Flatter Quotes

In all of my work I'm trying to create a dialogue, in which I want to provoke the recipients, stimulate them to use their own imaginations. I don't just say things recipients want to hear, flatter their egos or comfort them by agreeing with them. I have to provoke them, to take them as seriously as I take myself.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it.

I must not say what I truly think, or you will tell me I flatter you-but I can only speak what I feel-and very often I cannot even do that when the feeling is very deep.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

So you shouldn't really flatter yourself that they want to be your buddy. They don't. Generally. They want you for some reason or other, and you just have to fend that off all the time.

Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.

If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.

Tell me not of joy: there's none Now my little sparrow's gone; He, just as you, Would toy and woo, He would chirp and flatter me, He would hang the wing awhile, Till at length he saw me smile, Lord! how sullen he would be!

Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor.

The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.

It is simpler and easier to flatter people than to praise them.

I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.

The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.

A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

Worse there cannot be; a better, I believe, there may be, by giving energy to the capital and skill of the country to produce exports, by increasing which, alone, can we flatter ourselves with the prospect of finding employment for that part of our population now unemployed.

Were I to flatter myself with the possibility of success in such combat, it would indeed be presumption.

People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

You can always draw as well as you know how to. I flatter myself that I feel more than I express on canvas; but I know that is not so.

If you followed this economic crisis and you do not think that the world is getting flatter, you are not paying attention. We saw the entire global economy at one time acting totally in sync. The real truth is the world is even flatter than I thought. Our mortgage crisis is killing Deutsche Bank. You still don't think the world is flat?

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

I don't care how stylish something is if it doesn't flatter me.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.

I don't flatter myself - I'm not a scientist, I'm not a conservation expert.

The women who inspired this play deserved to be smacked across the head with a meat ax and that, I flatter myself, is exactly what I smacked them with.