Quotes About Flattery

If all we had to do was flatter, everybody would catch on and we should all be experts in human relations.

My students," a business school professor confides, understand "organizational life as a kind of 'vanity fair,' in which those who want to get ahead can do so by playing to the vanity of their superiors." One plays this game, his students know, by using outright flattery and adulation. Enough sycophancy, they believe, will lead to promotions. If in the process they have to withhold, downplay, or distort important information, so be it.

"To me, you are perfect."

To flatter a young man, tell him that you thought that he was older than he is. To flatter an old woman, tell her that you thought that she was younger than she is.

I never paid you a compliment, Rachel, in my life. Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.

Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; "the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people";41 and "Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?

Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride; every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy; the crowd so loves flattery, it is so "hungry for honey," that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the "protector of the people" rises to supreme power

Chamberlain's obsequiousness, his exaggerated flattery, in these letters can be nauseating. "Your Majesty and your subjects," he wrote, "have been born in a holy shrine," and he informed Wilhelm that he had placed his portrait in his study opposite one of Christ by Leonardo so that while he worked he often paced up and down between the countenance of his Savior and his sovereign.

He who praises me on all occasions is a fool who despises me or a knave who wishes to cheat me.

He'd just finished one drink when an attractive woman approached and asked if she could buy him another. He was surprised but flattered. Sure, he said. The woman walked to the bar and brought back two more drinks—one for her and one for him. He thanked her and took a sip. And that was the last thing he remembered.

Flattery is never so agreeable as to our blind side; commend a fool for his wit, or a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosoms

He surprised me by his familiarity with details of movements and battles which I did not suppose had come to his knowledge. As he kept me talking for over half an hour, I flattered myself that what I had to say interested him.

The constant, obvious flattery, contrary to all evidence, of the people around him [Tsar Nicholas I] had brought him to the point that he no longer saw his contradictions, no longer conformed his actions and words to reality, logic, or even simple common sense, but was fully convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and inconsistent with each other, became sensible, just, and consistent with each other only because he gave them.

Speransky, either because he appreciated Prince Andrey's abilities or because he thought it as well to secure his adherence, showed off his calm, impartial sagacity before Prince Andrey, and flattered him with that delicate flattery that goes hand in hand with conceit, and consists in a tacit assumption that one's companion and oneself are the only people capable of understanding all the folly of the rest of the world and the sagacity and profundity of their own ideas.

Prince Vasili took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become intimate with him,

quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative – conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery.

Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.

The glib, facile, simplistic, and prefabricated language by which we as consumers are constantly surrounded is a language that flatters us, that urges us to indulge ourselves, to get away from it all, to be unique by opting in, talking back, liking us on Facebook, leaving a review, sharing, retweeting, etc.

Arrogance sort of destroys that nervousness because you're having a bunch of people flatter you and tell you you're awesome, and it keeps you from striving as hard for the kind of validation you seek from a good show.

Apprenez que tout flatteur Vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute : Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute. Flatterers thrive on fools' credulity. The lesson's worth a cheese, don't you agree?

Flattery, or rather condescension, is not always a vice, it is more often a virtue, especially in young people. The kindness with which a man treats us attaches us to him; one does not give way to him in order to deceive him, one does so in order not to make him sad, not to return him harm for good.

BARBARA: God, Deon, you look really good. You really . . . filled out. Nicely, I mean. You just look great. SHERIFF GILBEAU: Thanks. BARBARA: How 'bout me, don't I look good? SHERIFF GILBEAU: Yes, sorry, yes. You look great, too, just great.

The art of flatterers is to take advantage of the foibles of the great, to foster their errors, and never to give advice which may annoy.

The public wants work which flatters its illusions.