Quotes & Sayings About The Greatest Compliment

What sort of person you grow into should not be achieved by default, and often that's exactly what happens to kids. I see literature as a method of guidance, information, and contemplation, and consider it the greatest compliment possible when a reader tells me that a book of mine really made him/her think. — Wendelin Van Draanen

Hardness," I was learning, was the supreme virtue among recon Marines. The greatest compliment one could pay to another was to say he was hard. Hardness wasn't toughness, nor was it courage, although both were part of it. Hardness was the ability to face an overwhelming situation with aplomb, smile calmly at it, and then triumph through sheer professional pride. — Nathaniel Fick

When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life. If you were selfless, it would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person's need of you. I don't have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person. — Ayn Rand

So it's the greatest compliment in the world when people want to hear you sing. That means it feels good to them, so I keep doing it. — Shelby Lynne

<> he asks. I sit down and think about it. I could list a million reasons. Gray sits next to me.
<> I say. <> I stop rambling and look over at Gray. He's smiling. <> he says. <> I say, stunned. It's the greatest compliment he could ever give me. — Katie Kacvinsky

Your wife's willingness to allow a daughter to grow inside her who had, by all laws of probability, a fifty-percent chance of inheriting your face, is something you should view as a compliment. Perhaps the greatest compliment a woman can give a man. — Herman Koch

Shooting at a man who is returning the compliment means going into action with the greatest speed of which a man's muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick shooting involves. — Wyatt Earp

The greatest compliment to any player is he is a great teammate. We can't all be great players, but we can all be great teammates — Jay Bilas

Tell me I'm beautiful, it's nothing. Tell me I'm intellectual - I know it. Tell me I'm funny, and it's the greatest compliment in the world anyone could give me. — Julie Newmar

The greatest compliment in the world is your adult children telling you they had a wonderful childhood. — Ron Baratono

Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him. I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost feminine. — Jean Webster

If something is successful with the audience, it's automatically suspect; the reverse is to say that not to reach audiences is the greatest compliment an artist can receive! — Carlisle Floyd

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. — Henry David Thoreau

When we came out with 'Lazy Sunday,' the greatest compliment I heard was that Questlove had it on his iPod. — Jorma Taccone

I am still so proud to have been a part of something that introduced theater to so many people who weren't exposed to it before. We took Broadway and put it in peoples' living rooms once a week for two seasons. People still come up to me in the street and say, 'I never went to theater before I saw "Smash.'" That's the greatest compliment. — Megan Hilty

As a horn player, the greatest compliment one can get is when a person comes to you and says, 'I heard this saxophone on the radio the other day and I knew it was you. I don't know the song, but I know it was you on sax.' — Clarence Clemons

The greatest compliment that anyone can pay me is that after I say something, they remember it. I'll go over a piece of copy until I've gotten the essence of what the writer had in mind - every nuance. — Casey Kasem

The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. I'm caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points. — Iris Johansen

The greatest compliment one can pay a master is to compare him with Capablanca. — Irving Chernev

"You're more trouble than the children are" is the greatest compliment a grandparent can receive. — Gene Perret

The greatest compliment I can pay Paul Scholes is that he reminds me of Bryan Robson, the way he bombs into the box. — Ray Wilkins

Master Fellows surprised Ellysetta with an unexpected compliment. "You have a natural regal grace, my lady, and it has been the greatest of pleasures to teach you. Just remember, while some part of you may always be Ellie, the woodcarver's daughter, you are also Lady Ellysetta, the Tairen Soul's queen." He bowed and kissed her hand. "At the palace tonight, let Ellysetta reign. — C.L. Wilson

I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange. — Nick Cave

As for piracy, I love to be pirated. It is the greatest compliment an author can have. The wholesale piracy of Democracy was the single real triumph of my life. Anyone may steal what he likes from me. — Henry Adams

Whenever anybody does well spiritually, I usually ignore them. It's the greatest compliment I can pay them. — Frederick Lenz

Could you imagine me and the roasters taking on the GOP field? It would be the greatest show ever. Prove that you can take a joke. Prove that you're a man or woman of the people. Prove that you're not above criticism even in the form of a backhanded compliment. — Jeff Ross

A story once went the rounds of Israel to the effect that Ben-Gurion described me as 'the only man' in his cabinet. What amused me about is that he (or whoever invented the story) thought that this was the greatest compliment that could be paid to a woman. I very much doubt that any man would have been flattered if I had said about him that he was the only woman in the government! — Golda Meir

I have never pretended to be a great House of Commons man, but I pay the House the greatest compliment I can by saying that, from first to last, I never stopped fearing it. — Tony Blair

The greatest compliment I ever got was when people called me an artist, and I understand that solo aspect of being an artist, when you're in there by yourself, trying to do something great, and people who don't even know you can come up and just dump on you. — John McEnroe

The greatest compliment that I know how to pay another photographer is to say, 'I never would have made that photograph myself. I'm sure glad you did.' You hope along the way that maybe, once in a while, you do that for someone else. — John Sexton

And if you tell a good story, it feels is. A couple looked at this film and said it was the first time that they had ever felt that as they watched something, that they felt as if what they were watching was happening now rather than in the past. And that is the highest compliment someone could ever pay. They might say it was the greatest documentary ever, but it wouldn't be the same thing as it felt as if it was happening now. There was a familiarity. And that is what we wanted. We wanted to remove the distance between us. — Tom Roston

There are records that you just sink into. They coincide with what you're going through and become an ally. If our records do that for people, that's the greatest compliment I could ever receive. That's one of the reasons making music is so important to me, because there's a very strange emotional reach. For me - more than books or movies or other things - music is like a mainline to your heart. — Matt Berninger

I am a writer and the greatest compliment I can get is to know that I've contributed language to the culture, that I've defined something, given it a name. So I think that is one of the great things a writer can do. — Chuck Palahniuk

Now you listen to me," says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door. "You've given birth to two children and quite soon will be squeezing out a third. You've come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense. You've learned a new language and got yourself an education and you're holding together a family of obvious incompetents. And I'll be damned if I've seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now ... I'm not asking for brain surgery. I'm asking you to drive a car. It's got an accelerator, a brake and a clutch. Some of the greatest twits in world history have sorted out how it works. And you will as well." And then he utters seven words, which Parvaneh will always remember as the loveliest compliment he'll ever give her. "Because you are not a complete twit. — Fredrik Backman