Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.

The most pleasing of all sounds that of your own praise.

There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

For what is the self-complacent man but a slave to his own self-praise.

Self-admiration giveth much consolation.

But the conceited man did not hear him. Conceited people never hear anything but praise.

Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.

I sure am handsome. I can't lie. This is one handsome guy.

I stare at myself in the mirror and I think, 'Wow, I'm really great-looking.'... I think I'm the greatest, anyway.

I don't need to pat myself on the back until my arm breaks. I don't need any of that.

Who walks around proud of things they've done? That's an obnoxious quality.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

Every one praises his own saint.

The more people that praise you, the more there is danger to develop arrogance.

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

Arrogance sort of destroys that nervousness because you're having a bunch of people flatter you and tell you you're awesome, and it keeps you from striving as hard for the kind of validation you seek from a good show.

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

So many actors say, 'Oh, I can't bear to see myself on screen,' but it's not true. Everyone loves to see themselves from a good angle.

It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin.

Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.

Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.

I consider it an indubitable mark of mean-spiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man.

Pride works _from within_; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

There is scarcely any man, how much soever he may despise the character of a flatterer, but will condescend in the meanest manner to flatter himself.