Insincere Compliments Quotes

FLATTERY is nothing, but false friendship, fawning hypocrisy, dishonest civility, base merchandise of words…

The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.

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

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

No visor does become black villainy so well as soft and tender flattery.

False praise is worse than no praise.

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.

He who cannot love must learn to flatter.

Flattery looks like friendship, just like a wolf looks like a dog. Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.

The world's flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel: eat less of it, for it is full of fire. Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest, but its smoke becomes visible in the end.

Men sometimes think they hate flattery, but they hate only the manner of flattering.

It is better to fall among crows than flatterers; for those devour only the dead - these the living.

We sometimes imagine we hate flattery, but we only hate the way we are flattered.

Learn that every flatterer Lives at the flattered listeners cost.

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.

Whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise.

I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.

A flatterers throat is an open Sepulcher.

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.

The skilful class of flatterers praise the discourse of an ignorant friend and the face of a deformed one.

I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.

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.

You know when someone's over-flattering you in a way. You smile but you can't believe it.