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More "Flatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Architect. Thereafter he sat thoughtfully in his britchka—plunged in meditation on the subject of whom else it might be well to visit. However, not a single magnate had been neglected, and in conversation with his hosts he had contrived to flatter each separate one. For instance to the Governor he had hinted that a stranger, on arriving in his, the Governor's province, would conceive that he had reached Paradise, so velvety were the roads. "Governors who appoint capable subordinates," ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... My dear Sir, you flatter yourself. You have lied over the reason. Pip, remember that I know you as you don't know yourself. You have been everything to me, though you are—(Fan-guard.) Oh, what a contemptible Thing it is! And so you are ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... when she brings the knee close to the flap of the saddle; and it will be more inconvenient to alter the length of the leather, when the lady is mounted, than if the buckle or hook was low down. The hook (Fig. 14) is better than a buckle, because it lies flatter and is ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... give my own character, I must be excused to give it as impartially as possible, and as if I was speaking of another body; and the sequel will lead you to judge whether I flatter myself or no. ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... 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 came to the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... I flatter myself that's not a bad signature, nor would be easily forged. One can not be too careful over— What's that? a ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... does not appear to flatter humanity its effect is of that character. He would make his readers believe that they are pure, great, and capable beings like those deified by him. The adulation being too great for many who peruse his pages, large numbers of readers are led into dangerous vagaries. "The influence of Carlyle's ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... booty from the island of our enemies, by means of tobacco, a weed the cause of much deceit; for how much deceit is practiced in carrying it about, in mixing it, and in weighing it: a weed which entices some people to bib ale; others to curse, swear, and to flatter in order to obtain it, and others to tell lies in denying that they use it: a weed productive of maladies in various bodies, the excess of which is injurious to every man's body, without speaking of his soul: a weed, moreover, by which we get multitudes of the poor, whom we should never get, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... a lady, I translate for you, 'go now and say, that angels cannot die.' But you must not read this to her, for she will absurdly say 'tis flattery, as if I could have any motive to flatter her. ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... here, and you told me she hated her husband; therefore, without too much vanity, I may flatter myself she will give me the ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... above mentioned, from private business, I flatter'd myself that, by the sufficient tho' moderate fortune I had acquir'd, I had secured leisure during the rest of my life for philosophical studies and amusements. I purchased all Dr. Spence's apparatus, who had come from England to lecture here, and I proceeded ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... any occasion to consider him. We have neither the right, the capacity, nor the data by which to sit in judgment; but it is hardly honest to withhold reports, that seem to be well founded, because they do not flatter the youthful career of a great man. In his own "Henry IV." and "Henry V." Shakespeare shows how the recklessness of youth is not incompatible with sound living and a high standard of morality and common sense ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... dun-colored ridges or sharply outlined crests of remote mountain range, in lifeless desolation the landscape lay outspread to the view. Southward, streaked with white fringe of alkali, the flat monotone of sand and ashes blended with the flatter, flawless surface of a wide-spreading, ash-colored inland lake, its shores dotted at intervals with the bleaching bones of cattle and ridged with ancient wagon-tracks unwashed by not so much as a single drop from the cloudless heavens since their first ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... again a report was received from aloft that all was clear ahead, and the explorers began to flatter themselves that they had fairly entered the polar sea. Several headlands were passed, and wide openings to the north and south. With a strong breeze from the eastward, running on until midnight, ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... he, "yes, that would flatter me very much; but I should not have time enough to enjoy the distinction. During our expedition to Bethune the husband of my duchess died; so, my dear, the coffer of the defunct holding out its arms to me, I shall marry the widow. Look here! I was trying on my wedding ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it would,' she said, nodding confidently at him. 'You must not flatter yourself, because Mr. Wentworth told me everything about it, that you wouldn't have done just the same, if I had had to find it out from you. All men are pretty much alike where ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... certain that it is not to be proved, and therefore we had better take it as we find it (viz.) for one single Act; but suppose it was so, 'tis still certain that Noah's Preaching was sadly interrupted, the Energy of his Words flatter'd, and the Force of his Persuasions enervated and abated, by this shameful Fall; that he was effectually silenc'd for an Instructor ever after, and this was as much as the Devil had Occasion for; and therefore indeed we read little more of him, except that he lived three ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... is pleased to flatter," she returned, drooping her eyes at him with a purposefully artificial effect. From the time when she was a child of four she had carried on a violent and highly appreciated flirtation with "Cousin Billy," being the only person in the world who employed the diminutive ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... London contain all the famous men of France and England, and anybody who jokes about them is sure of having the whole public for an audience; while the best New York joke falls flat in Boston or Philadelphia, and flatter still in Cincinnati or Chicago, owing to want of acquaintance with the materials of ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... request of my friend, Lord Byron, I consider it my duty to offer you some considerations relative to the proposed journey to Geneva, so as to give you an idea of the undesirable results likely to follow. I flatter myself that you will accept this request of his, together with the motives leading me to acquiesce, as an excuse for the liberty taken by a total stranger. In acting thus, the sole object I have in view is my friend's peace of mind, and that of those in whom he is so deeply interested. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... "You flatter me, Mr. Chadron, and the uniform of the United States army," returned King, with barely covered contempt. "Suppose we allow events to shape themselves in regard to Miss Chadron. She'll hardly be entertaining marriage ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... letters to my sister two descriptions of nature for my stories. It is curious that you have quite a masculine way of writing. In every line (except when dealing with children) you are a man! This, of course, ought to flatter your vanity, for speaking generally, men are a thousand times better than women, and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... General C.C. Pinckney yesterday, and he told me, in his laughing, humorous way, that he had requested you to draw his brother Thomas twenty years younger than he really was, so as to be a companion to his own when he was twenty years younger than at this time, and to flatter him as he had directed Stuart to do so ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... aunt is addicted to snuff, tracts, and the distribution of flannel, and before August, the fair Dorothea will be yearning for a sight of her adorer. You can easily gammon Anthony Whaup into a loan of that yacht of his which he makes such a boast of; and if you go prudently about it, and flatter him on the score of his steering, I haven't the least doubt that he will victual his hooker and give you a cruise in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... affectations, shines equally in either sphere; rules her rough posse