Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

The most that can be said of flattery is that it is sometimes a cheap psychological trick with which charlatans and dishonest people lull others into a state of carelessness while they pick their pockets.

They do not abuse the king that flatter him. For flattery is the bellows blows up sin; The thing the which is flattered, but a spark To which that blast gives heat and stronger glowing.

Flattery has to overcome my mistrust, and it does.

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

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o' the flatterer.

Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.

Learn that every flatterer Lives at the flattered listeners cost.

Influencing people is dangerous. Their acts and thoughts become your illegitimate children. You can't get away from them and Heaven knows what they mayn't grow up into.

Flattery, the dangerous nurse of vice.

Flattery is praise insincerely given for an interested purpose.

There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

People who wish to numb our caution in dealing with them by means of flattery are employing a dangerous expedient, like a sleeping draught, which, if it does not put us to sleep, keeps us all the more awake.

What valor cannot win, flattery may.

Flattery is like wine, which exhilarates a man for a moment, but usually ends by going to his head and making him act foolishly.

Flattery must be pretty thick before anybody objects to it.

He who cannot love must learn to flatter.

There is undoubtedly a difference between people who manipulate other people and people who create things.

... motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

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

Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her; Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right; She may then grow wise for spite.

I'm told I'm very charming when people do what I want.

The thoughts he put in her head. Someone should’ve arrested him for it.

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.