Pietro Aretino Quotes

To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your efforts to believe it.

Hypocrisy and rhetorical flimflam are standard in politics …

It hurts not the tongue to give faire words.

Compliments are only lies in court clothes.

Keep thy smooth words and juggling homilies for those who know thee not.

Twas never merry world Since lowly feigning was called compliment.

It is undoubtedly true that some people mistake sycophancy for good nature, but it is equally true that many more mistake impertinence for sincerity.

Flattery was formerly a vice; it has now become the fashion.

For they are yet ear-kissing arguments.

Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.

Flattery is a counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation.

We have a name for those who try to praise when they have no pleasure in the object. We call them hypocrites.

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

Of all sorts of flattery, that which comes from a solemn character and stands before a sermon is the worst-complexioned. Such commendation is a satire upon the author, makes the text look mercenary, and disables the discourse from doing service.

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.

flattery would be worse than vain; there is no consolation in flattery.

And, of all lies (be that one poet's boast) / The lie that flatters I abhor the most.

I am surrounded by flatterers and fools.

General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocite, flatterer.