"Flatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for 's ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... bride a present of some far-fetched and elegant curiosity. I have been a little perplexed, I must honestly confess, where to obtain anything likely to please a princess of her exquisite taste. But this morning, I flatter myself, I have ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... moment there are many hundred thousand young and middle-aged men of the lower and middle classes, especially the latter, who are idlers by profession, and exactly correspond to Captain Widdrington's description. These gentry have nothing particular to lose by any political rumpus, and they flatter themselves they may gain; besides, they cannot be always playing monte or taking the siesta; and even if they could, a change is sometimes agreeable. Now and then, too, they get tired of hearing Aristides called the Just—that is a very common thing with Spaniards—some mischievous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... tho' my Tongue never spoke, my Eyes said a thousand Things, and my Hopes flatter'd me hers answer'd 'em. If I'm lucky—if not, 'tis but a hundred Guineas thrown away. (Miranda and Patch ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... more distant and a little to my right. I was beginning to flatter myself with the belief that I had reached the point where the picket-line bent back. ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... preceded him, and desirous of evincing as much zeal and generosity as they. Then, besides, the duke received these vassals with so much condescension and urbanity, and treated them with so much consideration and respect, as greatly to flatter their vanity, and raise them in their own estimation, by exalting their ideas of the importance of the services which they could render in carrying so vast an enterprise to a successful result. In a word, the tide turned like a flood in favor of ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... revenues being assigned for the maintenance of the building and the support of the missionaries. He then took measures to have the same thing done in the other towns of his fief, and he seconded the preachers of the Gospel so well in everything else that he could flatter himself that he soon would not have one single idolater in his states." This fanatical "Prince Andrew" survived his baptism by two years only, but during that time twenty thousand converts were made in Arima. His successor, however, was a believer in Buddhism. He caused ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... strength and endurance of which was so little suspected, had been as trifling a factor in the problem, as was supposed, still it would have been difficult for any one of these powers to absorb the United Netherlands. As for France, she hardly coveted their possession. "We ought not to flatter ourselves," said Buzanval, "that these maritime peoples will cast themselves one day into our nets, nor do I know that it would be advisable to pull in the net if ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "You flatter me; you do, really. You elevate my self-respect. How I shall enjoy your conversation at—at——What is the name of your principality or grand duchy down in Maryland? I am told that your great plantations down in the South are quite equal in wealth, population and extent of territory to our ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... reader to need repeating here." They know that that is not true. It is a low kind of flattery. They know that the reader has forgotten every detail of it, and that nothing of the tremendous event is left in his mind but a vague and formless luminous smudge. Aside from the desire to flatter the reader, they have another reason for making the remark-two reasons, indeed. They do not remember the details themselves, and do not want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them out; also, they are afraid that if they search them out and print them they will be scoffed at by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's side, and looking rather absently at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in exquisite writing. "The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the love of ideas, practical beliefs and social habits. And faithlessness here means not a gradual conversion dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a yielding to seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original choice was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a growing desire. In this sort of love it is the forsaker who has the melancholy lot; for an abandoned belief may be more effectively vengeful than Dido. The child of a wandering tribe, caught young and trained to polite life, if he feels ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... you?" snarled the man, little beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "Or blush and stammer any of the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his supreme idiocy. Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it. Are you a good woman or a bad? I don't know. Are you generous or mean? I don't know. Are you loyal and stanch and true—or treacherous and contemptible? I don't know. I don't ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... gathered them for you, and, in sending my bouquet, I could not resist the temptation of adding a word. 'Before doing penance,' I said to myself, 'let me commit this one folly; it shall be the last.' We always flatter ourselves that each folly will be our last. The unfortunate note had scarcely gone, when I regretted having sent it; I would have given much to have had it back; I felt all its impropriety; I have ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... bring back day if it were dark; And, if I tell you all my thought, Though I comprehend it not, In those unfathomable orbs Every function he absorbs; Doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot, And write, and reason, and compute, And ride, and run, and have, and hold, And whine, and flatter, and regret, And kiss, and couple, and beget, By ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... scene shift. Manhood is touched by age; but Lust is "heeled" by Luxury, and Pomp is the heir of Pleasure; gewgaws and gaud, instead of glory, surround, rejoice, and flatter thee to the last. There rise thy buildings; there lie, secret but gorgeous, the tabernacles of thine ease; and the earnings of thy friends, and the riches of the people whom they plunder, are waters ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his highness of women does not flatter the ladies. He recommended us never to listen to the advice of our wives; if we did, we should be lost. The women were very well to fetch water, pound ghaseb, and cook the supper, but for nothing else. He never, himself, paid any attention ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... if I am not to be master in my own house! Well, well; flatter yourself with foolish fancies if you will; but know that your destiny is fixed. You shall never leave this cave, except as my wife. This is your fate, and you may as well make up your mind to it at once. I will have no more words ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... shall be able to steer clear of some serious misfortune in this quarter. I hope the period has not yet arrived, which will convince the different states by fatal experience, that some of them have mistaken the true situation of this country. I flatter myself, however, that we may still retrieve our affairs if we have but a just sense of them, and are actuated by a spirit of liberal policy and exertion equal to the emergency. Could we once see this spirit generally prevailing, I should not despair of a prosperous issue of the campaign. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... most unusual Ambassador it had ever known. It never knew how to take him. He did not behave as other diplomats did. When he went to the Foreign Office it was always on business. He did not flatter and praise, bow and chat or speak to Excellencies in the third person as European representatives usually do. Gerard began at the beginning of the war a policy of keeping the United States fully informed regarding Germany. He used to report daily the political developments and the press comment, ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... Iemon could flatter himself on the efficacy of the divine interposition. The public mind was quieted. Nothing more was heard of O'Iwa San. Only the daily summons, on one pretext or another, to the ward office troubled him. The yakunin ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... easily. It's only on the stage that folks ever have any particular use for other people's children. I've known some bad characters in my time, but I'd have trusted the worst of 'em with a wagon- load of other people's kids. Don't you flatter yourself you're going to lose it! Whoever's got it, you take it from me, his idea is to do the honest thing, and never rest till he's succeeded in returning ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... Viscount. He wrote to Strafford at Utrecht, that his promotion had been a mortification to him. "In the House of Commons," he said, "I may say that I was at the head of business. ... There was, therefore, nothing to flatter my ambition in removing me from thence, but giving me the title which had been many years in my family, and which reverted to the Crown about a year ago, by the death of the last of the elder house. ... ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... can play so well as that tiresome fellow. It was positively silly, the way some girls stood listening to him last night. I'd be ashamed, or, rather, too proud, to flatter such a high-headed care-for-nobody. I wish ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... shown by his hatred and, indeed, non-comprehension of cowardice. In his first battle, upon the French surrendering, he wrote to the governor, "if the whole Detach't of the French behave with no more Resolution than this chosen Party did, I flatter myself we shall have no g't trouble in driving them to the d—-." At Braddock's defeat, though the regiment he had commanded "behaved like men and died like soldiers," he could hardly find words to express his contempt ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... glare, or stems the tepid wave, And thanks his gods for all the good they gave. Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, His first, best country, ever is at home. And yet, perhaps, if countries we compare, And estimate the blessings which they share, Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find An equal portion dealt to all mankind; As different good, by art or nature given, To different nations ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... their oppressors. Here Jacques van Artevelde, the Brewer of Ghent, encountered a hostile association, and fought one of the most furious combats known in history. He was called the Brewer of Ghent, because, though of noble family, he joined the society of brewers to flatter the vanity of the lower classes. His partisans were chiefly weavers, and his opponents the fullers. In the midst of the strife the host—the consecrated bread and wine of the Catholic mass—was brought into the square, in order to separate the furious artisans; but it was disregarded, ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... individuals, some writers unacquainted with the views of government, with their secret negotiations, with the character of their ministers, with the interests of the protectors and the protected, who flatter themselves that they can discern the reason of events, amongst a multitude of important or frivolous causes, which may have equally occasioned them; who do not conceive, that among all these causes, the most natural may ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... goddess travelling incognito? If we lived in the 'piping days of Pan' I should flatter myself that 'Ox-eyed Juno' had honored me with a call, as a reward for my ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... said, "I have too great a regard for you—and you know I dare not flatter you—to let you off this way, or rather leave you to think you have done your duty when you have not done the half of it. You have done your son a wrong, a great wrong. How can you claim to be a gentleman—I ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... free State having raised a murmur among the people, the soldier, disconcerted at the liberties which the citizens took, thus addressed them: "Having left you when nine years old, I have returned after a lapse of thirty-six years. I flatter myself I am well acquainted with the qualifications of a soldier, having been instructed in them from my childhood, sometimes by my own situation and sometimes by that of my country. The privileges, the laws, and customs of the city and the forum you ought to teach ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... We should flatter him in supposing Harry Boyce of a chivalrous delicacy. Whether the lady's fair fame might be the worse for him was a question of which he never thought. It is certain that he did not blame himself for using his place ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... not wish to flatter you," replied Vandeleur; "but upon my word, you have an unusual disposition for a life of crime. You have more accomplishments than you imagine; and though I have encountered a number of rogues in different quarters of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chert, obsidian, green and red jasper, and quartz-crystal flakes, arrowheads, cores, and saw-blades. Chert and limestone rough hoe-blades (easily mistaken for palaeolithic implements; they are, however, much flatter); polished serpentine or jasper celts; lentoid (lentil-shaped), amygdaloid (almond-shaped), and discoid beads of cornelian, crystal, obsidian, &c., unpolished; nails of translucent quartz and obsidian (obviously imitations of metal types); hard grey pottery sickles, pottery cones of various sizes, ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... yourself with Such close application. I almost tremble for your health let me prevail on you my much-loved H. not to keep to your Studys so long at one time, my D. love if you could know how very precious your welfare is to me I flatter myself you wou'd endeaver to preserve it for my sake as well as your own. pray inform me how you do and how you have Slept. I hope to see you to Morrow at the concert and on Saturday I shall be happy to See you here to dinner, in the mean time my D: my Sincerest good wishes constantly ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... good man," a sort of sluggishly responded Don Benito, like a phlegmatic appreciator, who would neither find fault nor flatter. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... wrong'st me, cruel Prince! At first, in truth, I might not have been won, Save through the weakness of a flatter'd pride; But now,—oh! trust me,—couldst thou ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... remarked that much might be said on this subject; but I do not think that the present occasion requires it. If the suggestions which are made in the chapter on "Early Rising" should receive the attention I flatter myself they merit, I do not believe children would often sleep too long. If, on the contrary, they are suffered to lie late in the morning, and then sit up late in the evening, all healthful habits and tendencies will ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... managements of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests. It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the public good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they would ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... estimate which you have made of the two states, it appears that the incommodities of a single life are in a great measure necessary and certain, but those of the conjugal state accidental and avoidable. I cannot forbear to flatter myself that prudence and benevolence will make marriage happy. The general folly of mankind is the cause of general complaint. What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... accomplished diplomat lifted brows and hands in a deprecating gesture. "Mon ami," he responded with suavity, "you flatter me. What I have done is nothing. I have only paved the way. Quite possibly Louis did kill himself. If so it was a meritorious act, but whether he did so or whether some mad young officer, infatuated and jealous, was the real author of the result, the result stands—and meets our requirements. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... "I flatter myself that I have managed that with considerable dramatic talent," said Tom Strachan, as he stood looking at the two, holding each other's hands in silence, and looking ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... one. He had played a part in their little drama which he knew must have baffled and infuriated her. More, had she, in those delightful few days of their early acquaintance, formed for him a sentiment somewhat stronger than friendship (he did not flatter himself that this was so), he could understand her attitude toward him as that of the woman scorned. For the present, however, it was all a profound and disturbing mystery, and after an hour of futile concentration there came to Bryce the old childish ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... who had shone in the late slaughter, Was left upon his way with the despatch, Where blood was talk'd of as we would of water; And carcasses that lay as thick as thatch O'er silenced cities, merely served to flatter Fair Catherine's pastime—who look'd on the match Between these nations as a main of cocks, Wherein she liked her own to ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... his place. So death prevailed against him and he passed; his countenance was changed, and he was sent away.' 10. I flatter myself that the preceding paragraphs contain a more correct narrative of the principal incidents in the life of Confucius than has yet been given in any European language. They might easily have been expanded into a volume, but I did not wish to exhaust the subject, but only to ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... "Don't flatter yourself that you will be allowed to do that. You may be sure that they will find ample work for lazy hands to do. Now it is time to buckle on our swords, and go out and inspect our fellows. I can see that they are ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... was not his business to tell M. Fortunat his opinion of him; and in the second place, he did not deem it an opportune moment for a declaration of his sentiments. So, when his employer paused, he exclaimed: "Well, we must outwit these scoundrels—for I'll join you, m'sieur; and I flatter myself that I can be very useful to you. Do you want the particulars of the viscount's past life? If so, I can furnish them. I know the brigand. He's married, as I told you before, and I'll find his wife for you in a few ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Jew boy, Reherrey, detached himself from the others and came out to stand by her and flatter her. He had wound the black stuff that he had bought three days before so cleverly round his slim body that he seemed no fatter than a lacquered hairpin. The cynical flattery of this nineteen-year-old ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... for disport we fawn and flatter both, To pass the time when nothing else can please, And train them to our lure with subtle oath, Till, weary of their wiles, ourselves we ease; And then we say when we their fancy try, To play with fools, O what ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... cannon, and an application made to Madras, at a thousand miles' distance, for the rest. Madras answers, that they cannot exactly comply with the requisition; but still the board at Bengal hopes better things from them than they promise, and flatter themselves that with their assistance they shall properly arm a ship ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of subordinates can not perform. Therefore I would be there with naked, informal, and sinecure duties, and utterly out of place. This you understand well enough, and the army too, but the President and the politicians, who flatter themselves they are saving the country, cannot and will not understand. My opinion is, the country is doctored to death, and if President and Congress would go to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, the country ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... rooms that we are now thinking you have a lucky hand, and for this reason a man—and he is a great man, being the portier of George's house—who will run about to find a house for her, is ordered to apply to you when he has found a few; and you with your elegant tact (you see how I flatter you) will also examine what he has found, and give your opinion thereon. The main point is that it should be detached, if possible; for instance, a little hotel. Or something in a courtyard, with a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... which all articles of faith in general are attacked by the servants of Satan, and the one concerning the Trinity is in particular beginning to be derided confidently by some skeptics and Epicureans. These are ably assisted not only by those Italian grammarians [Humanists] and orators, which they flatter themselves to be, but also by some Italico-German vipers and others, or, as you are accustomed to call them, viper-aspides, who sow their seed here and there in their discourses and writings, and, as Paul says [2 Tim. 2, 17], eat as doth a canker (gar sehr um sich fressen) and promote godlessness, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... depredations for an unusual length of time; and a feeling of security and peace had taken the place of that constant watchfulness and anxiety, which had long proved so harassing to the settlers. They began to flatter themselves that their foes had retired from the neighborhood, and would no more return to molest them, now that they knew the emigrants to be on such friendly terms with their powerful rivals, the Wampanoges. But false was this appearance of security; and vain was every hope that ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... I tagged around after him and tried to get acquainted. I had to do the talking, because he was shy, but I didn't mind it. He seemed pleased to have me around, and I used the sociable "we" a good deal, because it seemed to flatter him to be included. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... was saying when interrupted by my Wagnerian associate, the young man went to Thalberg and played an original composition called the Tornado Galop. It was written exclusively for the black keys, and a magnificent glissando, if I do flatter myself, ended the piece most brilliantly. Thalberg—it was in the year '57, if ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... should do and say when she stood in the presence of her injured friends. She was not studying how to conceal or palliate her offence, but how she could best tell the whole truth. She gave herself no credit for any good deed she had done during her absence; she did not flatter herself that she had been benevolent and kind in using the stolen money as she had used it; she did not believe that her tender vigil at the bedside of the dying ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... into the interstices of enjoyment were passed in the most childish manner, without the appearance of any vigor of mind to palliate the wanderings of the imagination. Still, she was a woman of uncommon address; and though her conversation was insipid, her compliments were so artfully adapted to flatter the person she wished to please or dupe, and so eloquent is the beauty of a queen, in the eyes even of superior men, that she seldom failed to carry her point when she endeavored to gain an ascendency over the mind ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... thousand. Make Mademoiselle Thuillier the proprietor of that house and you'll win her love; she'll believe that you can put such chances in her way every year. There are two ways of getting hold of vain people: flatter their vanity, or threaten them; and there are also two ways of managing misers: fill their purse, or else attack it. Now, this stroke of business, while it does good to Mademoiselle Thuillier, does good to us as well, and it would be a pity not to ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... beyond the first act, in which the item in question occurs. When, moreover, I heard that he had nothing to say in regard to my score, except that he had had portions of it played over to