of attendant swains with unwearying tact and gusto; and with her master and mistress pushes the arts of insinuation to their crowning point. The attention of man and the regard of other dogs flatter (it would thus appear) the same sensibility; but perhaps, if we could read the canine heart, they would be found to flatter it in very different degrees. Dogs live with man as courtiers round a monarch, steeped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her head positively. "Old American. As old and as good as her name. You wouldn't flatter her by guessing her to be anything else. I dare say she would consider the average British aristocrat ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The two started on the return to the village. On the road Bakahenzie sought to flatter MYalu by pretending to take him into his confidence, adjuring him to secrecy and informing him that he would cause it to be known that MYalu, the son of MBusa, would bring back the Bride of the Banana. MYalu assented ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... no compromise," Engleton answered fiercely. "There is nothing which you could offer which could repay me for the horror of the nights you have left me to shiver here in this d—d vault. Don't flatter yourself that I shall ever forget it. I stay on because I cannot escape, but I would sooner stay here for ever than beg for mercy from ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... invite us," said the exchange editor, "but then I suppose the affair is to be a very quiet one, and we can't take offence at that. The old man's not a bad lot, by any means. Let's do something to please him and to flatter his bride. What do you say to raising a fund to buy them a present, in the name ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... made the people of Redriff and Wapping, Ratcliff and Limehouse, so secure, and flatter themselves so much with the plague's going off without reaching them, that they took no care either to fly into the country or shut themselves up: nay, so far were they from stirring, that they rather received their friends and relations ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... replied I, modestly, "I had begun to flatter myself that our little innocent gayety had inspired you with the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... their using different weights and different divisions of them in different parts of that empire. It is therefore a very desirable thing to have these difficulties removed, and to get all philosophers to use pounds divided in the same manner, and I flatter myself that may be accomplished if you, Dr. Priestley, and a few of the French experimenters will agree to it; for the utility is so evident, that every thinking person must immediately be ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... tempt all the rogues in Yorkshire, and there's a lot of them. But now I've seen it, I'll go home with these bits of paper. I shall be a very important woman to-night. Them two lads won't know how to fleech and flatter me enough. I'll be waited on hand and foot. And Nicholas will get a bit of a set-down. He was bragging about Miss Ethel bringing his invitation to his hand and promising to dance with him. I wouldn't do it if I were Miss Ethel. She'll find out, if she does, ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Highness! (Curtseying profoundly.) JULIA (sneering at her). Old frump! BAR. Humph! A recent creation, probably? LUD. We were married only half an hour ago. BAR. Exactly. I thought she seemed new to the position. JULIA. Ma'am, I don't know who you are, but I flatter myself I can do justice to any part on the very shortest notice. BAR. My dear, under the circumstances you are doing admirably—and you'll improve with practice. It's so difficult to be a lady when one isn't born to it. JULIA (in a rage, to LUDWIG). Am I to stand this? Am ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Thou 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 fall from ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Possible of it, and it Carried us out about a 1/4 of a Mile from the breakers; but it was too Narrow for us to keep in long. However, what with the help of this Ebb, and our Boats, we by Noon had got an Offing of 1 1/2 or 2 Miles, yet we could hardly flatter ourselves with hopes of getting Clear, even if a breeze should Spring up, as we were by this time embay'd by the Reef, and the Ship, in Spite of our Endeavours, driving before the Sea into the bight. The Ebb had been in our favour, and we had reason to Suppose the flood which was now made would ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... will perhaps be astonished to find, that the Doctor as supposed to flatter himself with the hope that his attentions were not altogether unacceptable to a young lady of singular elegance and personal accomplishments, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... grave and sometimes comic, but never-failing. He describes solicitors (or suitors) at Court, all pushing their fortune. "Some singis, some dancis, some tells storyis." Some try to make friends by their devotion, some have their private advocates in the King's chamber, some flatter, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and persistency in the people of Italy, and was perhaps as much for their good as the dangerous boon of independence would have been. All such prejudices will be removed by a candid perusal of this memoir. Cavour himself, as a statesman and a man, was of exactly that stamp which we flatter ourselves to be the exclusive growth of America and England. He was nothing of a visionary, nothing of a political pedant, nothing of a doctrinaire. Franklin himself had not a more practical understanding, or more of large, plain, roundabout sense. He had, too, Franklin's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... are plenty of people in the same box that you are," I said. "Don't flatter yourself that you are the only one who has taken money; but perhaps they will now go through the books, and, discovering the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... so insipid, so contemptible—what I hear is so small. A strong, highly spiced word, even if it is sharp, refreshes me—When you have finished a picture, do you like to hear nothing but how well your friends can flatter?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dear, do you say?' and he turned with practised insolence to a pot-girl in a red shawl who could not have uttered an audible word to save her soul, but who blushed and giggled with pleasure at this mark of attention. 'Ah! you flatter, fair maiden! I look more than twenty, but I think I may say that I do not look thirty. Does any lady or gentleman think I look thirty? No! As a matter of fact, I was twenty-nine years of age when, in ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... state of our knowledge we may flatter ourselves with having thrown some light on the extraordinary effects of electric fishes, yet a vast number of physical and physiological researches still remain to be made. The brilliant results which chemistry ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the whole people of Paris and that it is dangerous to insult him at this moment, and if this priest wished it, in an hour you would be without a crown? Come, then, on another occasion you can be firm and strong; but to-day is not the proper time; to-day, flatter and caress, or you are ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Not flatter vice. We curse vice only behind its back, and that's like making a long nose at it round a corner. I am a zoologist or a sociologist, which is the same thing; you are a doctor; society believes in us; we ought to point out the terrible harm which threatens it and the next generation ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... added, that democracy would have very little to say to it, on one side or on the other. The lower order of voters, the small farmers and tradesmen, would no doubt range themselves on the side of the duke, and would endeavour to flatter themselves that they were thereby furthering the views of the Liberal side; but they would in fact be led to the poll by an old-fashioned, time-honoured adherence to the will of their great Llama; ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... to me that you could not breathe easily while this world held Carleton Barker living. You may now draw an easy breath, and many of them, for the Barker episode is over. Barker is dead, and I flatter myself that I am doing very well myself to live sanely after the ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... had betrayed her. She would go away with these monstrous captors, endure them, even flatter them, until she and they were far removed from the island. And then—she would kill herself. In her innocence she imagined that self-destruction, under such circumstances, was a pardonable offence. She