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He that flatters you more than you desire either has deceived you or wishes to deceive.
-Italian Proverb
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Flattery makes friends and truth makes enemies.
-Proverb
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Many lick before they bite.
-Proverb
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If we did not flatter ourselves the flattery from others would not harm us.
-Proverb
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Between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt.
-Minna Antrim
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. . . it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?
-Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
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I would rather hear the pleased laugh of a child over some feature of my exhibition than receive as I did the flattering compliments of the Prince of Wales.
-P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum
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Flattery is a form of hatred.
-Bible
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Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.
-Josh Billings
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The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
-Jorge Luis Borges
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A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.
-Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
-Edmund Burke
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The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Flatterers look like friends, as wolves like dogs.
-George Chapman
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Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces: for every woman who is not absolutely ugly, thinks herself handsome.
-Lord Chesterfield
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. . . although a skilful flatterer is a most delightful companion, if you can keep him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.
-Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby
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We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
-Denis Diderot
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For lack of a better term, they've labeled me a sex symbol. It's flattering and it should happen to every bald, overweight guy.
-Dennis Franz
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When the flatterer pipes, then the devil dances.
-Thomas Fuller
Gnomologia, 1732
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Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.
-Johann von Goethe
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Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.
-Samuel Johnson
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Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
-Samuel Johnson
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Don't flatter the rich, or appear to willing before the great.
-Thomas Kempis
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Every flatterer lives at the expense of him who listens to him.
-Jean De La Fontaine
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He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Books about Flattery