him by a pupil of the Conservatoire, I really could not flatter myself that he had entered into definite and conscious relations with me. And yet I had palpable evidence in a letter of his to Avenarius, which the latter forwarded to me, that Scribe had actually occupied himself ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... have borrowed the misuse, I believe, as we have more than one beside, from the French press. I trust that we shall neither accept it, nor the temper which inspires it. It may be convenient for those who flatter their nation, and especially the military part of it, into a ruinous self-conceit, to frame some such syllogism as this—"Courage is heroism: every Frenchman is naturally courageous: therefore every Frenchman is a hero." But we, who have ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... sparkling, deserved to be a duchess. Rigou knew nothing of the love affair between her and Jean-Louis Tonsard, which proves that he had let himself be fooled by the girl,—the only one of his many servants whose ambition had taught her to flatter the lynx as the only ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... difference, or accompanying that physical difference, woman is the superior of man in mental and moral qualities. In proof of this see the report of the minority and all the eulogiums of woman pronounced by those who, like the serpent of old, would flatter her vanity that they may continue to ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... have fallen in love with you already," she said, "from those snapshots in the Looking Glass. They make you both look such darlings—though they don't flatter either of you. All the people we know will be clamouring to meet you, so you must hurry and find a nice house, in the right part of town, before some other sensation comes up and you're forgotten. How would it be if ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... there is surely nothing derogatory in continuing in a path which Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Rossini have not disdained. I quite understand what you say of my compositions in the "Goethe Album," and only regret you did not hear my "Tasso" overture, which, I flatter myself, would not have displeased you. In consequence of the good opinion which you kindly express of my talent as a composer, I am going to ask you a favour if the idea meets with your approval. While recently glancing through the volume of Lord Byron which has ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... of Language are enormous. There is no sphere of intellectual activity which has not felt more or less the influence of this new science. Nor is this to be wondered at. Language is the organ of all knowledge, and though we flatter ourselves that we are the lords of language, that we use it as a useful tool, and no more, believe me there are but few who can maintain their complete independence with respect to language, few who can say of her, Ech Laida, ouk echomai. To know language historically ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... notes, and was much affected by them. It was during the famine of 1845-6. In all the songs of the slaves, there was ever some expression in praise of the great house farm; something which would flatter the pride of the owner, and, possibly, draw ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... son. Don't flatter yourself. On your way out West to join the Tyee you wrote her every day on the train. You told her about your bet with me, and who I was and all about me. Lucky for you that you did, and doubly lucky for ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... your brow of youthful bloom I would not cast a shade of gloom; Yet did I say that life will ever Flow onward like a placid river, With only sunshine on its breast, That ne'er 'twill be by storms distressed, I should but flatter to deceive, And but a web of falsehood weave. Yet, checkered though life's path may seem, Life's pleasures are not all ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... call came from a young congregation in an eastern city, and was based partly upon his college record and more upon the advice of those among the authorities who knew his work in the mountains. But I flatter myself that my letters to friends who were of importance in that congregation were not without influence, for I was of the mind that the man who could handle Black Rock miners as he could was ready for ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... dispossessed of power, room is made for a democracy. But what do our rebels against democracy propose to substitute for the sovereign will of the majority, if they succeed by resistance in reducing it to impotence? Possibly they hope that their own exalted will may prevail. Let them not flatter themselves by any such vain dream. Even assuming what is improbable, viz., that they remain united among themselves, can they suppose that their example of successful revolt will remain without imitators, or that ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... gifted, I think I have. I rather flatter myself I could master more than that," says Molly, significantly, giving his ear ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... was of an exquisite rose-color on which I indited this gem. I flatter myself that genius can sometimes write beautifully. It is not just the thing to particularize here, but if that Grand Duke can read English he must have admired the sweet morsel which that lovely songster bore to him on the wings—well, of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the mysteries of life, excepting only the, to him, mysterious volumes of the classics. To do justice to all was not within the limits of my work; I have therefore selected from among you the most distinguished names, and I flatter myself, in so doing, I have omitted very few of any note; if, however, any efficient member of your brotherhood should have been unintentionally passed by, he has only to forward an authenticated copy of his biography and peculiar merits to the publisher, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of gratification, for there breathes no flattery in it—only the serious observations of an old man bent on getting knowledge by personal experience. "A man may flatter himself as he pleases," says Sir Richard Steele, "but he will find that the women have more understanding in their own affairs than we have." Man suffers in his loves for woman. She often casts him on the rocks like an angry unfeeling sea, but when, at last ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... in trying to flatter her vanity, unable to realize that her mind was not worldly. She replied, negligently, that it might be a pleasant trip. Then he praised the mountains, the ancient cities, the bazaars, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... to her, he saw that she was simply a young girl with good health, good muscles, and a rather pretty face and figure. He called her "Miss" because it seemed to flatter her; but Dud Stone felt himself infinitely older than this girl of ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... popular common-places, and the current habits of thought and feeling. Newspapers, popular literature, and popular oratory show the effort to operate suggestion along these lines. They rarely correct; they usually flatter the accepted notions. The art of adroit suggestion is one of the great arts of politics. Antony's speech over the body of Caesar is a classical example of it. In politics, especially at elections, the old apparatus of suggestion ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... local developments I am more impressed with the unlikenesses than with the resemblances. And besides this, if one had the ability to draw to the life a single individual in the most homogeneous community, the product would be sufficiently startling. We cannot flatter ourselves, therefore, that under equal laws and opportunities we have rubbed out the saliencies of human nature. At a distance the mass of the Russian people seem as monotonous as their steppes and their commune villages, but the Russian novelists find characters in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on, "you know I like plain speaking, and therefore you won't make the mistake of thinking I'm trying to flatter you." ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... to celebrate its foundin', but don't know enough to prize what's fell to it. Do you know what I was doin' of, when I tolled that bell? I'll tell ye. I tolled a hunderd an' ten strokes. That's the age of the bell you're goin' to throw aside to flatter up a man that made money out o' the war. A hunderd an' twelve years ago that bell was cast in England; a hunderd an' ten years ago ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... I have already been honour'd with your Grace's protection and favour, I flatter my selfe with the continuance of it, and that, if your Grace thinks me deserving, your Grace will recommend me to the Court of Directors.—I am, with the greatest respect, your ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... his fresco, Michelangelo received a letter, dated Venice, September 15, 1537, from that rogue of genius, Pietro Aretino. It opens in the strain of hyperbolical compliment and florid rhetoric which Aretino affected when he chose to flatter. The man, however, was an admirable stylist, the inventor of a new epistolary manner. Like a volcano, his mind blazed with wit, and buried sound sense beneath the scoriae and ashes it belched forth. Gifted with a natural feeling for rhetorical ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Laryngitis, Cardialgia, Angina Pectoris, | | Neuralgia, Paralysis, Amaurosis, Deafness, Liver Complaint, Apoplexy, | | Insanity, Hippochondriasis, "Horrors," "Blues," and so on through the | | greater part of the Nosological family. | | | | Because you are not killed outright you flatter your self that you are | | not poisoned, but I tell you that you are, and you are dying by inches | | or by sixteenths of inches if you please, how ever small the effect on | | you it has some effect and finally ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... remarks, and they apply nearly to the general practice of the present day. The farces and whims of people require often as much discrimination on the part of the physician as the disease itself. Those who know best how to flatter such caprices, are frequently the best paid for their trouble. Nervous diseases are always in season, and it is here that some professional dexterity is pardonable. Nature, when uninterrupted, will often do more than art; but our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... "I don't flatter myself too much on that," he replied. "It's my story you want. Well, I've been busy putting things together, and I guess it's only the two ends of the jig-saw that are missing now. I warn you, Peggy, I don't know how Eagle March got into church, or where from, or what became ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... two to look at the table. One is not always looking. The other has that astonishment. Something has changed. That is what would be the defence if any one saw that she was flatter. She had the smile and it was not lightening all her evenings. They were not always too hot. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... which are more proper for Ridicule than a serious Censure. Most Books being calculated for Male Readers, and generally written with an Eye to Men of Learning, makes a Work of this Nature the more necessary; besides, I am the more encouraged, because I flatter myself that I see the Sex daily improving by these my Speculations. My fair Readers are already deeper Scholars than the Beaus. I could name some of them who could talk much better than several Gentlemen that make a Figure at Will's; and as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... apprehensive that, in so complicated a work, some oversights must have been committed, by the inattention to which, at all times, all mankind are liable. However, I am conscious, as yet, of none but literal and insignificant mistakes; and if there are others more considerable, which have escaped me, I flatter myself they are not of moment enough to affect any material transaction; and therefore I hope they may justly claim ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... (Farnaby) Since first I saw your face I resolved to honour and renown ye (Ford) Sing we and chant it (Morley) Sister, awake! close not your eyes (Bateson) Sleep, angry beauty, sleep and fear not me (Campion) So light is love, in matchless beauty shining (Wilbye) Some can flatter, some can feign (Corkine) Sweet, come again (Campion and Rosseter) Sweet Cupid, ripen her desire (Corkine) Sweet heart, arise! why do you sleep (Weelkes) Sweet Kate (Jones) Sweet Love, if thou wilt ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... 1559, Dudley and his sister warmly took up the archduke's cause, and assured Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, that if the suitor would flatter the queen by coming to England on chance, she would marry him. But Elizabeth and Cecil, though they hinted much, would not clearly confirm Dudley's promise, and Philip and the emperor dared not expose the archduke to the risk of being repulsed. The English nobles, in good faith, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... truth, sir, I have been think I may say that wondering—of course it I have been patient. is just as you think best I have continued my and I wouldn't think of efforts with unremitting insisting, but after all, zeal, and I think I may perhaps I have made a flatter myself that my mistake in mentioning endeavors have not been it, but I was thinking without result. I have that possibly you might here, carefully tabulated, bear in mind the idea of a memorandum of a possible ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... most mistaken estimate of my character; I beg to say that any affair I undertake is certain to be conducted in a very sedate and business-like manner. My prudence I consider unimpeachable; and as to steadiness, I flatter myself I go considerably ahead of the Archbishop of Canterbury in that article. If I hear you repeat such offensive remarks, I shall be under the painful necessity of elongating your ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... are sweet With smell of ripening fruit. Through the sere grass, in shy retreat, Flatter, at coming feet, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... habitually the seat of a war between alien armies, the ordinary virtues of diligence, honesty, and kindliness seem to be of little avail. The only way to escape destruction is to win the favour of the prevailing powers, take the side of the strongest invader, flatter the despot, placate the Fate or Fortune or angry god that is sending the earthquake or the pestilence. The Hellenistic period pretty certainly falls in some degree under all of these categories. And one result ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... blinds, bull's-eyes; in a word, of all openings, holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or through which the light of the sun has been in use to enter houses, to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which we flatter ourselves we have accommodated our country,—a country which, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us now to a strife ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... be said to have doubled his mental resources." No man is wise enough to be his own counselor, for he inclineth too much to leniency toward himself. "It is a well-known rule that flattery is food for the fool." Therefore no man should be his own counselor since no one is so apt to flatter another as he is himself. A wise man never flatters himself, neither does a friend flatter. As a wise man sees his own faults and seeks to correct them, so a true friend sees the faults of his friend and labors ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... that the first thing that two young women meeting each other do is to cast about for what is ridiculous in each other, and the second to flatter each other. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... over, and Theodora's pulses were calmer as she lay alone on her pillow, she had a sudden thrill of fear. But she put it aside—it was not her nature to think herself the object of passions. "I would be a very silly woman to flatter myself so," she said to herself, and then ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... is?