only gave a life to save a life, and greater love than this is ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... course, I must now proceed to my dinner at Sir Charles Stuart's. I was shewn into a room where I found three or four Englishmen gaping at one another. Before many more had assembled, in came Sir C., and I believe, or rather I am willing to flatter myself, he made a sort of half bow towards us, and then we stood and gaped again; a few more words between him and one or two who were to go to Court the day after, but to me and some others not a syllable of any description was uttered, and when some more English were shewn in who were, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... the stations I have occasion to visit from time to time. On one a good lady played and sang Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance to me from dewy eve to dawn. I'm bound to say I sang some of it at sight myself; and I flatter myself it helped to pass an embarrassing night rather pleasantly for all concerned. We had all hands on the place for our audience, and when I left I was formally presented with both scores; for I had ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... repulsion—"She declares we are in the pay of her aunt and Lord Roxmouth. So we are, more or less! And what does it matter! Money must be had—and whatever way there is of getting it should be taken. I laughed at her, and told her quite frankly that I would do anything for money,—flatter a millionaire one day and cut him the next, if I could get cheques for doing both. How in the world should I get on without money?—or you either! But she is an incorrigible little idiot—talks about honour and principle exactly like some mediaeval story-book. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... will soon be charged with sums sufficient for the ransom; and if this avail not, not one of them will grudge their silver flagons and vessels to melt down to make the total required. But we must not flatter ourselves that he will obtain his liberty so soon as the money is raised. Prince John has long been yearning for sovereignty. He has long exercised the real, if not the nominal, power, and he has been intriguing with the pope and Philip of France for their support for his seizing the crown. He ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... Minister will not remove the Court to some other place? Is it possible to have that Communication with our Constituents, or to be benefited by the Reasonings of the people without Doors here, as at Boston? We cannot but flatter ourselves, that every judicious and impartial Person will allow, that the holding the General Court at Cambridge, is inconvenient and hurtful to the Province; Nor has your Honor ever yet attempted to show a single Instance, in which the province can be benefited by it: No good purpose which ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... govern at Rome when I cease to reign at Milan? No, Holy Father! the pontiff who placed the crown on my head, should it be shaken, will fall to rise no more." If what Cardinal Caprara said can be depended upon, Bonaparte frequently used to intimidate or flatter ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... You've no idea! she's so jealous that life is not only a burden, it's a weight that's smashing me flatter every day. I'm getting a gray hair and a wrinkle, and all because of her. And ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... fare; a little goes a long way; I respect Bancroft, but I do not love him; he has moments when he feels himself inspired to open up his improvisations upon universal history and the designs of God; but I flatter myself I am more nearly acquainted with the latter than Mr. Bancroft. A man, in the words of my Plymouth Brother, "who knows the Lord," must needs, from time to time, write less emphatically. It is a fetter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is no doubt from following this standard of beauty that even the Aztec people, who never disfigured the heads of their children, have represented their heroes and principal divinities with heads much flatter than any of the Caribs I saw on the Lower Orinoco."—Humboldt's Researches on the Ancient Inhabitants ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... What are you trying to say? I remember, in the spring You pretended you could sing; But your voice is now still queerer, And as yet you've come no nearer To a song. In fact, to sum the matter, I never heard a flatter Failure than your doleful clatter. Don't you think it's wrong? It was sweet to hear your note, I'll not deny, When April set pale clouds afloat O'er the blue tides of sky, And 'mid the wind's triumphant drums You, in your white ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... truer explanation of Frank's failures. Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater compliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making. Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried to flatter. Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your letter of three sheets: I began to flatter myself that the storm was blown over, but I tremble to think of the danger you are in! a danger, in which even the protection of the great friend you have lost could have been of no service to you. How ridiculous it seems for me to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... to in a note from a correspondent at Albany, in which we find the following sentences: 'If received, I hope it was not amenable to the censure in a late number of the KNICKERBOCKER, of certain correspondence, for having been written 'too carefully.' Now I do flatter myself upon so writing, that compositors can have no excuse for blunders, though I am well aware that to be esteemed a Genious, one's chirography should very nearly approach unintelligibility. If this be true, the patience and good nature of an Editor must be ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... then thirty years old; Louise of Savoy was forty-five, but she was still beautiful, attractive, and puissant; she had given the constable unmistakable proofs of her inclination for him and of the influence which his inclinations exercised over her: she might well flatter herself that he would be attracted by the prospect of becoming the king's step-father and almost a sharer in the kingly power, whilst retaining that of the great feudal lord. The chancellor, Duprat, full of ability ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fates will, and not to worry one's self beforehand about times and connections. But the American was in a fever of impatience, desirous, if possible, to get on that night. I knew he was from the Land of the Free by a phrase I heard him use in the cars: he said, "I'll bet a dollar." Yet I must flatter myself that Americans do not always thus betray themselves. I happened, on the Isle of Wight, to hear a bland landlord "blow up" his glib-tongued son because the latter had not driven a stiffer bargain with us for the hire of a carriage round ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... need of his assistance, I tried to flatter his tastes, and he was so pleased with me that he immediately wished to show me how his trained boxers fought, and he led the way into a kind of arena situated ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... myself. They press me to bring our union to a conclusion, they threaten me also with a rival, who without doubt deserves her more than I. How can I, miserable wretch that I am, how can I ward off the blow which threatens me? I flatter myself, at least, to have succeeded in my endeavours to conceal the vice of a heart which, although entirely her own, can never exterminate the miserable passion which possesses it. The time approaches with rapid strides when I must make up my mind. Good ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... manner suggested a charming frankness and innocence, took Peter by the arm. "Which of the three Graces do you mean to devote yourself to this afternoon, Peter? You shall not flatter us ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... yet was he to me the moste shrew;* *cruel, ill-tempered That feel I on my ribbes all *by rew,* *in a row And ever shall, until mine ending day. But in our bed he was so fresh and gay, And therewithal so well he could me glose,* *flatter When that he woulde have my belle chose, Though he had beaten me on every bone, Yet could he win again my love anon. I trow, I lov'd him better, for that he Was of his love so dangerous* to me. *sparing, difficult We women have, if that I shall not lie, In this ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... that produces conviction; and, I flatter myself, that, being gifted with some little sense and skill, my efforts may be ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... yet exempt me not from your revenge. Thus by your pleasures being set aloft, Straight