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More "Flatterer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both cases an acquaintance of his own,—and one taken from ancient history or legend. Jason, for his desertion of Hypsipyle and Medea, is the classical example of the first offence. Of this use of mythological persons we have many examples, but the typical flatterer of old time is a more curious selection, being a character in a play, whom Dante ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... and distinguished origin, by receiving stupid compliments on my old Dutch blood, as if that species of blood were better than any other. That sort of nonsense I have always answered by informing the flatterer that the first bearer of my venerable name was a cook; the second, a tanner; the third—well, the least said about the third the better; and the fourth, a barber. My grandfather, a very worthy saddler, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... his "Fouche," ch. xi., shows how Bonaparte's private police managed the affair. Harel was afterwards promoted to the governorship of the Castle of Vincennes: the four talkers, whom he and the police had lured on, were executed after the affair of Nivose. That dextrous literary flatterer, the poet Fontanes, celebrated the "discovery" of the Arena plot by publishing anonymously a pamphlet ("A Parallel between Caesar, Cromwell, Monk, and Bonaparte") in which he decided that no one but Caesar deserved the honour of a comparison with Bonaparte, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... a flatterer. I am going to follow the example of the man who cast pearls before swine—I'm going to cast you a pearl from one of my own poems. You may listen. It will pass your ears, that's all. You cannot contaminate it by taking it in, so I repeat ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... recommend my opinions but long observation and much impartiality. They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life. They come from one almost the whole of whose public exertion has been a struggle for the liberty of others,—from one ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to a separate dedicatee. But these dedications meant money, and Fuller was poor. Furthermore, if in his necessity he flattered, his flattery was, for the most part, of a kind not irreconcilable with due self-respect on the part of the flatterer. It is a very different thing from the nauseous adulation to which Dryden—to name but one out of numerous kindred offenders—consented to abase himself. As auxiliary to a full understanding of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... ready with his assent; and whatever his lord says, he asserts to be true; never will he who associates with courts and lords be tongue-tied; his tongue must serve them with falsehood. My heart must needs do likewise if it wishes to have grace of its lord; let it be a flatterer and cajoler. But Cliges is such a brave knight, so handsome, so noble, and so loyal, that never will my heart be lying or false, however much it may praise him; for in him is nothing that can be mended. Therefore, I will that my heart serve him; for the peasant ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Gloucester, about 1594, was educated at Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford; was a master at Magdalen School, the Free School at St. Albans, and at Westminster, and Professor of Greek at Oxford under the Commonwealth. He died 1670. Wood characterises him as a butt for the wits and a flatterer of great men, and notes that he was always called by the name of Doctor Harmar, though he took no higher degree than M.A. But in 1632 he supplicated for the degree of M.B., and Dr. Grosart's note—"Herrick, no doubt, playfully ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Without the support of your own family, where will you find the aid which you may require? That a state of things not modelled from the lessons of antiquity can long continue;— that is what I have not heard. Ch'ing is now showing himself to be a flatterer, who increases the errors of Your Majesty, and not a loyal minister." 'The emperor requested the opinions of others on this representation, and the premier, Li Sze [5], said, "The five emperors were not one the double of the other, nor did the three dynasties accept one another's ways. Each had ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... pronounced by Temple to be the best and truest servant that ever prince had the good fortune to possess, and continued through life to merit that honourable character. The friends were indeed made for each other. William wanted neither a guide nor a flatterer. Having a firm and just reliance on his own judgment, he was not partial to counsellors who dealt much in suggestions and objections. At the same time he had too much discernment, and too much elevation of mind, to be gratified by sycophancy. The confidant of such a prince ought to be a man, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him that is no coward nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a Red Rose from ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... hyperbolical flatterer! Believe me—I set a higher value on thy nature than on my art. Come, pipe up once more, and I will, meanwhile, try ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... their disposal the goods, the honours, and the preferment justly the due of others; and in those more numerous and certainly more unhappy countries, where the rule of the tyrant is substituted for the law of God, the unwearying flatterer, patient under blows and abstemious under high-feeding, will assuredly make ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... as against their detractors. Plutarch says, "The influence of a true friend is felt in the help that he gives the noble part of nature; nothing that is weak or poor meets with encouragement from him. While the flatterer fans every spark of suspicion, envy, or grudge, he may be described in the verse of Sophocles as 'sharing the love and not the hatred of the person he cares for.'" Such a bit as that makes us forget the centuries which have rolled between us and Plutarch; his temptations are ours—how ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... declamatores; so doth Gregory, Non mihi sapit qui sermone, sed qui factis sapit. Make the best of him, a good orator is a turncoat, an evil man, bonus orator pessimus vir, his tongue is set to sale, he is a mere voice, as [724]he said of a nightingale, dat sine mente sonum, an hyperbolical liar, a flatterer, a parasite, and as [725] Ammianus Marcellinus will, a corrupting cozener, one that doth more mischief by his fair speeches, than he that bribes by money; for a man may with more facility avoid him that ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... flatterer! To business. How intendest thou to treat the subject which may represent me? Say, wilt thou paint me ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the little girls, and praised their bright eyes and glossy curls. "For," said his mother, "he is a sad flatterer, and not nearly so truthful, I am sorry to say, as his brother, George Washington, who ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... clients. He can resign his post without injury to himself or to those dependent on him, follow his own convictions, resist the noisy deleterious opinions of the day, and be the loyal servant, not the low flatterer of the public. Whilst, consequently, in the inferior or average conditions of life, the incentive is self-interest, with him the grand motive is pride. Now, amongst the deeper feelings of man there is none which is more adapted for transformation into probity, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of Confucius, name Tuan-mu Tz'u, style Tzu-kung, born 520 B.C.; i. 10, tells how the Master learns about government; i. 15, asks were it well to be poor but no flatterer; ii. 13, told that a gentleman sorts words to deeds; iii. 17, wishes to do away with sheep offering at new moon; v. 3, is a vessel; v. 8, cannot aspire to Yen Yuean; v. 11, wishes not to do unto others ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... a sufficient answer; but the answer in the play is "Prodigious." The flatterer always magnifies what he whom he is aiming to please wishes to have great. But while this smooth falsehood takes effect only with those who themselves attract and invite it; even persons of a more substantial and solid character ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... interest -.it the backstairs. It is a notion, that whatever is said of one, has generally some kind of foundation: surely I am a contradiction to this maxim! yet, was I of consequence enough to be remembered, perhaps posterity would believe that I was a flatterer! Good ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... children: who find out that wit in them, which another discerns not; and see not those errors, which are evident to the unconcerned. Nor is this Self Kindness more fatal to men in their writings, than in their actions; every man being a greater flatterer to himself, than he knows how to be to another: otherwise, it were impossible that things of such distant natures, should find their own authors so equally kind in their affections to them; and men so different in ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... though they seem, And hours of joy retrace, till from my dream I start, and find them not; then I could weep To think how Fortune blights the fairest flowers; To think how soon life's first endearments fail, And we are still misled by Hope's smooth tale, Who, like a flatterer, when the happiest hours Pass, and when most we call on her to stay, Will fly, as faithless ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... determine in several days. And let it not be supposed, that the works he thus ordered bore any marks of precipitancy. At the head of his topographical cabinet he had one of the first engineer officers in France, General Bernard; and this general, too brave, too loyal, to be a flatterer, could never enough admire the profound knowledge the Emperor possessed of the art of fortification, and his happy and prompt ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... you are? I shall go to Bologna by Ferrara, instead of Mantua: because I would rather see the cell where they caged Tasso, and where he became mad and * *, than his own MSS. at Modena, or the Mantuan birthplace of that harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow. I saw Verona and Vicenza on my ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... others—all men of honor.' How far-sighted was my father, in recommending these men! They are the very nobles who have kept aloof from the late king's mistresses. With one exception, I adopt the list; but there is one among them, who stooped to be a flatterer of Du Barry. The Duke d'Aiguillon is certainly a statesman, but he cannot ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... methods, this unerring diagnostician of the human soul had been reading him, liking him, and making him feel a heart-warming sympathy. The man who shrunk from lion-hunters, and who could return the churl's answer to the advances of sycophant and flatterer, enthusiastically poured out for the ungainly mountain boy all the rare quality and bouquet of his seasoned personal charm. It was a vintage distilled from experience and humanity. It had met the ancient requirement for the mellowing ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... God, as it does to me. How pleased we both feel when we think well of ourselves, I with my picture, and you con vostra [with your] learning! When anyone praises us we hold up our head and believe him, yet perhaps he is only some false flatterer who is making fun of us, so don't credit anyone who praises you, for you have no notion ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... the maze of happiness that surrounded her, Miss Milner oftentimes asked her heart, and her heart whispered like a flatterer, "Yes;" Are not my charms even more invincible than I ever believed them to be? Dorriforth, the grave, the pious, the anchorite Dorriforth, by their force, is animated to all the ardour of the most impassioned lover—while the proud priest, the austere guardian is humbled, if I but frown, into ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... our country, but to the world, must be deprecated by every patriot and every tendency to a state of things likely to produce it immediately checked. Such a tendency has existed—does exist. Always the friend of my countrymen, never their flatterer, it becomes my duty to say to them from this high place to which their partiality has exalted me that there exists in the land a spirit hostile to their best interests—hostile to liberty itself. It is a spirit contracted ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... a little girl, shyly twisting the toe of a rough shoe in the dust of the mountain roadside. Once more she saw a pair of eyes that won the heart with their honesty and seemed willing to have other eyes look through them into a soul concealing