—Above us, I say, is God's Spirit speaking to our spirits, below us is this world speaking to our flesh, as it spoke to Eve's, saying to us, "This thing is pleasant to the eyes—this thing is good for food—that thing is to be desired to make you wise, and to flatter your vanity and self-conceit." Below us, I say, is THIS world, tempting us to ease, and pleasure, and vanity; and in the middle, betwixt the two, stands up the third part of man— his SOUL and WILL, set to choose between the voice of God's Spirit ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... came to open rupture with the Papacy. Ferdinand, as we have just seen, had expressed himself contented with the situation of affairs at Trent. But the French prelates still remained in opposition, and the French Court was undecided. Cardinal Morone, upon his arrival at Trent, began to flatter the Cardinal of Lorraine, affecting to take no measures of importance without consulting him. This conduct, together with timely compliments to several Frenchmen of importance, smoothed the way for future agreement; while the couriers who ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... originally independent of each other. Of these nomes there were about twenty in Upper Egypt—that is, in the long gorge of the Nile from Elephantine in the south to Memphis in the north; and about the same number in Lower Egypt—that is, in the flatter country from Memphis to the sea. King Mena or Menes, founder of the first dynasty, whose date, if he was a historical character at all, and not a mythic founder like Minos of Crete, Manu of India, or Mannus of Germany, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... The Osseous does not flatter and seldom praises. Even when he would like to, the words do not come easily. But when he does give you a compliment you may know he means it. He is incisive and specific—a little too much so to grace modern social intercourse where ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... of offering a few remarks upon this subject, from having occasionally heard observations indicating some disapprobation relative to our theatrical arrangements. Such impressions, we flatter ourselves, a little more information upon the subject, and a candid reconsideration will do away. From a knowledge of the state of the theatres in other parts of the continent, we feel ourselves ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... the Conference or the League the right or power to dictate to them the persons or the people with whom alone they may have dealings? Can it narrow the field of Russia's political activities? Some people flatter themselves that it can. In this case the League of Nations must transform itself into an alliance for the suppression of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... fearful problem. Louis would have preferred a younger, slimmer, nattier, fluffier creature than Mrs. Tams, but was ready to be convinced that such as he wanted lived only in his fancy. Moreover, he liked Mrs. Tams, and would occasionally flatter her by ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... of that value which she had so generously acknowledged once to have had for me. I presumed, I said, to flatter myself that Lady Betty, in her own person, and in the name of all my family, would be able, on my promised reformation and contrition, to prevail in my favour, especially as our prospects in other respects with regard to the general reconciliation wished for were so happy. But let me owe to your ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... have not half done with him," he said one evening. "I don't want to flatter the boy, but he is very valuable to me. I could easily get a clerk or copyist to make out my lists and help me select and rearrange my specimens; but he would do it mechanically. Nat takes an interest in what he is doing, and ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... added emphasis, "Mr. Brute MacNair, since you have deemed it worth your while to furnish me with evidence? You told me once, I believe, that you cared nothing for my opinion. Is it possible that you hope at this late day to flatter me with ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... their eyes must have watered under the operation. Imagine dragoons drinking currant-water; and playing dominoes for shapeless sous, which they rattle incessantly in their preposterous trousers! I am meditating a book on the French army, in which I shall lay great stress on the above, I flatter myself, rather acute bit of observation. Carrie (she grows prettier daily) rather inclines to the idea that the moderation of these French dragoons is in their favour; and this is the first time I have found her judgment at fault. But then ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... absurd to me. Money for writing verses! One dollar would be as ridiculous as a thousand. I should as soon have thought of being paid for thinking! My mother, fortunately, was sensible enough never to flatter me or let me be flattered about my scribbling. It never was allowed to hinder any work I had to do. I crept away into a corner to write what came into my head, just as I ran away to play; and I looked upon it only as my most agreeable amusement, never thinking of preserving anything which ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... qu'une bete," Coralie cried, with a shrug of her robust shoulders; upon which, my lord said that she did not flatter at any rate; and pocketed his snuff-box, not desirous that Madame Brack's dubious fingers should plunge ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... looked at me meditatively. Her eyes were the color of early violets, but they were also very serious and very steady. She appeared to be deliberately taking stock of me, but I could not flatter myself that there was anything of ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... instead of regretting that He lived of old. Take the least man, observe his head and heart, find how he differs from every other man; see how Nature by degrees grows around him, to nourish, infold, and set him off, to enrich him with opportunities, as if he were her only foster-child, and to flatter thus every other man in turn, making him her darling as though in expectation of finding no other, till, having extorted all his worth and beauty, and cherished him to the utmost of his possible life, she rolls away elsewhere, continually keeping up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to wooe, Being a woman, could not but torment me, But bringing for my advocates, youth and beauty, Set off with wealth, and then to be deni'd too Do's comprehend all tortures. They flatter'd me, That said my looks were charms, my touches fetters, My locks soft chains, to bind the arms of Princes, And make them in that wish'd for bondage, happy. I am like others of a coarser feature, As weak to allure, but in my dotage, stronger: I am no Circe; he, more than ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the apartments, as well as an abundant expenditure of tact and diplomacy on our part, saved us from other applicants, and we were beginning to flatter ourselves that we should escape this much-dreaded imposition when, late in the afternoon, two young naval officers called, accompanied by orderlies and pack-mules. They presented billets de logement, requesting to ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... und Gesellschaft, vol. i, Heft 2), points out that it is the adult who needs education in this matter—as in so many other matters of sexual enlightenment—considerably more than the child. Parents educate their children from the earliest years in prudery, and vainly flatter themselves that they have thereby promoted their modesty and morality. He records his own early life in a tropical land and accustomed to nakedness from the first. "It was not till I came to Germany when nearly twenty that I learnt that the human body is indecent, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... moral appeal. For one thing, the Book is absolutely fair to humanity. It leaves out no line or wrinkle; but it adds none. The men with whom it deals are typical men. The facts it presents are typical facts. There are books which flatter men, make them out all good, prattle on about the essential goodness of humanity, while men who know themselves (and these are the only ones who do things) know that the story is not true. On the other ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Devil do I ask—Yes, you are still the same; one of those hoiting Ladies, that love nothing like Fool and Fiddle; Crouds of Fops; had rather be publickly, though dully, flatter'd, than privately ador'd: you love to pass for the Wit of the Company, by talking all ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... comfort to be brutally honest once in a while to myself. I do not dare, I do not care, to be so to everybody. But with my own self, I can feel that it is strictly a family affair. If I hurt my feelings, I can grieve over it until I apologize. If I flatter myself, I am only doing what every other woman in the world is doing in her innermost consciousness, and flattery as honest as flattery from one's own self naturally would be could not fail to please me. Besides, it would have the unique value of being believed by both sides—a situation ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... We flatter ourselves, dearest Mr. Kenyon, that as we think so much of you, you may be thinking a little of us, and will not be sorry—who knows?