Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

All the criticism and all of the praise, it doesn't - it's not worth the salt that goes on my bread, because TV is fickle. You can be loved one day and hated the next day. One day, you're getting an award. And the next day, you're getting a death threat.

Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

The more famous you become, the less people will tell you your faults.

In whatever adulation you get, there's truth and there's not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible - there's truth and there's not truth. It's human nature to like to read the adulation more.

The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck.

Fools may our scorn, not envy raise, For envy is a kind of praise.

To the Tennis Court and there saw the King play at Tennis, and others; but to see how the King’s play was extolled without any cause at all was a loathsome sight, though sometimes indeed he did play very well and deserved to be commended; but such open flattery is beastly.

I never want to get caught up in praises. Never want to get caught up in people telling me how good I am.

When things go well, the quarterback is the one who sees all the attention. When things go wrong, they are the ones who get criticized the most.

Flattery and criticism are always in our profession.

If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve.

Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful

The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers.

A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply; for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.

We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy, or charms, can make us sleep as well, And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?

There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.

Brooklyn praise is half slander.

Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

One cares so little for the style in which one's praises are written.