nothing. Though Jefferson Edwardes had been her first flatterer, he had flattered without ulterior motive. She was a ragged child and he a rich young man who might have to die. Suddenly she felt that the little girl who was once herself had been more admirable in every way than this polished woman who had succeeded her: the woman who was ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... discernment, Mrs. Fabens had discovered in him more than one design which she pronounced artful; she studied his character, and told her husband and daughter in confidence, she believed him a cunning flatterer, and a cheat; and that he would not always sail in smooth ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... boasted noble rivers, with a reputation for sanctity into the bargain? In short, he preferred his leprosy to such irregular medicine. But it happened, by some immense fortuity, that one of his servants, though an Oriental, was a friend, instead of a flatterer; and this sensible fellow said, 'If the prophet told you to do some great and difficult thing, to get rid of this fearful malady, would not you do it, however distasteful? and can you hesitate when he merely says, Wash in the Jordan, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... reformer could not see it so generally entertained without experiencing the deepest grief. On the side of the people, Munzer and all the leaders of the insurrection represented him as a vile hypocrite, a flatterer of the great, and these calumnies easily obtained belief. The violence with which Luther had declared against the rebels had displeased even moderate men. The friends of Rome exulted; all were against him, and he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... with the Members for Westminster and Southwark; and you will have no doubt to which the preference is due. It is needless to mention Mr Fox, Mr Sheridan, Mr Tierney, Sir Samuel Romilly. Yet I must pause at the name of Sir Samuel Romilly. Was he a mob orator? Was he a servile flatterer of the multitude? Sir, if he had any fault, if there was any blemish on that most serene and spotless character, that character which every public man, and especially every professional man engaged in politics, ought to propose to himself as a model, it was this, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is sweet of you," she said, giving him the full effect of her heavenly smile. "But I'm afraid you're a terrible flatterer." ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... author, "At last I am beloved!" When a woman, be she maid, wife, or widow, lets the charming words escape her, "Thou art handsome," the words may be false, but the man opens his thick skull to their subtle poison, and thenceforth he is attached by an everlasting tie to the pretty flatterer, the true or the deceived judge; she becomes his particular world, he thirsts for her continual testimony, and he never wearies of it, even if he is a crowned prince. Ernest walked proudly up and down his room; ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... has been sometimes represented as a very Diogenes, for carping and sarcasm—a very Aristophanes, to blacken character with ridicule and reproach. But he is as far removed from the cynic or the buffoon, as from the panegyrist or the flatterer. He is not the indiscriminate admirer that Plutarch was. Nor is he such a universal hater as Sallust. It is the fault of the times that he is obliged to deal so much in censure. If there ever were perfect monsters on earth, such were several of the Roman Emperors. ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... said the flatterer, with a generous smile. "Egscuse me—I diffeh fum you. 'Tis a beaucheouz bwead. Yesseh. And eve'y loaf got the name beaucheouzly pwint on the top, with 'Patent'—sich an' sich a time. 'Tis the tooth, Mr. Bison, I'm boun' to ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... you are no losenger!" [flatterer] saith he. "Have I two heads, or four legs, that you think no maid should have me? or is my temper so hot that you count I shall lead her a dog's life? or what see you in me, body or soul, to make you cry out in ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... yours, Leo, or rather of your Court; by his example alone we may learn that an enemy is not more baneful than a flatterer. For what did he bring about by his flattery, except evils which no king could have brought about? At this day the name of the Court of Rome stinks in the nostrils of the world, the papal authority is growing weak, and its notorious ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... know not what, and feare to finde Mine eye too great a flatterer for my minde: Fate, shew thy force, our selues we do not owe, What is decreed, must be: and be ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... by reason he spake some flattering words—in good sooth, but 'tis a marvel unto me. Truly, I might conceive the same in case a maid were rare ill-usen at home— were her father ever harsh unto her, and her mother all day a-nagging at her—then, if the man should show him no mere flatterer, but a true friend, would I not stick to the days she had known him. And yet, as methinks, it should be a strange case wherein a true man should not go boldly and honestly to the maid's father, and ask her of him, with no ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... and promises they break, Yet act the flatterer's part; With fair deceitful lips they speak, And with a ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... "Thanks, flatterer," simpered Blackie, coming to the edge of the walk as I stepped from the automobile. "Was you expectin' ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... was not slow to reply: she used to say that the defunct Barry was a bankrupt and a beggar; and as for the fashionable society which he saw, he saw it from my Lord Bagwig's side-table, whose flatterer and hanger-on he was known to be. Regarding Mrs. Barry, the lady of Castle Brady would make insinuations still more painful. However, why should we allude to these charges, or rake up private scandal of a hundred years old? ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to express the opinions and wishes of his prince. Buckingham came forward as a statesman, who opposes his own insight to the aims of his sovereign. He says that if he should concur with the King, he should be a flatterer; that if he should fail to express his own opinion, he should be a traitor. In this matter he could rely on the support of the Prince, who, without estranging himself from his father, still appeared to be less dependent on ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... "'You flatterer! But, seriously, I thought every one knew the Margravine of Kalbs-Kuchen. She is the greatest heiress in Europe—has a magnificent independent principality, noble palaces, and such diamonds! That personage beside her is ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... this war that a bold flatterer (whose name is unknown) published the Itineraries of Alexander and Trajan, in order to direct the victorious Constantius in the footsteps of those great conquerors of the East. The former of these has been published for the first time by M. Angelo ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... fawning dependents, the Fullertons, ceased to annoy him. They were poor parasites, but she thought for them, and they professed to love her in return. She had emptied her life of finer things, but this relation of patron and flatterer, such as it was, did something to fill the vacancy; and George made no further effort ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and by all manner of knavish tricks procures him money for the gratification of his passions; (as this character plays a principal part, I shall shortly make some further observations on it;) the flatterer or accommodating parasite, who, for the sake of a good meal, is ready to say or do any thing that may be required of him the sycophant, a man whose business it was to set quietly disposed people by the ears, and stir up law-suits, for the conduct of which he offered his services; the gasconading ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... many fields. At court, though no trifler or flatterer, he was a favourite counsellor in three successive reigns, but he never meddled much in civil or temporal affairs. His learning made him the equal and the friend of Grotius, and of the foremost contemporary scholars. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the whole, I do not think it would be going too far to apply to him the above-named moralist's description of the wise man:—"He reproves nobody, praises nobody, blames nobody, nor even speaks of himself; if any one praises him, in his own mind he contemns the flatterer; if any one reproves him, he looks with care that he be not unsettled in the state of tranquillity that he has entered into. All his desires depend on things within his power; he transfers all his aversions to those things which Nature commands us to avoid. His appetites are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... "Ah, Dolores, you flatterer! Seriously, though, don't you realize that we are Americans, and people of position? An injury to us would bring terrible consequences upon General Longorio's head. That is why he sent his ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... this vast multitude in society remain ever in an irrecoverably ungovernable state. We discover only the cunning depredator of the household; the tip-toe spy, at all corners—all ear, all eye: the parasitical knave—the flatterer of the follies, and even the eager participator of the crimes, of his superior. The morality of servants has not been improved by the wonderful revelations of Swift's "Directions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates the practice. This celebrated tract, designed ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... impressed instead of lolling there like a surfeited python. I tell you, old Sabre was all pink under his skin, and his eyes shining, and his voice tingling. I tell you, if you were a real painter instead of a base flatterer of bloated and wealthy sitters, and if you'd seen him then, you'd have painted the masterpiece of your age and called it The Visionary. I tell you, old Sabre was fine. He said he'd been thinking all round that sort of stuff for years, and that ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Colax, an old Play of Plautus)—Ver. 25. Although Nonius Marcellus professes to quote from the Colax of Plautus (so called from the Greek Kolax, "a flatterer" or "parasite"), some scholars have disbelieved in the existence of any Play of Plautus known by that name. Cooke says: "If Plautus had wrote a Play under the title of 'Colax,' I should think it very unlikely that it should have escaped Terence's eye, considering how soon he flourished ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... well believe she tempted them and failed, Being so bitter: for fine plots may fail, Though harlots paint their talk as well as face With colours of the heart that are not theirs. I will not let her know: nine tithes of times Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same. And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crime Are pronest to it, and impute themselves, Wanting the mental range; or low desire Not to feel lowest makes them level all; Yea, they would pare the mountain to the plain, To leave an equal baseness; ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... writes to please, and not to serve, he is a flatterer and a hypocrite; if to serve and not to please, he turns cynic and satirist. The first deals in smooth falsehood, the last in rough scandal; the last may do some good, though little; the first does no good, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... place, Zoe would call you an old flatterer," she returned with a light laugh, but a tell-tale ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... her beauty, is to listen to your obliging discourse; I would rather pay you usury than obtain money gratis from any one else." "Of a surety, my lord," said one of his principal associates, who was called flatterer, "my uncle shows you no respect but what is fully your right; but with your permission, I will assert, that he has not bestowed half the commendation on her ladyship which she deserves. I cannot myself ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... early trained in eloquence, and lived amid scenes of human activity. About 30 B.C. he settled at Rome, where his literary talents secured the patronage and friendship of Augustus. But though a courtier he was no flatterer. 'Titus Livius,' says Tacitus (Ann. iv. 34), 'pre-eminently famous for eloquence and truthfulness, extolled Cn. Pompeius in such a panegyric that Augustus called him Pompeianus, and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship.' He returned to his native town before ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... will accompany you!—Ah, since you are no longer minister, my dear friend, and that one does not appear to be a flatterer or a seeker of patronage, one can speak to you—You have faults enough!