"Flatterer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... flatterer. For he that is in love, soon as ever he has been smitten with the kisses of the object he loves, forthwith his substance vanishes out of doors, and melts away. 'Give me this, my honey, if you love me.' And then Gudgeon says, 'Oh apple of my eye, both that and still more, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... 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
... 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 be of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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
... 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, and forthwith returned to be herself ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... 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 ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... 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
... 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 time ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... 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
... 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 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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
... "Flatterer!" said Mrs. Ilkington archly. "I'm not surprised," she pursued. "I might have known you'd be ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... "Flatterer," said the queen, "if your father heard you, he would scold fearfully. If you compare me to the sun, how ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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
... "'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 her relation, the Duke of Kalbs-Braten, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... "Flatterer!" she said, with affected severity, but the delicate pink flush that bloomed in her cheeks showed ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... 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
... flatterer then it's long absence that gives charm. I assure you, Lieutenant Kenton, that we're very, very common clay. You should ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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
... 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, and be healed?' The general listened to good sense, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... 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 |