—to have ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... This may be called a morality of the person and of the bodily habits, as contrasted with the commercial and public morality of man. Purity, constancy, reserve, and devotion are the qualities In woman which please and flatter the jealous male; and woman has responded to these demands both really and seemingly. Without any consciousness of what she was doing (for all moral traditions fall in the general psychological region of habit), she acts in the manner which makes her most pleasing ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... do: Be pleased, my lord, to come and view." "I thought my mouth a little wider." "My lord, my lord, you me deride, ah!" "Such was my nose when I was young." "My lord, you have a witty tongue." "Ah well, ah well! you artists flatter." "That were, my lord, no easy matter." "Ah well, ah well! you artists see best." "My lord, I only (aside) earn my ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Voltaire in her glittering train. Voltaire must have boasted to his young friend that his fortune was made. Vauvenargues surprisingly expresses in his reply the evil which must be done by great authors who flatter vice and think to conceal its corruption by heaping flowers over a lie. The incident is important for us, because it led Vauvenargues, thus disappointed in Voltaire as he had been disappointed in Mirabeau, to examine ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... think we need not be young to prefer to hear the praise of others rather than our own. It is not embarrassing in the first place, as all praise of ourselves must be. I doubt if any man or woman can flatter so discreetly as not to make us uncomfortable. Besides, if our own performances be lauded, we are uneasy as to whether the honour is deserved. An artist has usually his own doubts about his own doings, or rather he has his own certainties. About our friends' ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... that close in therewith, and submit themselves thereto. Talkers of grace are but mockers of God, but flatterers of God. Those that only talk highly of grace, and submit not themselves unto it, are but like to those that praise a look, or flatter him in his own conceits. Grace God has exalted, has set it upon the throne, and so made it a king, and given it authority to reign; and thou goest by, and hearest thereof, but wilt not submit thyself thereto, neither thy soul nor thy life; why, what is this more than to flatter God with thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... doings since you arrived in Paris will be given, which I fear may not flatter you, but you must remember that it is necessary to put our German friends completely off the scent, and in a month's time or so you will reappear, ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... flatter me, signor! I believe I never was specially hideous—but looks in a man always rank second to strength, and of strength ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... flatter me. I have a great dislike to it. I am, I trust, satisfied in my present situation; and, were I weak enough to indulge a transient feeling of vanity, the reminiscence which would instantly intrude, that my advancement was founded ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... dear," murmured Vance, as he carefully buttoned the pocket to which he restored a purse woven from links of steel, after the fashion of chain mail. Ah, Messieurs and Confreres the Dramatic Authors, do not flatter yourselves that we are about to give you a complacent triumph over the Grand Melodrame of "The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child." We grant it was horrible rubbish, regarded in an aesthetic point of view, but it was mighty effective in the theatrical. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lord, forbear! The Empress! and I have never been out of Cherson! You flatter me, you flatter me, indeed. That is the way with all you courtiers from Constantinople. Now, if you had said that my Lady Gycia ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... the absurd appellation of the Rabbit Ground. The marshy banks of this river are skirted by low barren rocks, behind which there are some groups of stunted trees{9}. As we advanced, the country becoming flatter, gradually opened to our view, and we at length arrived at a shallow, reedy lake, the direct course through which leads to the Hill Portage. This route has, however, of late years been disused, and we therefore turned towards the north, and crossing a small arm of the lake, arrived at Hill Gates ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... imagine for a moment it would interest you to hear my reasons for leaving Oxford, I could not flatter myself you would see any sense in them. I know that Robert will think them moonshine; nay, more, that they will ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Reader! flatter not yourself that the circumstance of having hitherto escaped remarkable judgment is any real indemnification against future punishment: do not imagine that the supreme God is unobservant, because he is not vindictive; that it is possible to elude his eye, because you have not yet been slain ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... yet, the minority of the whole state, but it bears a respectable proportion to the whole, in numbers and weight of character; and it is constantly recruiting by the addition of nearly the whole of the young men as fast as they come into public life. I flatter myself that it will take place there at some period of time not very distant. In Maryland and North Carolina, a very few are disposed to emancipate. In South Carolina and Georgia, not the smallest symptom of ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... never flatter," she said. "If you won't help me overcome my faults I shall have to find ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... words for the sake of small criticism and fault-finding. Mr. Mann replied that Webster was wrong in his Latin, and the words Captatores Verborum meant toad- eaters, or men who hang on the words of great men to praise and flatter them, of which he found some conspicuous modern examples among Webster's supporters. Professor Felton, the Greek professor, who was a staunch friend of Webster, attacked Mann and charged him with ignorance of Latin. But Dr. Beck ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... its tenuity, had already seen service with generations of sleepers. Luckily it was early autumn; we should not need to dread the winter cold for some time to come; and I was young and lighthearted enough to flatter myself with the fancy that we should either be released as the sequel to some terrible defeat of the French, or that we should find ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... circumstances were also encouraging; the whole surface of the sea was completely free from ice, no land was seen in the direction of their course, and no bottom could be reached with one hundred and seventy fathoms of line, so that "we began," observes