—You are too confident, too moderate—It is necessary to have a firm hand—And then that could not last. Those situations are all very fine but they ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... perspicuity. This order of platonic ladies are to be dealt with in a peculiar manner from all the rest of the sex. Flattery is the general way, and the way in this case; but it is not to be done grossly. Every man that has wit, and humour, and raillery, can make a good flatterer for woman in general; but a Platonne is not to be touched with panegyric: she will tell you, it is a sensuality in the soul to be delighted that way. You are not therefore to commend, but silently consent to all she does, and says. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... possess a good share of common sense, and with the right kind of influence would have made a far different man from what he was. Self-love was the bane of his life, and as he liked dearly to be flattered, so he in turn became a most consummate flatterer; always, however, adapting his remarks to the nature of the person with whom he was conversing. Thus to Nellie Kennedy he said a thousand foolish things, just because he knew he gratified her vanity by doing so. Although possessing the reputation of a wealthy ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... the University building—had been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four were to be conjunct editors, and, what was the main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every rule of arithmetic—that flatterer of credulity—the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. I went home that morning walking upon air. To have been chosen by these three distinguished students ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... represent the Gods planning and executing any work in another form, and perhaps this opinion arose from the idea which mankind have of their own beauty. But do not you, who are so great an adept in physics, see what a soothing flatterer, what a sort of procuress, nature is to herself? Do you think there is any creature on the land or in the sea that is not highly delighted with its own form? If it were not so, why would not a bull become enamored of a mare, or a horse of a cow? Do you believe ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to be with some sign of respect to those present. Be no flatterer; neither play with any one who delights not to be played with. Read no paper or book in company. Come not near the papers or books of another when he is writing. Let your countenance be cheerful; but in serious matters ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... "Flatterer," she said lightly, as he rose, hat in hand. He glanced across at Adrien, who was talking to Lord Merivale. "I am off on another mission," he said, lowering his voice. "I fancy my friend must be thinking ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge, and executioner, let us decide, without trial, testimony, or form, that certain motives of those who are "there sitting where we dare not soar", are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet-laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... his preferment, indeed, to a long-exercised deference to Lundie and his family; for, while the Major himself was much too acute to be the dupe of one so much his inferior in real talents and attainments, most persons are accustomed to make liberal concessions to the flatterer, even while they distrust his truth and are perfectly aware of his motives. On the present occasion, the contest in skill was between two men as completely the opposites of each other in all the leading essentials of character as very well could be. Pathfinder ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... was done, the king showed him what manner of meat he had eaten, asking him how it liketh him. Harpagus made answer, though with an heavy heart, Quod regi placet, id mihi quoque placet; "Whatsoever pleaseth the king, that also pleaseth me." And here we have an ensample of a flatterer, or dissembler: for this Harpagus spake against his own heart and conscience. Surely, I fear me, there be a great many of flatterers in our time also, which will not be ashamed to speak against their ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... elaborate eulogy. No doubt Pope came to regard a letter from Hill with terror, though Hill compared him to Horace and Juvenal, and hoped that he would live till the virtues which his spirit would propagate became as general as the esteem of his genius. In short, Hill, who was a florid flatterer, is so complimentary that we are not surprised to find him telling Richardson, after Pope's death, that the poet's popularity was due to a certain "bladdery swell of management." "But," he concludes, "rest his memory in in ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... little flatterer, you will make me vain," said Isabel kissing her. "If I have done you any good, I am very glad indeed," she added in a more serious tone, "I have endeavored to do my duty, but I am afraid that I ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... attending church only in the morning—pray reform it), you use a very harsh term. There is nothing in the book that offends me; although," he added, cautiously, "I do not mean to say that I sanction entirely either your religious, philosophical, or political speculations. I am no flatterer, and claim the privilege of a friend to speak ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Tickels, drawing nearer to her, and eagerly surveying the exposed charms of her splendid person—"offer no apology for feasting my eyes on beauty such as yours. I am no fulsome flatterer when I declare to you, that you are the queen and star of all the beautiful women it has ever been my lot to behold! You are ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... "There, flatterer," said the queen tapping him lightly on the shoulder to Francis' amazement for she expected her to take no notice of such adulation. "Thou must come ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... for impartial censure, and even for quick-sighted envy, to cross-examine the tale without offence to the courtesies of humanity; and while the eulogist, detected in exaggeration or falsehood, must pay the full penalty of his baseness in the contempt which brands the convicted flatterer. Publicly has Mr. Southey been reviled by men, who, as I would fain hope for the honour of human nature, hurled fire- brands against a figure of their own imagination; publicly have his talents been depreciated, his principles ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... supposed by their eagerness that they had never seen a regal countenance." "Yet there was no occasion to run very far to see the handsome face of a king." "Hold your tongue, madame la baronne de Pamklek, you are a flatterer. There is a crowned head which for thirty years has desired to visit France, but I have always turned a deaf ear, and will resist it as long as possible." "Who, sire, is the king so unfortunate as to banished by you from your majesty's presence?" ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he ...
— The Republic • Plato
... McCulloch-Williams Monotony Philip Gerry "Plug" Ivory and "Plug" Avery Holman F. Day Supper With Natica Robert E. MacAlarney By The Fountain Margaret Houston Bas Bleu Anna A. Rogers The Vagabond M. M. The Doing of the Lambs Susan Sayre Titsworth The Unattained William Hamilton Hayne The Flatterer George Hibbard The Miracle of Dawn Madison Cawein The Song of Broadway Robert Stewart Green Devils and Old Maids Emerson G. Taylor Two Sorrows Charles Hanson Towne Love and Mushrooms Frances Wilson Some Feminine Stars Alan Dale For Book Lovers ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... such qualities to a prince who was known to be entirely lacking in them would be regarded as little acquainted with the world and with court manners, for he would cause the person to be publicly ridiculed. In this case the praise would degenerate into satire and the incautious flatterer would fare badly."[203] Flattery has always been the return which court poets make for their slavery. Ariosto and Tasso were no more free from it than were Horace and Virgil. When the poet of the Orlando Furioso discovered that Cardinal Ippolito was beginning to ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... conscientious student, and takes an exceedingly comprehensive survey of all questions. He is genial, generous and candid, and has all the necessary qualities of heart and brain to make a great President. He has no prejudices. Prejudice is the child and flatterer of ignorance. He is firm, but not obstinate. The obstinate man wants his own way; the firm man stands by the right. Andrew Johnson was ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... verdict they proclaim, When Innocence her cause defends. So will the world succumb to ill, And what is worthy perish quite; How then may grow the sense which still Instructs us to discern the right? E'en the right-minded man, in time, To briber and to flatterer yields; The judge, who cannot punish crime, Joins with the culprit whom he shields.— I've painted black, yet fain had been A veil ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... But from his intimate relations, especially to the court of Prussia, some insinuations have been made as to the character of Humboldt. They are as unjust as they are severe in expression. He was never a flatterer of those in power. He has shown it by taking a prominent position, in 1848, at the head of those who accompanied the victims of the revolution of that year to their last place of rest. But while he expressed his independence in such a manner, he had the kindliest feeling for all parties. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... with thee! thou evil flatterer!" cried Zarathustra mischievously, "why dost thou spoil me with such ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... gray eyes were lifted for the sixth part of a second, and a voice that bad learned of the doves in the forest proceeded to rebuke the flatterer. "Thee is idle in thy speech, Angus MacLean," it declared. "I am not fair; nor, if I were, should thee tell me of it. Also, friend, it is idle and tendeth toward idolatry to speak of the first day of the fifth ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Our author might also have alluded to the old apology for every thing inane or contemptible—"It is a tale of the man in the moon." When that arch flatterer, John Lylie, published (in 1591) his "Endymion, or the man in the moon"—a court comedy, as it was afterwards called; in other words, intended for the gratification of Queen Elizabeth, and in which her personal charms and attractions are grossly lauded—he ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... lest he should perchance see the error of his ways and abandon his vicious courses, he secretly gave a commission to the son of one of his ministers, a young man of great abilities and agreeable manners, an eloquent flatterer and amusing companion, who arrived at the court of Anantavarma, attended by a numerous retinue, as if travelling about for ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... you!" says the Hen, kind of turning away and looking as if what Charley'd said really had made her feel like blushing a little. Then she faced round again and shook hands with Boston—who was so rattled he seemed only about half awake, and done it like a pump—and says to him: "Mr. Charles is a born flatterer if ever there was one, sir, and you must pay no attention whatever to his extravagant words. I only try in my poor way, as occasion presents itself"—she let her voice drop down so it went sort of soft and ketchy—"to mollify some ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... right mind, his patrimony is sufficient; if not, all supplies will be insufficient." But to Antipater he answered more sharply, who would have him engaged in something dishonorable. "Antipater," said he, "cannot have me both as his friend and his flatterer." And, indeed, Antipater was wont to say, he had two friends at Athens, Phocion and Demades; the one would never suffer him to gratify him at all, the other would never be satisfied. Phocion might ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... boasted of their temples, pyramids, colossi, and sepulchres, thus happy Bologna will be able to glory in and to boast of the choir of S. Domenico. And because I do not wish that the love and affection that I bear to my most excellent father should make me to be considered a flatterer (!), a thing far from me, and especially with friends about whom I always speak the truth, I say no more; yet all that which I could say would be little enough on the merit of his rare and singular ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... monuments of the imperial city. The Odeum, a roofed theatre, was erected by him, capable of holding twelve thousand people. He also made many additions to his palace on the Palatine—so lofty, that Martial, his flatterer, described it as