David Lodge Quotes

The biggest bore of all is he who is overflowing with congratulations

Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.

An overdose of praise is like 10 lumps of sugar in coffee; only a very few people can swallow it.

It is simpler and easier to flatter people than to praise them.

Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale.

Women are so much in love with compliments that rather than want them, they will compliment one another, yet mean no more by it than the men do.

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.

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

I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your efforts to believe it.

To the Tennis Court and there saw the King play at Tennis, and others; but to see how the King’s play was extolled without any cause at all was a loathsome sight, though sometimes indeed he did play very well and deserved to be commended; but such open flattery is beastly.

We seldom praise anyone in good earnest, except such as admire us.

Praise is good. Some people over-praise, though. Genuine appreciation is rare to come by.

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself.

People generally despise where they flatter, and cringe to those they would gladly overtop; so that truth and ceremony are two things.

Praise is like ambergrease: a little whiff of it, and by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to your nose, it is a stink, and strikes you down.

No wonder, Sir, that he is vain; a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.

There would be no sunshine in society if the born flatterers, I mean the so-called amiable people, did not bring it in with them.

As far as I can make out, women's friendships with each other are based on a gush of lies and pretty speeches that mean nothing. You'd think they were all wolves trying to seduce each other the way they flatter and flirt when they're together.

The contrived language and the flattering attitude rarely come with the virtue.

Is it just me, or are the 49ers doing an awful lot of ass-patting today?

What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s

None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.

Flattery must be pretty thick before anybody objects to it.