by your furies I should quickly fall. No, citizens, who readeth Sylla's mind, Must form my titles in another kind: Either let Sylla be dictator ever, Or flatter Sylla with these ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... James, had much prospered in wealth and even in comfort. Ayala might flatter in some degree, but he attests the great increase in comfort and ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... for yourselves," called Dennis. "We're level with the gun," and, trying to squeeze themselves flatter, if such a performance had been humanly possible, they heard the rhythmical tac-tac abreast of them and the weird whistle of the deadly stream of bullets a few feet above ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... say, sometimes (as I think) they may; but they being naturally ignorant, understand not that such convictions tend to their good; and therefore they do desperately seek to stifle them, and presumptuously continue to flatter themselves in the way of ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... thoughts; and flatter not too soon. Just in the place you named, where three ways met. And near that time, five persons I encountered; One was too like, (heaven grant it prove not him!) Whom you describe for Laius: insolent, And fierce ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the French socialists, and that Rights-of-labour-knot of vagabonds who meet at Geneva. Your boy is not too wise to keep himself out of these scrapes, and he is just, by name and station, of consequence enough to make these fellows make up to and flatter him. Give him a sound fright, then, and when he is thoroughly alarmed about his failure, send him abroad for a short tour, let him go study at Halle or Heidelberg—anything, in short, that will take him away from Ireland, and break off his intimacy with this Atlee and his ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... aloof from the theatre, nor from actors and actresses—heavies and juveniles, and emotionals and soubrettes. He must know them, and more intimately; and at first he must be subject to them, however he mastered them at last; he must flatter their oddities and indulge their caprices. His experience with Godolphin had taught him that, and his experience with Godolphin in the construction of his play could be nothing to what he must undergo at rehearsals and in the effort to adapt his work to ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... same principle which makes the young harlot an old saint makes the repentant rake a believer in sexual anesthesia. Most of the medical men who believe, or claim to believe, that sexual anesthesia is so prevalent do so either to flatter their hysterical patients or because they have the mentality of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Sparrow," cried she. "I have been looking forward with much pleasure to seeing you." And then she tried to flatter it ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... is possible you can arrange for yourselves!" She shot a bright, quizzical look from one to the other. "I know you would wish me to stay and measure out the milk and sugar, and it would flatter me to do so, but, unhappily, I have a dish of some importance upon my own fire, and it is necessary that one is domestic when one is only a woman—is it not so, Monsieur Max?" She wrinkled her pretty face into a grimace of mischief, and nodded as ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... you can bring a tomahawk and do the criticism, and I shall try to have my courage ready for it—Oh, you will do me so much good—and Mr. Kenyon calls me 'docile' sometimes I assure you; when he wants to flatter me out of being obstinate—and in good earnest, I believe I shall do everything you tell me. The 'Prometheus' is done—but the monodrama is where it was—and the novel, not at all. But I think of some half promises half given, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... landsman, there is some sort of a Cape Horn for all. Boys! beware of it; prepare for it in time. Gray-beards! thank God it is passed. And ye lucky livers, to whom, by some rare fatality, your Cape Horns are placid as Lake Lemans, flatter not yourselves that good luck is judgment and discretion; for all the yolk in your eggs, you might have foundered and gone down, had the Spirit of the Cape ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... tell you," said their host putting his finger to his nose. "If information is wanted in this part of the world, I flatter myself—Come, Master Gerard, here's a table; what shall I call for? glass of the Mowbray slap-bang? No better; the receipt has been in our family these fifty years. Mr Morley I know won't join us. Did you say a cup of tea, Mr Morley? Water, only water; well, that's strange. Boy alive there, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... are equal, either of them is by one Eighth more sharp than the former Sound, neither are they distinguished from one another; but if they prove to be unequally divided, then two distinct Sounds are made at the same time, whereof one is flatter than the ether, and this is commonly called a broken Voice: But why our Voice should fail us, when we endeavour to make it more sharp, or more flat than it ought to be, the reason is, because we strive either so to contract the Cleft of the Wind-pipe, ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... a surgical operation may be healthful for the individual body. Next to the Jew, the Dutchman is the most stubbornly tenacious of human creatures. He is a fighting man into the bargain. Iglesias could not flatter himself that the campaign would result in an easy walk-over for so much of the British army as a supine and annoyed Government condescended to place in the field. The whole affair lay heavy on his soul. It lay there all the heavier that ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... for the execution, and is delighted to wear his unearned laurels while the thing is barely talked of. The chance of success relieves the uneasiness of his apprehensions; so that he makes use of the interval only to flatter his favourite infirmity again. Would you wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable consequences to which they lead?—What holds more antipathy to pleasure than pain? The mind given up to self-indulgence revolts at suffering, and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the monumental style. Look grave as we will, there is something ludicrous in Counsellor Keane's pig being the pivot of a revolution. We are of yesterday, and it is to no purpose that our political augurs divine from the flight of our eagles that to-morrow shall be ours, and flatter us with an all-hail hereafter. Things do really gain in greatness by being acted on a great and cosmopolitan stage, because there is inspiration in the thronged audience, and the nearer match that puts men on their mettle. Webster was more largely endowed by nature than Fox, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Mendez, and the canoe he had recently purchased, presented itself to the mind of Columbus. He knew the ardor and intrepidity of Mendez, and his love of distinction by any hazardous exploit. Taking him aside, therefore, he addressed him in a manner calculated both to stimulate his zeal, and flatter his self-love. Mendez himself gives an artless account of this interesting conversation, which is full ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... husband must be attentive to the signs of sexual desire in his wife. "Women," he says, "when sexual desire arises within them are accustomed to ask their husbands questions on matters of love; they flatter and caress them; they allow some part of their body to be uncovered as if by accident; their breasts appear to swell; they show unusual alacrity; they blush; their eyes are bright; and if they experience unusual ardor they stammer, talk beside the mark, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of one or two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have been coated with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any house in this mountainous district which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of books, I flatter myself, is conducted on just principles in this country; but for any other architecture, it is in a barbarous state, and what is worse, in ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... at a venture, and both examiners rubbed their hands and murmured, "Very good, indeed!" at which Tom's hair began to lie a little flatter, and he ceased to feel as if he were in a ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... our missionaries in their enterprise had indeed run smooth, and they had begun to flatter themselves that they had over-estimated the trials and dangers of the life they had chosen; but sad reverses awaited them. They had been in Serampore but ten days, when Messrs. Judson and Newell