Self-Congratulation Quotes

The poor are the very lifeblood of the left, attracting activists, supporting among the intelligentsia, and - perhaps most important - allowing the left to indulge in self-congratulation as people who 'care.' But, if they really cared, they would want to know what the facts are and what the actual consequences of their various nostrums are.

Posting a brag, humble or otherwise, and then waiting for people to respond is the equivalent of having a conversation in which all you do is wait for your turn to speak.

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.

He who tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooted.

I have never got on with the quietist movements: they lapse too easily into self-congratulations: I have found the oneness, you have not. I prefer to look outside myself if I possibly can, not inside. Meditation reminds me too forcibly of being made to lie on a mat at nursery school and take an hour's nap.

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

New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public …. A man must be his own trumpeter—he must write or dictate paragraphs of praise in the newspapers; he must dress, have a retinue and equipage; he must ostentatiously publish to the world his own writings with his name, make the mob stare and gape, and perpetuate his fame.

When actors talk about research, they're just patting themselves on the back.

Every man who praises himself brushes the luster from his best efforts.

The mob may hiss me, but I congratulate myself while I contemplate my treasures in their hoard.

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

Prosperity inebriates men, so that they take delights in their own merits.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

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

Not living in L.A. gives me a different perspective. I'm not so caught up in the daily process of self-congratulations that's out there.

I don't call up the press and say, 'Look at me!'

It's not me to toot my horn. The minute you toot your horn, it seems like society will try and disconnect your battery. And if you do not toot your horn, they'll try their darnedest to give you a horn to toot, or say that you should have a horn.

I don't want to write a hagiography on myself. To me, that is just a waste.

Self-blame usually has an undertone of self-congratulation.

When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics.

If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

We all deserve to be congratulated, but sadly that would mean there's no one left to do the congratulating.

I make fun of Mensa. I don't know a great deal about Mensa - that's the high IQ group - but I say, 'To get into Mensa, you have to have a high IQ, and once you get in, you spend your time congratulating people who are in Mensa with you.' To me that's a pretty stupid way to spend your life.