Flatterer Quotes - Page 4

• Abhor flatterers as you would deceivers; for both, if trusted, injure those who trust them. If you admit as friends men who seek your favor for the lowest ends, your life will be lacking in friends who will risk your displeasure for the highest good.

  Isocrates

  Men, Risk, Favors

  Isocrates (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Isocrates (Illustrated)”, p.17, Delphi Classics

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• Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true; but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.

  Samuel Johnson

  Thinking, May, Firsts

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1824). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: A Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published; the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.339

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• I do I know not what, and fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe. What is decreed must be; and be this so.

  William Shakespeare

  Eye, Fate, Mind

  William Shakespeare (1823). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare: From the Text of Johnson, Stevens, and Reed; with Glossarial Notes, His Life, and a Critique on His Genius & Writings”, p.38

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• It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.

  Antisthenes

  Fall, Crow, Alive

  "Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers" by Diogenes Laërtius, (§ 4),

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• If we from wealth to poverty descend,
  Want gives to know the flatterer from the friend.

  John Dryden

  Giving, Want, Poverty

  John Dryden (1822). “Fables, from Boccaccio and Chaucer”, p.259

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• Consider, for example, and you will find that almost all the transactions in the time of Vespasian differed little from those of the present day. You there find marrying and giving in marriage, educating children, sickness, death, war, joyous holidays, traffic, agriculture, flatterers, insolent pride, suspicions, laying of plots, longing for the death of others, newsmongers, lovers, misers, men canvassing far the consulship and for the kingdom; yet all these passed away, and are nowhere.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Children, War, Holiday

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• 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.

  Moliere

  Art, Errors, Giving

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• The most detestable race of enemies are flatterers.

  Tacitus

  Race, Enemy

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• Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies.
  [Lat., Pessimum genus inimicorum laudantes.]

  Tacitus

  Enemy, Flattery, Kind

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• I'd rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Lying, Men, News

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Other Wind”, p.68, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A liar is a man who does now know how to deceive, a flatterer one who only deceives fools: he who knows how to make skilful use of the truth, and understands its eloquence, can alone pride himself in cleverness.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Liars, Lying, Pride

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• Persons who discover a flatterer, do not always disapprove him, because he imagines them considerable enough to deserve his applications.

  William Shenstone

  Flattery, Imagine, Enough

  William Shenstone (1804). “Essays on Men and Manners”, p.142

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• He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.

  Isabel Allende

  Arrogance, Ignorant, Quality

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• A flatterer can risk everything with great personages.

  Alain-Rene Lesage

  Risk, Great Person

  "Gil Blas". Book by Alain-René Lesage. Book IV, Chapter 7, 1735.

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• There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Kings, Flattery, Vermin

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• Hope is to a man as a bladder to a learning swimmer--it keeps him from sinking in the bosom of the waves, and by that help he may attain the exercise; but yet it many times makes him venture beyond his height, and then if that breaks, or a storm rises, he drowns without recovery. How many would die, did not hope sustain them! How many have died by hoping too much! This wonder we find in Hope, that she is both a flatterer and a true friend.

  Owen Feltham

  Hope, True Friend, Recovery

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• O Hope, sweet flatterer! thy, delusive touch
  Sheds on afflicted minds the balm of comfort,
  Relieves the load of poverty, sustains
  The captive, bending with the weight of bonds,
  And smooths the pillow of disease and pain.

  Richard Glover

  Hope, Sweet, Pain

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• Not kings alone--the people, too, have their flatterers.

  Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau

  Kings, People, Flattery

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• Hope is nothing but a deceitful flatterer accepted by reason only because it is often in need of palliatives.

  Giacomo Casanova

  Needs, Reason, Accepted

  Giacomo Casanova (2013). “The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt: Complete”, p.376, Simon and Schuster

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• There is a principle of human affairs that goes back millennia, which is that you don't look in the mirror. You can trace this principle back to the Bible. The designated intellectuals of that time are called prophets, which is a mistranslation of a Hebrew word, but they were basically intellectuals, giving geopolitical analysis, criticizing the moral practice of leadership, etc. Now, these people were not treated very nicely. There were other intellectuals who were treated nicely, namely those who centuries later came to be called false prophets. These were the flatterers of the court.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mirrors, Practice, People

  Source: www.madre.org

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• Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy.. a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.

  H. L. Mencken

  Struggle, Hypocrite, Men

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• A flatterers throat is an open Sepulcher.

  George Herbert

  Throat

  George Herbert (1874). “The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose”, p.344

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• Cats like men are flatterers.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Cat, Men, Flattery

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The Works of Walter Savage Landor”, p.207

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• Read not books alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thyself. If thou find anything questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend, rather than the gloss of a sweet-lipped flatterer there is more profit in a distasteful truth than in deceitful sweetness.

  Francis Quarles

  Friendship, Sweet, Lying

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