towering above the clouds, and Statius compared the ceiling to the cope ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... University building - had been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four were to be conjunct editors and, what was the main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every rule of arithmetic - that flatterer of credulity - the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. I went home that morning walking upon air. To have been chosen by these three distinguished students was to ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the great Whig party of this nation. Your speech upon this occasion is the greatest that has been made by any of us, for which we wish to honor and defend you.' This I consider no ordinary compliment, coming from Lincoln, for he was no flatterer nor disposed to bestow praise where it was undeserved. Colonel Baker heartily concurred in all he said, and between those two glorious men I left the stand and we marched out of the State House through our friends, who trooped after us evidently anticipating ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... a parasite and mighty flatterer of James V.; but one of the greatest enemies to God and his people (that then began to profess the true religion) that was in all the court, being such a bigotted papist, that, one day in a large audience, he renounced his portion of Christ's kingdom, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... such grace at all as should make him go leave off any of his mirth, and so sit and mourn for his sin." Such mind as this, lo, have some of those who are not unlearned, and have worldly wit at will, who tell great men such tales as perilously beguile them. For the flatterer who so telleth them would, if he told a true tale, jeopard to ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... dinner-table, she takes the earliest opportunity of expressing her belief that you are acquainted with the Clickits; she is sure she has heard the Clickits speak of you—she must not tell you in what terms, or you will take her for a flatterer. You admit a knowledge of the Clickits; the plausible lady immediately launches out in their praise. She quite loves the Clickits. Were there ever such true-hearted, hospitable, excellent people—such a gentle, interesting little woman as Mrs. Clickit, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... by this master-knave, who, from the start, made himself Thuillier's flatterer, the discussion became stormy, and presently bitter; but as, by the deed of partnership the deciding word was left to la Peyrade in all matters concerning the editorship, he finally closed it by sending the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... splendour, in which he could loudly celebrate the genius, the magnificence, and the piety of a prince, who, both as a conqueror and legislator, had surpassed the puerile virtues of Cyrus and Themistocles. Disappointment might urge the flatterer to secret revenge, and the first glance of favour might again tempt him to suspend and suppress a libel, in which the Roman Cyrus is degraded into an odious and contemptible tyrant, in which both the Emperor and his consort Theodora ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... worse, A brutal boorishness, which fain would win Regard by unbrushed teeth and close-shorn skin, Yet all the while is anxious to be thought Pure independence, acting as it ought. Between these faults 'tis Virtue's place to stand, At distance from the extreme on either hand. The flatterer by profession, whom you see At every feast among the lowest three, Hangs on his patron's looks, takes up each word Which, dropped by chance, might else expire unheard, Like schoolboys echoing what their masters say In sing-song drawl, or Gnatho in ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Chaminade's "The Flatterer" followed. In the midst of this the door opened quietly and closed again. Melissy finished, fingered her music, and became somehow aware that she was not alone. She turned unhurriedly on the seat and met the smiling eyes ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... unseasonably to set upon those that are carried with the vulgar opinions, with the theorems, and tenets of philosophers: his conversation being an example how a man might accommodate himself to all men and companies; so that though his company were sweeter and more pleasing than any flatterer's cogging and fawning; yet was it at the same time most respected and reverenced: who also had a proper happiness and faculty, rationally and methodically to find out, and set in order all necessary determinations and instructions for a man's life. A man without ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... sources. Aristoph'anes, the chief of the comic poets, describes him as "a noisy brawler, loud in his criminations, violent in his gestures, corrupt and venal in his principles, a persecutor of rank and merit, and a base flatterer and sycophant of the people." Thucydides also calls him "a dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the most violent of all the citizens." Both these writers, however, had personal grievances. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... ever a sad flatterer, my dear Beaufort," returned St. Aulaire, one hand on the hilt of his silver dress sword, the other holding his chapeau de bras. He regarded Beaufort for an instant with a sour smile, and then turned and made his way ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... On the Blessed Life, there is no direct evidence that the savor of Christian faith ever qualified his works or his personal principles. He was a man of grand ideas and inspirations, but he was a time server and a flatterer of the Emperor Nero, who, nevertheless, caused his death when he had no further use ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... who was always a flatterer, and who at last saved his ill-gotten wealth by the surrender of his wife as a love-gift to the Duc de Choiseul. "We all have our own injuries to bear. The Intendant was just showing us the spot of dirt cast upon ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... bear his friend's infirmities, But Brutus makes mine greater than they are. Bru. I do not, till you practise them on me. Cas. You love me not. Bru. I do not like your faults. Cas. A friendly eye could never see such faults. Bru. A flatterer's would not, though they do appear As huge as high Olympus. Cas. Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come, Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius, For Cassius is aweary of the world; Hated by one he loves; ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... feel sure he would not care for any of these other young ladies. I happen to know what he thinks of young ladies. But you—you are so different! I do not wish to be a flatterer, like so many of my shallow kind, but I am sure that he would appreciate the privilege of knowing you, would feel at his ease with you. But of course it all depends upon Mrs. Nunn. She may disapprove of your meeting one with so ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... but it was wonderful how those kind, sympathizing words blew off at once the whole mists of nonsense and fancy. Tom was the sound, good, religious man to whom her heart and her troth were given; the other was no such thing, a mere flatterer, and she had known it all along. She would never think of him again, and she was sure he would not think of her. Truth had dispelled all the fancied sense of hypocrisy and double-dealing: she sat down and wrote to Tom as if Delaford had never existed, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the dead. The popular form negromancie still survives in French. To curry favour is a corruption of Mid. Eng. "to curry favel." The expression is translated from French. Palsgrave has curryfavell, a flatterer, "estrille faveau," estriller (etriller) meaning "to curry (a horse)." Faveau, earlier fauvel, is the name of a horse in the famous Roman de Fauvel, a satirical Old French poem of the early 14th century. He symbolises worldly vanity carefully tended by all classes of society. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... possible; each step in the pedigree of the angler suggests some injurious reflection about the Sophist. They are both hunters after a living prey, nearly related to tyrants and thieves, and the Sophist is the cousin of the parasite and flatterer. The effect of this is heightened by the accidental manner in which the discovery is made, as the result of a scientific division. His descent in another branch affords the opportunity of more 'unsavoury comparisons.' For he is a retail trader, and his wares are either imported ...
— Sophist • Plato
... in England would be useless; the libeller or the flatterer would there reach me in spite of all; but in Italy we know little of literary England, and think less, except what reaches us through some garbled and brief extract in some miserable gazette. For two years (excepting two or three articles cut out and sent to you by the post) I never read ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... eye-witnesses. In the heart of Kentucky he was able to see the effects of the President's Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued but three weeks before. He described the coming of the Confederate army into Kentucky as "the Flatterer, dressed in a white garment, who with many fair speeches would have turned Christian and Faithful from the glittering gates of the Golden City, shining serene and fair over the land of Beulah." The ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... fond thing! Heave and flutter to his sighs While the flatterer on his wing, Woo'd, and ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... those who, in any of their private communications, had the meanness to affect acquiescence in such views. When Denon brought him, after the battle of Wagram, the design of a medal representing an eagle strangling a leopard, Buonaparte rebuked and dismissed the flatterer. "What," said he, "strangling the leopard! There is not a spot of the sea on which the eagle dares show himself. This is base adulation. It would have been nearer the truth to represent the eagle as ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... shoved, and pressed, and would be heard. Sakil's high roof, the Muses' palace, rung With endless cries, and endless sons he sung. To bless good Sakil Laurus would be first; But Sakil's prince and Sakil's God he curst. Sakil without distinction threw his bread, Despised the flatterer, but the poet fed." I need not say that Sakil is Sackville, or that Laurus is a translation of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... therefore, proper to change the common form of our addresses to the throne, to do once, at least, what his majesty demands and the people expect, and to remember that no characters are more inconsistent, than those of a counsellor of the king, and a flatterer of the ministry. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... the skill of the Florentines, who have beautified and adorned not only their own city but also very many others, with great glory and no small profit to themselves and to their country. And, seeing that the fear of being held a flatterer should not prevent me from testifying to the truth, though this will turn to the highest fame and honor of my lords and patrons, I say that all Italy, nay the whole world, owes it solely to the judgment and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Assembles flatterers, brib'd to praise his trash. But if he keeps a table, drinks good wine, And gives his hearers handsomely to dine; If he'll stand bail, and 'tangled debtors draw Forth from the dirty cobwebs of the law; Much shall I praise his luck, his sense commend, If he discern the flatterer from the friend. Tu seu donaris seu quid donare voles cui; Nolito ad versus tibi factos ducere plenum Laetitiae; clamabit enim, Pulchre, bene, recte! Pallescet; super his etiam stillabit amicis Ex oculis rorem; saliet; tundet pede terram. Ut qui conducti ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... have passed since last we observed the lover. He is husband and father now, but what a change these few years have wrought in him! Forgotten are the lover's vows. She that once his goddess was, is now his slave. The fulsome flatterer of former times has degenerated into a chronic fault-finder. With the change of her name has begun his change of treatment of her. Cast aside are the many courtesies and expressions of endearment that marked his conduct to her prior ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... action—every man admires these in woman in the best moments of his life. It is when he lowers himself to the level of the public meeting, or of the fashionable drawing-room, that he is changed into a flatterer, and he who flatters always despises the object ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... have been severe. The Ranters were like the black man with the white robe, named Flatterer, who led the pilgrims into a net,[70] under the pretence of showing them the way to the celestial city; or like Adam the first, who offered Faithful his three daughters to wife[71]—the lust of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... more ready than any other man to receive calumnies. Then of all things he is the most inconsistent; for if you express admiration of him moderately, he is offended that no very great court is paid to him, whereas if you pay court to him extravagantly, he is offended with you for being a flatterer. And the most important matter of all is that which I am about to say:—he disturbs the customs handed down from our fathers, he is a ravisher of women, and he puts men to death without trial. On the other hand the rule of many ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... entrusts his fortunes to the sea, wins a mighty harvest; he who seeks the camp and the field of war, may gird him with gold: the vile flatterer lies drunken on embroidered purple; the gallant who courts the favours of wedded wives, wins wealth by his sin: eloquence alone shivers in frosty rags and invokes the neglected arts ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... nation. And taught more pleasant methods of salvation; Where Heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute, Lest God himself should seem too absolute: Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare, And vice admired to find a flatterer there! Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies, [552] And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies. These monsters, critics! with your darts engage, Here point your thunder, and exhaust your ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... sources of influence upon collected assemblies, he was absolutely deficient. Besides which, he had neither the inclination nor habit of sustained, systematic labour, another important condition of internal government. He was at once ambitious and indolent, a flatterer and a scoffer, a consummate courtier in the art of pleasing and of serving without the appearance of servility; ready for everything, and capable of any pliability that might assist his fortune, preserving always the mien, and recurring at need to the attractions of independence; a diplomatist ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... evil will dart forth in the latter: utterly to extinguish which will give some pain, and uneasiness to both; for I apprehend no mind was ever yet formed entirely free from blemish, unless peradventure that of a sanctified hypocrite, whose praises some well-fed flatterer hath gratefully ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... same old flatterer, Hans," said Inza; "but you mustn't try to flirt with me now. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... access to the emperor, by means of my father's intimacy with him, he being a very good courtier—or, in other words, a most prostitute flatterer—so I soon ingratiated myself with Zeno, and so well imitated my father in flattering him, that he would never part with me from about his person. So that the first armed force I ever beheld was that with which Marcian ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... man may be a Weston in merit, and a Churchill in fortune.—But Harriet Smith—I have not half done about Harriet Smith. I think her the very worst sort of companion that Emma could possibly have. She knows nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing every thing. She is a flatterer in all her ways; and so much the worse, because undesigned. Her ignorance is hourly flattery. How can Emma imagine she has any thing to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful inferiority? ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of the aristocratic lady who was to be her chaperon; the Queen, who last evening had catechised her as if she were a child, and whom she distrusted; the servile flatterer, Malfalconnet, in whose mirthful manner that day for the first time she thought she had detected dislike and slight sarcasm; the imperial love messenger, Don Luis Quijada, who with icy, dutiful coldness scarcely vouchsafed a word to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have in process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village, and fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward coils, as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the net of the Flatterer. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... favourite captain of His Majesty George the Third, who, let people say what they will of him, was truly the sailors' friend, and wished to be his subjects' friend, as far as he had the power. Sir Harry was a favourite, not because he was a flatterer, but because the King knew him to be an ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... not what; and fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe; What is decreed must be, and be ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... away his weapons! Y. Mor. Thou proud disturber of thy country's peace, Corrupter of thy king, cause of these broils, Base flatterer, yield! and, were it not for shame, Shame and dishonour to a soldier's name, Upon my weapon's point here shouldst thou fall, And welter in thy gore. Lan. Monster of men, That, like the Greekish strumpet, train'd to arms And bloody wars so many valiant knights, Look for no other fortune, wretch, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... would not overwhelm the authors with the whole load of infamy, of which part, perhaps the greater part, ought to fall upon their patrons. If he that hires a bravo, partakes the guilt of murder, why should he who bribes a flatterer, hope to be exempted from the shame of falsehood? The unhappy dedicator is seldom without some motives which obstruct, though not destroy, the liberty of choice; he is oppressed by miseries which he hopes to relieve, or inflamed by ambition which he expects to gratify. But the patron ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... him with an easy, kind air; he, always a flatterer with his lips, cast himself ten times on his knees before the prince, and gained nothing by all these demonstrations. He went to rejoin Mademoiselle on the following day at Choisy, and dared to scold her for having constructed and ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... last night gave us a very perfect imitation of old Cumberland, who carried the poetic jealousy and irritability further than any man I ever saw. He was a great flatterer too, the old rogue. Will Erskine used to admire him. I think he wanted originality. A very high-bred man in point ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... thenceforth much with him, made cheese-soup and other odd messes for him; and finally worked his way. It is true he was cudgelled by some one he had offended, for a thousand paces, in sight of the whole army, but this did not prevent his advancement. Vendome liked such an unscrupulous flatterer; and yet as we have seen, he was not in want of praise. The extraordinary favour shown him by the King—the credulity with which his accounts of victories were received—showed to every one in what direction their laudation was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the other girl, just because she is pretty and I am not. Go! I don't love you any longer!" and then she caught the coaxing cat with both hands to her breast, pressed her smooth chin on the white head of the little flatterer, and gazed after the boat. In her ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Byron told Lady Blessington ('Conversations', p. 172), "is another of my early friends. He is very clever, very original, and has a fund of information: he is also very good-natured, but he is not much of a flatterer." Bankes ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... and I must strive To know my shames and praises from your tongue; None else to me, nor I to none alive, That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong. In so profound abysm I throw all care Of others' voices, that my adder's sense To critic and to flatterer stopped are. Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: You are so strongly in my purpose bred, That all the ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... with his And yet. Would I listen to him, what a world of palliations and apologies would he furnish! How would he remind me of cases in which my sympathy was always awakened with attention! How often—But I will not listen to the flatterer. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Captive of the Earth art thou! She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name[hv] Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame, Who wooed thee once, thy Vassal, and became[hw] The flatterer of thy fierceness—till thou wert A God unto thyself; nor less the same To the astounded kingdoms all inert, Who deemed thee for a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... class-room we sat always side by side. My comrade was unapproachably first in the class, and I came next; sometime between us like a dividing wall came this fellow Sarvoelgyi, who was even then a great flatterer and sneak, and in this way sometimes drove me out of my place—and young schoolboys think a great deal of their own particular places. Of course I was even then so godless that they could not make sufficient complaints against me. Later, during the French war, as the schools ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... is perfectly well, and ready to dance at this minute with your reverence," says her father. "Or stay, Chaplain, perhaps you only dance on Sunday?" The Colonel then turned to Harry again. "You paid your court very neatly to the great lady, Mr. Flatterer. My Lady Yarmouth has been trumpeting your praises at the Pump Room. She says she has got a leedel boy in Hannover dat is wery like you, and you are a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... promised to a flatterer, a mountebank, a panegyrist, a prize-fighter, &c. (M.) Manu ch. ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... but a flatterer," said Nance, but she did not say it clearly, for what with bewilderment and satisfaction, her heart ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like a flatterer, I must say it's because of the woods feature that I remember you so well. The forest interests me. I'm afraid I'm inclined to be very foolish about the woods. Why, in ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... In the last year of his life he said to Mr. Matthew Arnold, in a strange burst of confidence which showed how completely he realized that his fall from power was final, "You have heard me accused of being a flatterer. It is true. I am a flatterer. I have found it useful. Every one likes flattery: and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel." In this business Lord Beaconsfield excelled. Once, sitting at dinner by the Princess of Wales, he was trying ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... dog knowing full well what she was). "By the —- by the —- ," said the lord, "next to gazing at her beauty, my greatest pleasure was to hearken to your fair reasons; I had liefer pay you interest than get money elsewhere free." "Indeed, my lord," said one of his chief friends called Flatterer, "nuncle pays you not a whit less respect than is due to you, but an it please you, he has bestowed upon her ladyship scarce the half her mead of praise. I defy any man," quoth he, "to show a lovelier woman in all the Street of Pride, or a nobler than you in all the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... dickens of a time (Like the Parrot and the Monkey in the story) We shall have! Teach you, no doubt, Not to leave poor Jacko out Next time when you are ladling round the glory. I might share with honest Jack If of yielding I'd the knack, Or would stoop to play the flatterer or the flunkey. Pretty Poll! It is my pride To assist you—from outside! And I hope you're duly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... better. In all likelihood it would help her; but she did not dwell upon this adventitious encouragement. A more legitimate source of hope revealed itself in Mrs. Strangeways' allusion to her personal advantages. She was not ill-looking; on that point there needed no flatterer's assurance. Her looks, if anything, had improved, and possibly she owed something to her experiment in 'simplicity', to the air of mountain and of sea. Felix Dymes, Cyrus Redgrave, not to speak of certain other people—no matter. For all that, she must pay grave attention to the subject ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... sides of debatable questions regarding Bolvar. To follow a chronological order we have been guided by the beautiful biography written by Larrazbal, the man called by F. Lorain Petre "the greatest flatterer of Bolvar." That this assertion is false is proved in the first volume cited below. Petre's monograph contains apparent earmarks of impartiality, but in reality it is nothing but a bitter attack on the reputation of Bolvar. Its translator, a distinguished ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... will try a little History. Alison? No, certainly not Alison. 