Captain Parry, "to flatter ourselves that we had fairly entered the Polar Sea, and some of the most sanguine among us had even calculated the bearing and distance of Icy Cape, as a matter of no very difficult or improbable accomplishment. This ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... flatter'st me; but pr'ythee flatter still; for I would hope; I would not wake out of my pleasing dream. Oh hope, how sweet thou art! but to hope always, and have no effect ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Raymonde scornfully. "I flatter myself I'm pretty good at reading faces, and I can see at a glance he's a martinet. That frown gives him away, and the kind of glare he has in his eyes. I'm a believer in first impressions, and I knew in a second I ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... your friend," continued Diggle, "I might say that your attitude is one of sheer obstinacy. Why not trust us? You see we trust you. I stand pledged for you with Angria; but I flatter myself I know a man when I see one: si fractus illabitur orbis—you have already shown your mettle. Of course I understand your scruples; I was young myself once; I know the generous impulses that rule the hearts ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... last letter out of his pocket. It occurred to him that he was in no sense answering it. Not that Jane would mind; that wasn't the sort of thing she did mind. But it struck him suddenly how difficult it had grown to him to answer Jane's letters—or, indeed, any one else's. He could not flatter himself that he was already contracting the inarticulate habit, because he could pour forth fluently enough about his own experiences; but to Jane's news of London he had nothing to say. A new paper had been started; another paper had died; some one they knew had deserted from one literary coterie ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... said, "the country is wild and hilly here, and Bruce may hide himself long before you can overtake him. Keep steadily in his track till he gains flatter country, where we can keep him in sight, then we shall have no more occasion for the hound and can ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... be found enticing? for, from the negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp. Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God's universe, nor so much as a single ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... continually that they may show us favour and vouchsafe to counsel us. I remember," he went on, "how once I heard you say that, as with men, so with the gods, it was but natural if the prayer of him should prevail who did not turn to flatter them only in time of need, but was mindful of them above all in the heyday of his happiness. It was thus indeed, you said, that we ought to deal with our earthly friends." [4] "True, my son," said his father, "and because ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... equipment men are stronger and bigger than women. They excel in muscular tests in ability to "spurt," whereas women do better in endurance tests. The male sex seems on the whole to be slightly more variable than the female, i.e., its curve of distribution is somewhat flatter and extends both lower and higher than does that of the female; or, stated another way, men furnish more than their proportion of ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... twitted in print before now with rather flattering actors when I address them as one of their trustees at their General Fund dinner. Believe me, I flatter nobody, unless it be sometimes myself; but, in such a company as the present, I always feel it my manful duty to bear my testimony to this fact—first, because it is opposed to a stupid, unfeeling libel; secondly, because my doing so may afford some slight encouragement ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... does not go round the World quite so easily as a Cit taking a Wherry from Lambeth Walk to Chelsea Reach. No, no, my Masters; there are Perils to encounter, Obstacles to overcome, Difficulties to surmount; and I flatter myself that Jack Dangerous was not found wanting when a Stout Heart, a Strong Hand, and a Clear Head were needed. I repeat that 'tis impossible for me to give you an exact Log of so lengthy a Cruise; and you must needs be content if I set ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... fajrejo. fireworks : artfajrajxo. firm : firma, fortika; firmo. fish : fisx'o, -i, -kapti. fist : pugno. fit : atako. "—for", tauxga; konvena, deca. fix : fiksi. flake : floko, negxero. flame : flami. flannel : flanelo. flat : plata, ebena; apartamento. flatter : flati. flavour : gusto. flax : lino. flea : pulo. flesh : (meat), viando; karno. flint : siliko. flit : flirti. float : nagxi; surnagxi. flock : aro, pasxtataro, sxafaro. flog : skurgxi. flood : superakvegi. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... is not so easy to flirt with you just a little. You are so charming." Thereupon he proceeded to flatter her, and wonder how he had escaped a passionate attachment to so brilliant a creature. "What saved me," said he, oracularly, "is, that I never could love two at once; and Zoe seized my love at sight. She left me nothing to lay at your feet ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... SELBY Her newly flatter'd hopes Array'd themselves at first in forms of doubt; And with a female caution she stood off Awhile, to read the meaning of my suit, Which with such honest seeming I enforced, That her cold scruples soon ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... not of joy,—a hum! Now the British Sparrow's come. Sent first was he Across the sea, Advisers kind did flatter me, When he winged way o'er Yankee soil, My caterpillar swarms he'd spoil; And oh, how ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... not since led an idle life. For nearly 25 years I have been engaged as an itinerant private tutor teaching adult folks and I flatter myself that I was very successful among ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Wheeler, who, as he says, is most likely to be chosen captain. He has taken prodigious pains to flatter and win over many to his interest. My brother does not so much care about ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... acknowledge its Right to make Laws binding upon us in all Cases whatever, that is, its absolute Sovereignty over us the Acts we shall them complain of as burdensome to us, shall be repeald, all Grievances redressd, and Administration will flatter us that the right shall never be exercisd but in a Case of absolute necessity which shall be apparent to every judicious man in the Empire. To induce us to be thus submissive beyond the bounds of reason & Safety ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... his face, and, though he did not meet her eye, his manner was so composed, that she began to doubt her own senses, and then he suddenly changed the subject to Oxford and the commemoration, and by the end of the set could flatter himself that he had quite dispelled the cloud which had ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... might conclude, not only that every man is an egoist, but also that every man is at all times a prudent and calculating egoist— which seems to flatter grossly the drunkard and the excited man laying about him in blind fury. But one may hold that egoism is inevitable without going so far. [Footnote: Psychological Hedonism, the doctrine that "volition is always determined by pleasures or pains actual or prospective," ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... indifference to property, though on scientific principles, and that among the tubs full of arrows, and the tar-barrels and the beams, the fagots, and other utensils, here and there a workman or a soldier lay flatter than is usual in limited naps, and something more or less feathered stuck in them, and blood, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... speak, sir," cried the lieutenant, angrily. "I advise you not to be conceited, not to jump at the conclusion that you are very clever, and not to begin to domineer over your messmates because they flatter and fawn upon you on the strength of your having thrashed Mr Terry. You see ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn |
