory Maguire

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse. — Christopher Hitchens

We always had dogs,so I understood all the joy and the love animals are capable of giving. It's crazy to me that some people have dogs in thier homes, but they treat them more like furniture. — Alicia Silverstone

Probably the biggest temptation that young writers face is to be entertaining, to show your bag of tricks and do a bit of tap dancing. I read a lot of things, and I keep seeing this brocade of voice where someone is trying to be too pally with you or ingratiating on the page. — Teju Cole

The Master said: 'Artful speech and an ingratiating demeanour rarely accompany virtue. — Confucius