'They will be proposing Lingard next,' he murmurs, and the little irritation caused by the well-meant suggestion throws him back for the next six hours. Presently he tries Macaulay, whom some flatterer has fulsomely called 'as good as a novel,' but, though the trial of Warren Hastings gives him a fillip, the rout of Sedgemoor does away with the effect of it, and, happening upon the character of Halifax, he suffers a severe relapse. As a bedfellow, Macaulay ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... things well from one that we know doth entirely love us.' 'Love them,' said Augustine, 'and then say anything you like to them.' Now, that was Mr. Prywell's way. He loved Mansoul, and then he said many things to her that a false lover and a flatterer would ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... There are few things more irritating than to hear anyone perpetually bragging of his money, and if you happen to be poor yourself I do not think that it helps you to sit and listen more patiently. And then Gould was an injudicious flatterer; he made the flattered fellow uncomfortable. It is a nice thing, flattery, and causes one to feel good all over, if it is delicately applied with a camel's-hair brush, as it were. But Gould laid it on with a trowel. ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Avery Holman F. Day Supper With Natica Robert E. MacAlarney By The Fountain Margaret Houston Bas Bleu Anna A. Rogers The Vagabond M. M. The Doing of the Lambs Susan Sayre Titsworth The Unattained William Hamilton Hayne The Flatterer George Hibbard The Miracle of Dawn Madison Cawein The Song of Broadway Robert Stewart Green Devils and Old Maids Emerson G. Taylor Two Sorrows Charles Hanson Towne Love and Mushrooms Frances Wilson Some Feminine Stars Alan Dale For Book Lovers ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... I am," said Mrs. Holt, vigorously, "I am not a flatterer. I am telling you something for your own good—which you probably ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is incidental to man alone, or whether beasts also are liable to it." Division, and also partition, in this manner: "Whether there are three descriptions of good things." Description, like this: "What sort of person a miser is; what sort of person a flatterer;" and other things of that sort, by which the nature and life of ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... by a special grace of God. How pleased we both are when we fancy ourselves worth somewhat—I with my painting, and you with your wisdom. When any one praises us, we hold up our heads and believe him. Yet perhaps he is only some false flatterer who is scorning us all the time. So don't credit any one who praises you, for you've no notion how utterly and entirely unmannerly you are. I can quite see you standing before the Margrave and speaking so pleasantly—behaving exactly as if you were flirting with ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... a feeling which, in spite of our national unsentimentality, had a chivalrous and almost feudal tone. The interest of the poor in the life and doings of "The Family" was keen and genuine. The English peasant is too much a gentleman to be a flatterer, and compliments were often bestowed in very unexpected forms. "They do tell me as 'is understanding's no worse than it always were," was a ploughman's way of saying that an uncle of mine was in full possession of his faculties. "We call 'im 'Lord Charles' because he's so ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... with the theorems, and tenets of philosophers: his conversation being an example how a man might accommodate himself to all men and companies; so that though his company were sweeter and more pleasing than any flatterer's cogging and fawning; yet was it at the same time most respected and reverenced: who also had a proper happiness and faculty, rationally and methodically to find out, and set in order all necessary determinations and instructions for a man's life. A man without ever ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... of guiltless joys, On fools and villains ne'er descend; In vain for thee the tyrant sighs, And hugs a flatterer for ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... had little hope of his convalescence, at least in the hands of doctors. A message from the Pope produced an imprudent letter from the poet, in which he says, "Holy father! I shudder at the account of your fever; but, believe me, I am not a flatterer. I tremble to see your bed always surrounded with physicians, who are never agreed, because it would be a reproach to the second to think like the first. 'It is not to be doubted,' as Pliny says, 'that physicians, desiring to raise a name by their discoveries, make experiments upon us, and thus ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... mortifications arose in the course of their intimacy, to be sure, but few more laughable than when the newspapers had tacked them together as the pedant and his flatterer in Love's Labour's Lost. Dr. Goldsmith came to his friend, fretting and foaming, and vowing vengeance against the printer, etc., till Mr. Johnson, tired of the bustle, and desirous to think of something else, cried out at last, "Why, what would'st ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the penalty of this ancient and distinguished origin, by receiving stupid compliments on my old Dutch blood, as if that species of blood were better than any other. That sort of nonsense I have always answered by informing the flatterer that the first bearer of my venerable name was a cook; the second, a tanner; the third—well, the least said about the third the better; and the fourth, a barber. My grandfather, a very worthy saddler, in old Queen's street, was the first ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... himself. Untrue as was this comparison, it strikingly exhibited the innate nobility of soul of the poor 'Northamptonshire Peasant.' Yet even this humility, the true sign of genius, was ill-construed by some of Clare's lukewarm patrons, who reproached him for being a flatterer when he ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... of manner, nor any of those peculiarities that usually give value to praise; but the unflinching truth of the speaker, that carried his words so directly to the heart of the listener. This is one of the great advantages of plain dealing and frankness. The habitual and wily flatterer may succeed until his practices recoil on himself, and like other sweets his aliment cloys by its excess; but he who deals honestly, though he often necessarily offends, possesses a power of praising that no quality but sincerity can bestow, since his words go directly to the heart, finding their ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... longer the attitude of a favourite, who has only to express the opinions and wishes of his prince. Buckingham came forward as a statesman, who opposes his own insight to the aims of his sovereign. He says that if he should concur with the King, he should be a flatterer; that if he should fail to express his own opinion, he should be a traitor. In this matter he could rely on the support of the Prince, who, without estranging himself from his father, still appeared to be less dependent on his will than before.[438] ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... you use a very harsh term. There is nothing in the book that offends me; although," he added, cautiously, "I do not mean to say that I sanction entirely either your religious, philosophical, or political speculations. I am no flatterer, and claim the privilege of a ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... about 1594, was educated at Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford; was a master at Magdalen School, the Free School at St. Albans, and at Westminster, and Professor of Greek at Oxford under the Commonwealth. He died 1670. Wood characterises him as a butt for the wits and a flatterer of great men, and notes that he was always called by the name of Doctor Harmar, though he took no higher degree than M.A. But in 1632 he supplicated for the degree of M.B., and Dr. Grosart's note—"Herrick, no doubt, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... any one else, never esteemed as the best judge, of either play, or player. But money may purchase, and interest procure, a patent, though they cannot purchase taste, or parts, the person proposed was, possibly, some favoured flatterer, the partner of his private pleasures, or humble admirer of his table talk: These little monarchs have their little courtiers. Mr. Thomson insisted on my keeping the part. He said, 'Twas his opinion, none ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... "O, flatterer! The other, depicting my faded aspect before I discovered the priceless secrets of the treatment that I practise in the rue Baba. I shall hang them both in the reception-room. I must look at least a decade older in the 'Before' than in the 'After,' and it must, of course, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions, even ...
— The Republic • Plato
... battles, and killing half a dozen elephants for me with a single spear." This anger was worthy of Alexander, of him who could not bear the adulation of that architect {29} who promised to transform Mount Athos into a statue of him; but he looked upon the man from that time as a base flatterer, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... the world means better by him than he thinks, and that he must never treat it as his foe; he must not try to force its benefits and rewards. He must not approach it like the highwayman. Tell him never to flatter. That is the worst fault in a gentleman, for flattery makes false friends and the flatterer himself false. Tell him that good address is for ease and courtesy of life, but it must not be used to one's secret advantage as I have used mine to mortal undoing. If ever Guilbert be in great temptation, tell ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are? I shall go to Bologna by Ferrara, instead of Mantua: because I would rather see the cell where they caged Tasso, and where he became mad and * *, than his own MSS. at Modena, or the Mantuan birthplace of that harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow. I saw Verona and Vicenza ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... get a man more friends than a disposition to admire the qualities of others. I do not mean flattery, but a sincere admiration." Johnson: "Nay, Sir, flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true; but in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... support of your own family, where will you find the aid which you may require? That a state of things not modelled from the lessons of antiquity can long continue;— that is what I have not heard. Ch'ing is now showing himself to be a flatterer, who increases the errors of Your Majesty, and not a loyal minister." 'The emperor requested the opinions of others on this representation, and the premier, Li Sze [5], said, "The five emperors were not one the double of the other, nor did the three dynasties ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... next, and by his side Bloody Catullus leaning on his guide: Decrepit, yet a furious lover he, And deeply smit with charms he could not see. A monster, that ev'n this worst age outvies, Conspicuous and above the common size. A blind base flatterer; from some bridge or gate, Raised to a murd'ring minister of state. Deserving still to beg upon the road, And bless each ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... General. Lady Hamilton takes possession of him, and he is a willing captive, the most submissive and devoted I have ever seen. Sir William is old, infirm, all admiration of his wife, and never spoke to-day but to applaud her. Miss Cornelia Knight seems the decided flatterer of the two, and never opens her mouth but to show forth their praise; and Mrs. Cadogan, Lady Hamilton's mother, is—what one might expect. After dinner we had several songs in honour of Lord Nelson, written by Miss Knight, and sung by Lady ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... little arch-flatterer," I said; "and the Basin, out of its goodness of heart, has made me vain, that is all. It won't do. I need to sweep some more floors and peel some more potatoes." She would not smile; she shook ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... sugared words, returned to her The clear remembrance of a gentle voice:— 'And O! my child, should ever a flatterer Tap with his wares, and promise of all joys And vain sweet pleasures that on earth may be; Seal up your ears, sing some old happy song, Confuse his magic who is all mockery: His sweets are death.' Yet, still, how she doth long But just to taste, then ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... our forums. A calamity so awful, not only to our country, but to the world, must be deprecated by every patriot and every tendency to a state of things likely to produce it immediately checked. Such a tendency has existed—does exist. Always the friend of my countrymen, never their flatterer, it becomes my duty to say to them from this high place to which their partiality has exalted me that there exists in the land a spirit hostile to their best interests—hostile to liberty itself. It is a spirit contracted in its views, selfish ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... quoth Mr. Tickels, drawing nearer to her, and eagerly surveying the exposed charms of her splendid person—"offer no apology for feasting my eyes on beauty such as yours. I am no fulsome flatterer when I declare to you, that you are the queen and star of all the beautiful women it has ever been my lot to behold! You are ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... hair, which loosest fastest tieth? Who makes a man live then glad when he dieth? To you! to you! all song of praise is due: Only of you the flatterer never lieth. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... in many fields. At court, though no trifler or flatterer, he was a favourite counsellor in three successive reigns, but he never meddled much in civil or temporal affairs. His learning made him the equal and the friend of Grotius, and of the foremost contemporary scholars. His preaching was a unique combination ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the time, out of that order, and a choice that does honor to his memory. This was Lanfranc, a man of great learning for the times, and extraordinary piety. He owed his elevation to William; but though always inviolably faithful, he never was the tool or flatterer of the power which raised him; and the greater freedom he showed, the higher he rose in the confidence of his master. By mixing with the concerns of state he did not lose his religion and conscience, or make them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Florentines, who have beautified and adorned not only their own city but also very many others, with great glory and no small profit to themselves and to their country. And, seeing that the fear of being held a flatterer should not prevent me from testifying to the truth, though this will turn to the highest fame and honor of my lords and patrons, I say that all Italy, nay the whole world, owes it solely to the judgment and the generosity of the Medici that Greek ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... down yon vile flatterer of the clouds, 290 The smoky harbinger of thy dull prayers— Thine altar, with its blood of lambs and kids, Which fed on milk, to be destroyed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... taking leave of an old and tried friend. By homely methods, this unerring diagnostician of the human soul had been reading him, liking him, and making him feel a heart-warming sympathy. The man who shrunk from lion-hunters, and who could return the churl's answer to the advances of sycophant and flatterer, enthusiastically poured out for the ungainly mountain boy all the rare quality and bouquet of his seasoned personal charm. It was a vintage distilled from experience and humanity. It had met the ancient requirement ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... little tresses of brown have become the jet-black and flowing hair that becomes thy years, and that thou hast the stature, and, I say it not in idleness of speech, Martha, for thou knowest my tongue is no vain flatterer, but do I not see that thou hast grown into all the excellence of a most comely maiden? But 'tis not thus, or rather 'twas not thus, with her we mourn; for till this hour have I ever pictured my sister the little innocent we sported with, that gloomy night ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... is no coward, nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluch a red rose from ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... but I at the same time exempted myself from the yoke it would have imposed. Adieu, truth, liberty, and courage! How should I afterwards have dared to speak of disinterestedness and independence? Had I received the pension I must either have become a flatterer or remained silent; and, moreover, who would have insured to me the payment of it! What steps should I have been under the necessity of taking! How many people must I have solicited! I should have had more trouble ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... been severe. The Ranters were like the black man with the white robe, named Flatterer, who led the pilgrims into a net,[70] under the pretence of showing them the way to the celestial city; or like Adam the first, who offered Faithful his three daughters to wife[71]—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—if he would ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... rallied only, and not abused. And Alcibiades again was smart on Socrates, as his rival in Agatho's affection. Kings are pleased when jests are put upon them as if they were private and poor men. Such was the flatterer's to Philip, who chided him: Sir, don't I keep you? For those that mention faults of which the persons are not really guilty intimate those virtues with which they are really adorned. But then it is requisite that those virtues should be evident and certainly belong to them; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... son. When it was done, the king showed him what manner of meat he had eaten, asking him how it liketh him. Harpagus made answer, though with an heavy heart, Quod regi placet, id mihi quoque placet; "Whatsoever pleaseth the king, that also pleaseth me." And here we have an ensample of a flatterer, or dissembler: for this Harpagus spake against his own heart and conscience. Surely, I fear me, there be a great many of flatterers in our time also, which will not be ashamed to speak against their own heart and consciences, ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... beg pardon for saying so much on this subject; I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for. On this point of instructions, however, I think it scarcely possible we ever can have any sort of difference. Perhaps I may give you too much, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pretty Flatterer, to free her Heart and thy Suspicions, I'll make such aukward Love as shall persuade her, however she chance to like my Person, to think most leudly of my Parts.—But 'tis fit I take my leave, for if Lodwick ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Fabens had discovered in him more than one design which she pronounced artful; she studied his character, and told her husband and daughter in confidence, she believed him a cunning flatterer, and a cheat; and that he would not always sail ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... in a new character, Eva—that of an adroit flatterer," returned Grandma Elsie, with a look of amusement; "but I am not at all displeased, my dear child, because I credit it entirely to your affection, which I prize very highly," she hastened to add, seeing that her words had called up ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... polity has a mysterious procedure Few men have been admired by their own domestics Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it First informed who were to be the other guests First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time Flatterer in your old age or in your sickness Follies do not make me laugh, it is our wisdom which does Folly and absurdity are not to be cured by bare admonition Folly of gaping after future things Folly satisfied with itself than any reason can reasonably be Folly than ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... preservation, totally distinct from maternal affection; and to this his fine qualities served rather as an alloy, than an incentive. A youth weak enough to be really a convert, or sufficiently base to have affected being one to her opinions, a flatterer of her faults, and the tool of her designs, would have been invested by her erroneous judgment with those high deservings which actually adorned her noble offspring, though she wanted penetration to ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... over her court of parasites, he had no notion of obeying, and a direct command or opposition roused his sullen temper of passive resistance. When he found 'that little nobody of a Mrs. John Dusautoy' so far from being a flatterer, or an adorer of his perfections, inclined to laugh at him, and bent on keeping him in order, all the enmity of which he was capable arose in his mind, and though in general good-natured and not aggressive, he had a decided pleasure in doing what she disapproved, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... myself from seeming like a flatterer, I must say it's because of the woods feature that I remember you so well. The forest interests me. I'm afraid I'm inclined to be very foolish about the woods. Why, in ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... a contemptuous way," may Solomon go on to remark, "does this author speak of human nature! There is scarce one of these characters he represents but is a villain. The fox is a flatterer; the frog is an emblem of impotence and envy; the wolf in sheep's clothing a bloodthirsty hypocrite, wearing the garb of innocence; the ass in the lion's skin a quack trying to terrify, by assuming the appearance of a forest monarch (does the writer, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Antigonus, spoken in the days of Herod, and in a manner to his face, that he was an Idumean, i.e. a half Jew, seems to me of much greater authority than that pretense of his favorite and flatterer Nicolaus of Damascus, that he derived his pedigree from Jews as far backward as the Babylonish captivity, ch. 1. sect. 3. Accordingly Josephus always esteems him an Idumean, though he says his father Antipater was of the same people with the Jews, ch. viii. sect. 1. and by birth ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... world had been his marriage with Sally Flannelly,—that Sally whom Macdermot had rejected,—for from the time of his wedding he had much prospered in all worldly things. He was a hardworking man, and in that consisted his only good quality; he was plausible, a good flatterer, not deficient in that sort of sharpness which made him a successful attorney in a small provincial town, and he could be a jovial companion, when called on to take that part. Principle had never stood much in his way, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... something like the gate, and also some of the beauty of the place. When they were about to depart, one of the Shepherds gave them a note of the way. Another of them bid them beware when they met the Flatterer. The third bid them take heed that they did not sleep upon the Enchanted Ground. And the fourth bid them "Godspeed." So I awoke from ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... What figurative language! The flatterer adopts the grand style to add dignity to his speech, to make it more attractive. Will the child understand this cunning? Does he know, how could he possibly know, what is meant by grand ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... was a flatterer, and it cannot be claimed for her that she flattered adroitly always. But adroitness in flattery is not necessary for its successful use. There is no morsel of it too gross for the condor gullet and the ostrich stomach of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stranger to the noble profession of arms, yet I could admire Bonaparte's clever military plans and his shrewd remarks on the great captains of ancient and modern times. I could not refrain from saying, "General, you often reproach me for being no flatterer, but now I tell you plainly I admire you." And certainly, I really spoke the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... unreliable sources. Aristoph'anes, the chief of the comic poets, describes him as "a noisy brawler, loud in his criminations, violent in his gestures, corrupt and venal in his principles, a persecutor of rank and merit, and a base flatterer and sycophant of the people." Thucydides also calls him "a dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the most violent of all the citizens." Both these writers, however, had personal grievances. Of course Cleon very naturally became a target for the invective of the poet. