Quotes on Flattering

The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

Only God is able to humble us without humiliating us and to exalt us without flattering us.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

If people have split views about your work, I think it's flattering. I'd rather have them feel something about it than dismiss it.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

An ad hominem attack against an individual, not against an idea, is highly flattering. It indicates that the person does not have anything intelligent to say about your message.

Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale.

I guess it's flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

I always prefer photographing in available light – or Rembrandt-light I like to call it – so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait.

Gallantry of mind consists in saying flattering things in an agreeable manner.

[The American President] has to take all sorts of abuse from liars and demagogues.… The people can never understand why the President does not use his supposedly great power to make ’em behave. Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

I'm telling you, if aliens landed on earth today and took a good hard look at why babies get born, they'd conclude that most people had children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn't one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren't very flattering.

I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass but my madness speaks.