Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow.
Benjamin DisraeliRead
Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
Interpretation
Flattery is often expected, especially among those in power, and should be given generously.
This quote by Benjamin Disraeli humorously underscores the idea that those in positions of authority, such as royalty, often appreciate and even expect excessive praise. It suggests that to navigate such relationships successfully, one should be prepared to indulge in such flattery, metaphorically using a 'trowel' to emphasize the need for generous application.
In practice
In a speech about leadership, one might quote Disraeli to illustrate how leaders often thrive on flattery.
Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow.
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.
Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Yes, I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.
The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.
Performing comedy in San Francisco to begin with is pretty wild. You've got to - you've got the human game preserve to play off of. And it's a lot of great characters everywhere. You work off that, and then you play the rooms, and eventually you get to a point where you're playing a club that is a comedy club, with other comics.
He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it's probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.
Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.
Laughter is a celebration of our failings. That's what clowns are for. And that's what I am.
I recently bought a book of free verse. For twelve dollars.
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