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... accordingly lost no time in setting him up in the game of Siege Aunt Sally as a popular target for our rancour. And pelted he was with right good will. The genial Mr. Quilp, when he found himself deserted by his obsequious flatterer, Sampson Brass, cried out in the seclusion of his apartment at the wharf: "Oh, Sampson, Sampson, if I only had you here!" and he was considerably consoled by his operations with a hammer on the desk in front of him. The feelings ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... would be going too far to apply to him the above-named moralist's description of the wise man:—"He reproves nobody, praises nobody, blames nobody, nor even speaks of himself; if any one praises him, in his own mind he contemns the flatterer; if any one reproves him, he looks with care that he be not unsettled in the state of tranquillity that he has entered into. All his desires depend on things within his power; he transfers all his aversions to those things which Nature commands us to avoid. His appetites ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... lady at a dinner-table, she takes the earliest opportunity of expressing her belief that you are acquainted with the Clickits; she is sure she has heard the Clickits speak of you—she must not tell you in what terms, or you will take her for a flatterer. You admit a knowledge of the Clickits; the plausible lady immediately launches out in their praise. She quite loves the Clickits. Were there ever such true-hearted, hospitable, excellent people—such a gentle, interesting ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... ill-dressed. Well, all the Frenchmen ran after him; one would have supposed by their eagerness that they had never seen a regal countenance." "Yet there was no occasion to run very far to see the handsome face of a king." "Hold your tongue, madame la baronne de Pamklek, you are a flatterer. There is a crowned head which for thirty years has desired to visit France, but I have always turned a deaf ear, and will resist it as long as possible." "Who, sire, is the king so unfortunate as to banished by ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... ye would fain Your King would bide afar. But if ye looked For countenance and favor when He came, Knowing yourselves right worthy, would ye care, With cautious reasoning, deep and hard, to prove That He would never come, and would your wrath Be hot against a prophet? Nay, I wot That as a flatterer you would look on him,— Full of sweet words thy mouth is: if He come,— We think not that He will,—but if He come, Would it might be to-morrow, or to-night, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... poison of this insidious foe than in the affairs of love. A lady is beautiful, and she is praised to excess for her personal attractions. Her vanity is soothed, and her mind is so darkened, that she sees no bad motive whatever, and no blemish in the flatterer. "A woman," says one well versed in our nature, "can always find a palliation for the misdeeds which are set in motion by her own beauty." How often do we see the faults of the flatterer, in this way, actually converted into graces. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... his speech. Let me remind you of a few of them; 'smellfeast', if not a better, is yet a more graphic, word than our foreign parasite; as graphic indeed for us as {Greek: trechedeipnos} to Greek ears; 'clawback' (Hackett) is a stronger, if not a more graceful, word than flatterer or sycophant; 'tosspot' (Fuller), or less frequently 'reel-pot' (Middleton), tells its own tale as well as drunkard; and 'pinchpenny' (Holland), or 'nipfarthing' (Drant), as well as or better than miser. And then what a multitude ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Miss Percy. I feel sure he would not care for any of these other young ladies. I happen to know what he thinks of young ladies. But you—you are so different! I do not wish to be a flatterer, like so many of my shallow kind, but I am sure that he would appreciate the privilege of knowing you, would feel at his ease with you. But of course it all depends upon Mrs. Nunn. She may disapprove of your meeting one ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... "You flatterer! You dear, bonny lover. You whom I had always loved and prayed for, when I knew not where you were! You who had not left me to be like Mariana, but had hurried home at once for me when your man's work was done,—doing ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... if what Charley'd said really had made her feel like blushing a little. Then she faced round again and shook hands with Boston—who was so rattled he seemed only about half awake, and done it like a pump—and says to him: "Mr. Charles is a born flatterer if ever there was one, sir, and you must pay no attention whatever to his extravagant words. I only try in my poor way, as occasion presents itself"—she let her voice drop down so it went sort of soft and ketchy—"to mollify ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, and has a long claim to that distinction, because as early as on the 25th of June, 1790, he made a motion in the National Assembly to suppress all former Royal Orders in France, and to create in their place only a national one. Always an incorrigible flatterer, when Napoleon proclaimed himself Ali the Mussulman, De Menou professed himself Abdallah the believer ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... burly animal before me flushed. The other man was but a tricky politician of the creeping sort, a caterer to all prejudices, and a flatterer and favorer. This everybody knew. But he had become a part of the machine, was shrewd, and, with the machine ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... who were left alive. The MAN rode up; we made the circle round him. Ha! he knew how to cajole his children; he could be amiable when he liked, and feed 'em with words when their stomachs were ravenous with the hunger of wolves. Flatterer! he distributed the crosses himself, he uncovered to the dead, and then he cried to us, 'On! to Moscow!' ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... The flatterer was flattered. Having delivered the weighty news, he had leisure to savour his own importance as the bearer of it. He drank a cup of tea. Josiah was thoughtful, but Clara brimmed over with a fascinating loquacity. Then Mr. Duncalf said that he must really be ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... LADY UTTERWORD. Flatterer. Think, Mr. Mangan, whether you can really do any better for yourself elsewhere: that is the essential ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... pre-eminently attractive, it is that of a lovely daughter manifesting a promptitude and zeal to alleviate the sorrows, and to aid the weekness of a parent, by those nameless and numberless assiduities which bespeak a genuine affection. Her own works praise her, and the mere flatterer's tongue is awed into respectful silence. How deplorable is it to witness the impatience of some young persons who think every little exertion an insufferable effort, a trouble, and a fatigue; and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... My answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart: A friend should bear his friend's infirmities, But Brutus makes mine greater than they are. Bru. I do not, till you practice them on me. Cas. You love me not. Bru. I do not like your faults. Cas. A friendly eye could never see such faults. Bru. A flatterer's would not, though they do appear As huge as high Olympus. Cas. Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come, Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius, For Cassius is aweary of the world; Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother; Checked like a ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... pleasure, to looking at her beauty, is to listen to your obliging discourse; I would rather pay you usury than obtain money gratis from any one else." "Of a surety, my lord," said one of his principal associates, who was called flatterer, "my uncle shows you no respect but what is fully your right; but with your permission, I will assert, that he has not bestowed half the commendation on her ladyship which she deserves. I cannot myself produce, and I will defy any man ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... preferment, indeed, to a long-exercised deference to Lundie and his family; for, while the Major himself was much too acute to be the dupe of one so much his inferior in real talents and attainments, most persons are accustomed to make liberal concessions to the flatterer, even while they distrust his truth and are perfectly aware of his motives. On the present occasion, the contest in skill was between two men as completely the opposites of each other in all the leading essentials of character as very well could be. Pathfinder ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... with respectful politeness, as they were persuaded that the rich and powerful seek the society of persons in an inferior station only for the sake of surrounding themselves with flatterers, and that every flatterer must applaud alike all the actions of his patron, whether good or bad. On the other hand, they avoided, with equal care, too intimate an acquaintance with the lower class, who are ordinarily jealous, calumniating, and gross. They thus acquired, with some, the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... nose, that makes him execute his pantomime. Whoever has need of another is indigent, and assumes a posture. The king postures before his mistress, and before God he treads his pantomimic measure. The minister dances the step of courtier, flatterer, valet, and beggar before his king. The crowd of the ambitious cut a hundred capers, each viler than the rest, before the minister. The abbe, with his bands and long cloak, postures at least once a week before ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... this may be a lonely sort of siren play, but it is true to life and should prove a lesson. The men were flattering the dude, and flattery is always based on design and a selfish motive. Beware of the flatterer in the first place. Eschew gambling—if you are only playing for fun it costs as much as though you were playing to make money. It is demoralizing every time, and often leads to greater crime. Gambling is a very dangerous amusement. These ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... one of the four men who kept guard on their sheep tell us to take heed lest Flatterer should spread ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... easy access to the emperor, by means of my father's intimacy with him, he being a very good courtier—or, in other words, a most prostitute flatterer—so I soon ingratiated myself with Zeno, and so well imitated my father in flattering him, that he would never part with me from about his person. So that the first armed force I ever beheld was that with which Marcian surrounded the palace, where ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... to the woods, inhaling joyous renovation from the breath of Spring, and catching from the odors and sounds of autumn some diviner mood of sweetest sadness, which improves the softened heart. Whosoever is no deceiver and destroyer of his fellow-men—no liar, no flatterer, no murderer—may walk among his species, deriving, from the communion with all which they contain of beautiful or majestic, some intercourse with the Universal God. Whosoever has maintained with his own heart the strictest correspondence of confidence, who dares to examine and to estimate ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... xi., shows how Bonaparte's private police managed the affair. Harel was afterwards promoted to the governorship of the Castle of Vincennes: the four talkers, whom he and the police had lured on, were executed after the affair of Nivose. That dextrous literary flatterer, the poet Fontanes, celebrated the "discovery" of the Arena plot by publishing anonymously a pamphlet ("A Parallel between Caesar, Cromwell, Monk, and Bonaparte") in which he decided that no one but Caesar deserved the honour of a comparison with Bonaparte, and that certain ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... I had spoken about George IV. in terms of praise and affected reverence, do you believe they would have hailed his name with cheers, or have heard it with anything of respect?" And again; "We degrade our own honour and the sovereign's by unduly and unjustly praising him; and the mere slaverer and flatterer is one who comes forward, as it were, with flash notes, and pays with false coin his tribute to Caesar. I don't disguise that I feel somehow on my trial here for loyalty,—for honest English feeling." This was said by Thackeray at ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... says: "I made iniquity my law! I trod the nations under me! Their wealth gilded my palaces, where now thou mayst see the fox and hear the owl. Wicked men were my cabinet counselors. The flatterer breathed his poison in my ear. Millions of bondmen wet the soil with tears and blood! Do you not hear it crying yet to God? Lo here have I my recompense, tormented with such downfalls ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... win Regard by unbrushed teeth and close-shorn skin, Yet all the while is anxious to be thought Pure independence, acting as it ought. Between these faults 'tis Virtue's place to stand, At distance from the extreme on either hand. The flatterer by profession, whom you see At every feast among the lowest three, Hangs on his patron's looks, takes up each word Which, dropped by chance, might else expire unheard, Like schoolboys echoing what their masters say In sing-song drawl, or Gnatho in the play: While your blunt fellow battles ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... measure, Let me seize thy wetted string! Swiftly flies the flatterer, pleasure, Headlong, ever ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
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