were summoned to Calcutta, where an order from government was read to ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... said the Duchess, who took it for granted that Mr. Finn knew all that his wife knew. "Has it answered?" Phineas was silent for a moment. "Of course you will tell me the truth. You won't be so bad as to flatter me now that I am so much in earnest." "I almost think," said Phineas, "that the time has gone by for what one may call drawing-room influences. They used to be very great. Old Lord Brock used them extensively, though by no means as your Grace has done. But the spirit of the world has changed ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... something to go on. We are not absolutely in the dark. Who knows? If the goddess of luck sits upon our shoulders, I myself may know the place well—may recognize it instantly! For years I have ridden these hills and I flatter myself that no one knows their hidden nooks and byways better than I. Even if I should not know the exact spot, it may be that I can tell by the general features its approximate locality, and thus limit our search to a ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... truth could flatter on the lips of an exile? But you don't answer my question—what think you of Vaudemont? Few are ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... told him to give it to them with all the power he had; and as some of them were present, I told them I would be very much obliged if they would give it to him in about the same way. I take it he has now vastly improved upon the attack he made then upon the Administration. I flatter myself he has really taken my advice on this subject. All I can say now is to re-commend to him and to them what I then commended,—to prosecute the war against one another in the most vigorous manner. I say to them again: "Go it, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... impression of Paris brilliancy, and see us in our own sphere, you pay court to us, if only as a pastime. And you, who are famous for your past passions, will be the object of attentions which will flatter you. Then take care!" cried Dinah, with a coquettish gesture, raising herself above provincial absurdities and Lousteau's irony by her own sarcastic speech. "When a poor little country-bred woman has an eccentric passion ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... there is a kind of physiognomy in the title of a book by which a skilful observer will know as well what to expect from its contents as one does reading the lines. I flatter myself this claim will be disproved in ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... all. One of the suite overheard, and I got round him. There was much more, which I did not learn. But they are going to soothe and flatter the unfortunate King and Queen by asking ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... commented the immaculate Waldron. "Well, much as I'd like to flatter your astuteness, Flint, I'm bound to say you're barking up a false trail, this time! Beef, yes. Steel, yes. Railroads, steamships, coal, iron, wheat, yes. All tangible, all concrete, all susceptible of being weighed, measured, put in figures, fenced ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... over, depend upon it. There are boys and men of all sorts, Miss R.—There are selfish sneaks who hoard until the store they daren't use grows mouldy—there are spendthrifts who fling away, parasites who flatter and lick its shoes, and snarling curs who hate ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... How many a maid Has been betroth'd and then betray'd; And has repented after! Yet still he flatter'd her aside, And from the linden, far and wide, Juchhe! Juchhe! Juchheisa! Heisa! He! Rang fiddle-bow ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... with success you yourself shall judge. Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, William Latimer, Cuthbert Tunstall, friends of yours as well as of mine, thought highly of them; you know yourself that they are too learned to be deceived in their judgement, and too sincere to want to flatter a friend—unless their affection for me has somewhat blinded them; the Italians to whom I have so far shown my attempt do not condemn it. It has been printed by Badius, successfully as far as he is concerned, so he ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... has found safety inside its opal globe. Safety? Ah, but what an unfortunate expression I have used! Is there any one in the world who can flatter himself that he has escaped ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... "Don't you flatter yourself on that point," said the engineer. "Let her once get a square look at you, and she will know you all right enough. She had an uneasy suspicion when she went past, that she had seen the distinguished gentleman with his back to her somewhere. ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... strong lights and shadows on buttresses and pointed windows; and the brown fields faintly sheened with green, which gave place to the deep maroon of the turned earth of vineyards, and the shining silver where the wind ruffled the olive-orchards; and beyond, the rolling hills that grew gradually flatter until they sank into the yellowish plain of Castile. As he made the gesture his fingers were stretched wide as if to grasp all this land he was showing. His flaccid cheeks were flushed as he turned to us; but we should see it in May, he was saying, in May when the wheat was thick ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... "Don't flatter yourself that I am afraid of you," she said. "I would say to your face what these people only dare think. Indeed, I was just going to look ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himself with any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable to comprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were valueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air his knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep. From what I have heard ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... in books that whoso will flatter the lion, beguileth him, for that he is lightly duped by fair words and glorieth in praise; so he began and said, 'O lion of the forest and the waste! O unconquerable warrior! O father of heroes and Sultan of wild beasts! Behold, I ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... from those who are cast away in ships or boats; but the people who come here, have never returned. The difficulty of leaving the island is very great: and we flatter ourselves, that few who have remained any time with us, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not kill her?" cried Hortebise. "Had she not all his letters, and taunted him with the production of them? Ah, my dear friends, do not let us flatter ourselves that we have the sole monopoly of blackmailing. The high-born Countess plunged her hand into the Duke's coffers just as if she had been a mere adventuress. It is only ten days ago that she borrowed—you ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the generals and addressed them: "Xenias and 8 Pasion," he said, "have taken leave of us; but they need not flatter themselves that in so doing they have stolen into hiding. I know where they are gone; nor will they owe their escape to speed; I have men-of-war to capture their craft, if I like. But heaven help me! if I mean to pursue them: never shall it be said of me, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... As Strangers flatter'd with deceitful Snow, Fall in a Deadly Pit they do not know, So was I hamper'd in a Marriage Noose, In Marrying one that did frequent the Stews, As well as Cuckold me at Home; but she Transacting Whoredom with great Secresie Like other Neighbours, to avoid ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... full dear for all the pleasures of sin, that have carried away his heart from closing with, and following the Lord in the day of his prosperity. Ungodly men, because they feel no changes now, they fear none hereafter, but flatter themselves with dying as the godly, though their life is consumed in wickedness, and their strength in providing for and satisfying the lusts of the flesh. But as it fared with wicked Balaam, so shall it fare with these, and their vain hopes will prove a feeding upon ashes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... York. I flatter myself I've loosened them while we've been away," the girl went on. "They won't find in Utica the same charm; that was my idea. I want a big place, and of course Utica—!" She broke off ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... flatter you" said Mrs. Gary, one evening "but that child has very elegant manners! Really, I think they are very nearly perfect. I don't believe there is an English court beauty who ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... amongst them, and that they were