Universally Flattering Quotes & Sayings

For say what you will of lovers there's nothing so flattering to female vanity as the praise of a husband, because it is universally considered a more difficult matter to retain affection than to win it. — Hannah Crafts

Whether we are able to be a complete success or failure is in such critical balance that every smallest human test of integrity every smallest moment-to-moment decision tips the scales affirmatively or negatively. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken. — Ferdinand De Saussure

Each of us is called upon to take a stand. So in these days ahead, as we examine ourselves and each other, our works, our fears, our differences, our sisterhood and survivals, I urge you to tackle what is most difficult for us all, self-scrutiny of our complacencies, the idea that since each of us believes she is on the side of right, she need not examine her position. — Audre Lorde

We are accused here of polygamy, and actions the most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit to belief ... — John Taylor

Why should not the knowledge, the skill, the expertness, the assiduity, and the spirited hazards of trade and commerce, when crowned with success, be entitled to give those flattering distinctions by which mankind are so universally captivated? Such are the specious, but false arguments for a proposition which always will find numerous advocates, in a nation where men are every day starting up from obscurity to wealth. To refute them is needless. The general sense of mankind cries out, with irresistible force, Un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme. — James Boswell

I'm trying to photograph an old offshore oil city that is lying in decay in the Caspian Sea, but I've been having a hard time getting there. — Edward Burtynsky

Distrust even Mathematics; albeit so sublime and highly perfected, we have here a machine of such delicacy it can only work in vacuo, and one grain of sand in the wheels is enough to put everything out of gear. One shudders to think to what disaster such a grain of sand may bring a Mathematical brain. Remember Pascal. — Anatole France