entirely submissive to their saintly founder. Admiring all these things, they said to each other: "This shows that the way to heaven is narrow, and that it is very difficult for the rich to enter into the Kingdom of God. We flatter ourselves that we shall eke out our salvation in the enjoyment of all the comforts of life, having our ease in all things, while these people, to save their souls, deprive themselves of everything, mortify their bodies, and are notwithstanding not ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... depot of prisoners at Verdun, the Marquis's interest with the Emperor prevailed, and I was allowed to remain at Paris, the happiest of prisoners, at the Colonel's hotel at the Place Vendome. I here had the opportunity (an opportunity not lost, I flatter myself, on a young fellow with the accomplishments of Philip Fogarty, Esq.) of mixing with the elite of French society, and meeting with many of the great, the beautiful, and the brave. Talleyrand was a frequent guest of the Marquis's. His ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... territories there are no mines either of gold or silver, and this young nation, just recovering from the waste and desolation of a long war, has not as yet had time to acquire riches by agriculture and commerce. But our soil is bountiful and our people industrious, and we have reason to flatter ourselves that we shall gradually ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... thing, of course; but I'm sanguine enough," declared my employer. "That little girl is a perfect brick. She's entirely unsuspicious. Flatter and court a woman, and if she falls in love with you she'll go any length ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... purpose. It is among them that the most powerful antagonists of atheism are found. If any one were to say to them "A lofty spirituality is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man"—it would make them furious, I shall take care not to say so. I would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities, that it is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the "merely moral" man, after they have been acquired singly through long training and practice, perhaps ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... print! The reader will say, "Oh, how disagreeable they must have been, those two, that every one should have deserted them!" but this would be a mistake, for we flatter ourselves that we really are rather nice, and only "adverse circumstances" deprived us of our friends one ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the walls are hung with portraits taken at different periods of his life. Mine host said that visitors from every land were as much interested in this room as in Shakespeare's birth-place. The remark may have been intensified to flatter an American visitor, but there are few names dearer to the Anglo-Saxon race than that on the plain headstone in the burial-yard of Sleepy Hollow. Sunnyside is scarcely visible to the Day Line tourist. A little gleam of color here and there amid the trees, close ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... life! He was London born and bred, and goes up every year to visit his friends there. He's getting old now, as I am myself; but though he speaks sharp, he's as easy to be managed as a baby. Any one can twist him round with their little finger, so long as they just flatter ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... "Fields" between the jail and the Almshouse, to see me on the gallows. If such thoughts do not assail the brave—if restless nights, wakeful dawns, dull days are not their portion—I must own that all these were mine, not often, perhaps, but too frequent to flatter self-esteem. And, fight them as I might, it was useless; for such moments came without warning—often when I had been merry with friends, at times when, lulled by long-continued security, I had nigh forgotten ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... suppose I should have listened to opinions as much to the purpose as the tinkle of broken glass or the interpretation of dreams. By Hercules, you are much more deserving of censure than I, you who will flatter a poet so as to get an invitation to dinner!" Then we laughed ourselves out of a most disgraceful quarrel, and approached more peaceably whatever remained to be done. But the remembrance of that injury recurred to ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... on the passing World to turn thine Eyes, And pause awhile from Learning to be wise; There mark what Ills the Scholar's Life assail; Toil, Envy, Want, the Garret, and the Jail. See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just; To buried Merit raise the tardy Bust. If Dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat's Life, and Galileo's ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... mattress and a single woollen coverlet which, judging by 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 some ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... you know yet,' he went on after a slight pause, 'what it is to love anybody very dearly. I remember you told Gyda one day that you had never loved any one so since your mother. Certainly I have never had a right to flatter myself that I had been able to teach you what it means. If ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... little sleep he obtained after all. He always looked wide awake and as if he did not need sleep. His eyes had gradually become black, and when, after a day of fatigue and care with him he would at last close them, and we would flatter ourselves that now we too should snatch a little rest, we would see them shining upon us in the most amusing manner with an expression of content and even merriment. About this time he was baptized. I well remember how in his father's study, and before taking him to ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... on winning this office and he increased his debts, which were already enormous, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars in our money, to bribe and flatter and make sure of enough votes to win the election. He was so deeply in debt, he told his mother, that in case he did not win the office he would be obliged to leave Rome, never to return. But luck was on his side and ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... white sand about us. The translucent red ball itself sank behind the brown stretches of corn field as we sat down to eat, and the warm layer of air that had rested over the water and our clean sand-bar grew fresher and smelled of the rank ironweed and sunflowers growing on the flatter shore. The river was brown and sluggish, like any other of the half-dozen streams that water the Nebraska corn lands. On one shore was an irregular line of bald clay bluffs where a few scrub-oaks with thick trunks and flat, twisted tops threw light shadows on the long grass. The ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... if Lawrence, hired to grace His costly canvass with each flatter'd face, Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush, Saw cits grow centaurs underneath his brush? Or should some limner join, for show or sale, A maid of honour to a mermaid's tail? Or low Dubost (as once the world has seen) Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen? ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... In one word, was he a mighty and successful tyrant? Then that was the man to honour and worship; that was the sort of man to become, if anyone had the chance, by fair means or foul. Just as the world worships now the successful man; and—if you will but make a million of money—will flatter you and court you, and never ask either how you made your money, or how you spend your money; or whether you are a good man or a bad one: for money in man's eyes, as charity in God's eyes, covereth a multitude of sins; and as long as thou doest ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... just because they are bad," said Sadako, "that we must please them. We flatter them so that they may not ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... from near to distant objects, the lens becomes flatter and thinner (Fig. 161). This change is necessary because the less divergent waves from the distant objects require less converging power on the part ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... deck to the starboard bulwark, turned and ran forward again shrieking more loudly than ever, while the rapid motion through the air made the flames burn more furiously, and I could distinctly hear them flatter and roar. ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... bright afternoon. We met with no harsh treatment other than our bonds. Instead, when our captors spoke to us, it was with words of amity and smiling lips. Who accounteth for Indian fashions? It is a way they have, to flatter and caress the wretch for whom have been provided the torments of the damned. If, when at sunset we halted for supper and gathered around the fire, the werowance began to tell of a foray I had led against the Paspaheghs years before, and if he and his warriors, for all the world like ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... time, stood meekly and silently by, and when her father asked her how it was with her, she replied, "Father, my love toward you is as my duty bids. What can a father ask, or a daughter promise more? They who pretend beyond this only flatter." ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... shifting visitant, again shifting spectrally. "Why, I'm thinking of writing, for the Nineteenth Century, an article on 'Political Lightning Conductors,' which, I rather flatter myself, will comprehend everything, convince everybody, and conciliate even Professor TYNDALL. If you like I will read, from the advance-sheets, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... will repose my cause. It shall be my study to merit a return of affection; and I doubt not but generosity and honor will influence your conduct towards me. I expect soon to settle among a generous and enlightened people, where I flatter myself I shall be exempt from those difficulties and embarrassments to which too many of my brethren are subject. The local situation is agreeable, the society refined and polished; and if, in addition, I may obtain that felicity which you are formed to bestow in ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... H——, who, I learned, in after days, was seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of that name, who suffered—at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits,—some few years since? My friend Tobin was the benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... heel. It all rested on the fortuity of her getting five minutes alone with him. Granted this, she would have a chance. There are ways given to women whereby men of his type can be placated. She would have to flatter him by abasing herself, by throwing herself upon his mercy. But since this must be done, she was prepared to ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... himself, let me flatter this woman. That is the only way of preventing any rumour. I must leave Althausen, I will pass her on to my successor, but I do not want to have an enemy behind me. If you have my secret, you old hypocrite, I will have yours, and I will know what ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... tail And pitchfork? Not a vestige do I see Of your famed look! You have no frightful glance; I cannot even so far flatter you As to say special badness makes your face Great and distinguished. If you're Prince of Hell, How villanously ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... Nothing of that kind could anger him. If your father were to cringe or to flatter him then he would ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... in the minds of modern men. There was no need in the eighteenth century for any fine analysis to detect the naive belief that women exist only as auxiliary beings to contribute to the comfort and to flatter the self-esteem of men. The belief was avowed and accepted as the unquestioned basis of human society. Good men proclaimed it, and the cleverest ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... how to be happy though married, but my last page is at hand. To sum up therefore. Wives: if you would be happy, remember, make much of your husband, flatter him discreetly, laugh at his jokes, don't attempt to put down his club, never tell him home truths, ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... from other men, if he is a minister," said she with a comprehensive sniff. "They're all alike, as far as I can find out: anybody that's a mind to soft-soap them and flatter them into thinkin' they're something great can lead them right around by the nose. And besides, she's ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... and sister know nothing of what you have undergone. Had they, their suffering and alarm would have been great. But do not flatter yourself that the arrest of Count Monte-Leone is unknown to them. One of the Neapolitan papers informed them yesterday of that fact; and I do not hide from you, that in my presence, your mother deplored your unfortunate intimacy with one so adventurous ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... o'clock in the afternoon we arrive at a city that I flatter myself is Kan-tchou-foo; all attempts to question the carriers or anybody else in regard to the matter results in the hopeless bewilderment of both them and myself. The carriers are not such ignoramuses in the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... same genial soul as ever, though a shade stouter perhaps and greyer at the temples, and I flatter myself that it was with a smile of genuine pleasure that he led me to my old table in a corner of ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... whatever knowledge they contain, and that we might neither arrogate inventions which do not belong to us, nor weary the public by repetition. Some useful and ingenious essays may probably have escaped our notice; but we flatter ourselves, that our readers will not find reason to accuse us of negligence, as we have perused with diligent attention every work upon education, that has obtained the sanction of time or of public approbation, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... that if we'd had the whole army to pick from, we couldn't've got in with a better lot of boys and officers. Every one of them's true blue, and a MAN all the way through. It's the best regiment in the army, and our company's the best company in the regiment, and I flatter myself the company hasn't got two other as good men as ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... princess, passionately, "and look at me. You have known me since my infancy, dear friend, therefore you need not flatter me because of my station. Look at me, and tell me if it is not enough to break my heart, that I must appear before this beautiful empress and her daughters, and that I must try to win the affections of this prince, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... him all over so as to make his glossy black plumage look grey and shabby, ruffle his feathers, apply a little pomade hongroise to the feathers on the back of his head, and make some of them stick out to look like a dilapidated crest, and you may flatter yourself that you have produced a very fair imitation of a black bulbul as it appears when flitting about from one tree summit to another. Closer inspection of the bird reveals the fact that "black" is scarcely the right adjective to apply to it. Dark grey is the prevailing hue of its plumage, with ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... lords, let us not flatter ourselves that our actual losses have been equal; let us, before we determine this question, accurately compare the number and the value of our ships and cargoes with those of the Spaniards, and see on which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... 40 B.C., during the consulate of Pallio, whom the poet wished perhaps to flatter. Then presently Ovid sang the deathless soul and Tibullus gave rendezvous hereafter. The atmosphere dripped with wonders. The air became charged with the miraculous. At stated intervals the doors of temples opened of themselves. Statues perspired visibly. There was a book that explained the mechanism ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... Pericles had married a rich widow and she had kicked Peter out, there had come the Temple of Jimjambo, where the "Old Man" had been Tushbar Akrogas, the major-domo—terrible when he was thwarted, but a generous dispenser of favors when once you had learned to flatter him, to play upon his weaknesses, to smooth the path of his pleasures. All these years Peter had been forced to "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee"; it had become an instinct with him—an instinct that went back far behind the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... peripatetic essay. What would you say to this as a beginning?—it is to be a stately, pompous plunge into the subject, after the Milverton fashion:—"Friendship and the Phoenix, taking into due account the fire-office of that name, have been found upon the earth in not unsimilar abundance." I flatter myself that "not ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Doctor, "if you flatter me so I shall have to hide my head in a bush like an Ostrich. Birds are people, though of another race from ours, and I am happy if I can make you think so. Ah! we must be near a Redwing's nest—what a commotion the colony ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... is a 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 ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... The laws we establish will not perhaps be in force at once, but at any rate, having given back the power to the people, they will resist for the sake of their liberty which they will believe they are preserving. We must caress their vanity, flatter their hopes, promise them happiness after our work has been in operation; we must elude their caprices and their systems at will, for the people as legislators are very dangerous, they only establish laws which coincide ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... I laughed. "Born to flatter the male—every girl of your world." And I added seriously, "You don't answer my question. What takes ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... Heaven choose so near an instrument. Mercy is for the merciful! If thou Hast been of such, 't will be accorded now. Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep, For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep; Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel A hollow agony that will not heal. Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap The bitter harvest in a woe as real. I have had many foes, but none like thee; For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend, And be avenged, or turn them into friend; ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "That, I flatter myself, seems so only because I have not yet said it. That part of our Christmas-day which is made to be in any degree sacred is ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... tediousness upon you; but I have often regretted that we were not better known to each other, and have been glad of your success in literature and in more important matters." Returning to the tales, he adds: "I should like to flatter myself that they would repay you some part of the pleasure which I have derived from your ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "It is, I flatter myself. I've long had the idea, but I should never have worked it out and found the value of it but for Grey. I invented it to coach him in his history. You see we are in the Grecian corner. Over there is the Roman. You'll find Livy and Tacitus worked out there, just as ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... honoured with this important command, has much impaired a weak constitution. And now, finding that much abler officers are arrived within the district which I had thought under my command, ... and, I flatter myself, having made the British nation and our gracious Sovereign more beloved and respected than heretofore; under these circumstances I entreat, that if my health and uneasiness of mind should not be mended, that I may have your Lordship's ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... countries were so immediately susceptible to the idea of a World Revolution. Victory hath its charms and does not predispose a people to complain; so where the Masses (invested with a capital "M" to flatter their vanity and secure their goodwill) were victorious and content they were to be made to believe by advertisement that with a little trouble they could become even more victorious and more content. The KAISER and Imperialism had been disposed of; it only remained to get rid of Capitalism ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... of the physical 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 ...
— 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.
... of this composition are all devout lovers of the world, that they fear all that is dureless[17] and ridiculous: they fear the plots and practises of their opposites,[18] and their very whisperings: they fear the opinions of men, which beat but upon shadows: they flatter and forsake the prosperous and unprosperous, be they friends or kings: yea they dive under water, like ducks, at every pebblestone, that is but thrown toward them by a powerful hand: and on the contrary, they show an obstinate and giant-like valor, against the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... you," he said,—"you know that very well; but you mustn't quarrel with me, if I talk honestly with you; it isn't everybody that will take the trouble. You flatter yourself that you will make a good many enemies by leaving your old communion. Not so many as you think. This is the way the common sort of people will talk:—'You have got your ticket to the feast of life, as much as any other man that ever lived. Protestantism says,—'Help yourself; here's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Lord Vannelt, madam, than my own situation, that disgusted me: for though I liked not his behaviour, I found him a man too generally esteemed to flatter myself better usage would await me in merely changing my abode, while my station was the same. I believe, indeed, he never meant to offend me; but I was offended the more that he should think me ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... then to flatter him as you doe. Be but yourself againe and then consider What alteration in the State can be By which you shall not loose. Should you bring in (As heaven avert the purpose and the thought Of such a mischief) the old Tirrany That Spaine hath practisd, do you thinck you should be Or ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... one opportunity has come. The Bill for dividing the dioceses and doubling the number of the Bishoprics has just passed into law. I flatter myself that when the Prelates assented to that Bill they did not realize how its powers might be directed. It is the proposal of your Majesty's advisers to nominate to those Bishoprics only Free Churchmen, men whose political views ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... The gods, men, the Pitris, the Gandharvas, the snakes, and the Rakshasas, were all under my sway in days gone by. Thou knowest this, O Vasava! Their understandings stupefied by ignorance, all creatures used to flatter me, saying, "Salutations to that point of the compass whither Virochana's son Vali may now be staying!" O lord of Sachi, I do not at all grieve when I think of that honour (which is no longer paid to me). I feel no sorrow ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... letters from people who plainly had not read a word, and to the best of my belief never will. I wish you had been more critical, and had pointed out the faults and defects of the book, of which there are no doubt some, if not many, to be found. I flatter myself that I have made more clear some passages utterly unintelligible in our A.V., such as, "He shall deliver the island of the innocent, yea," etc., chap. xxii. 30, and chap, xxxvi. 33, and the whole ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... belief, quite groundless so far as he personally was concerned, that his government was indifferent to what are called Imperial interests, the interests of England outside England. But he always thought for himself, and never stooped to flatter the prejudices or inflame the passions of any ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... shutting up of all windows, dormers, sky-lights, shutters, curtains—in a word, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is used to penetrate into our dwellings, to the prejudice of the profitable manufactures which we flatter ourselves we have been enabled to bestow upon the country; which country cannot, therefore, without ingratitude, leave us now to struggle unprotected through so ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... her hospitality and kindness, made her a tender of his interest at court. 'Wouldst thou,' said he, 'be spoken for to the king, or to the captain of the host?'—What an offer was that, to gratify her ambition or flatter her pride!—'I dwell,' said she, 'among mine own people.' What a characteristic answer! all history furnishes no parallel ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... waves of the tumultuous Pacific wash the shores of the great Western world or from the town of Mallow itself. And that is to have the honor and glorification of introducing to you our new and worthy magistrate, Mr. Cornelius John Michael O'Crowley. (Applause) Far be it from me indeed to flatter any man, but there are times when we must tell the truth. (Applause) And when I say that there is no one more humble for a man of his achievements from here to Honolulu than Mr. O'Crowley himself, I am only telling the truth in a plain and unadorned ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... fitted by them to take a good place in after-life? It seems to me that the gratitude and the sweatmeats ought to flow from you to her; I quite see the force of it, if any girl feels what I have just described,—I flatter myself I generally do see the force of my victim's complaints; but it does not do my victim much good, because I generally also see the force of something else, which is of superior importance, but which the victim, very likely, will not see till ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Blackmouth Street, or Blasphemer's Row, or Drunkard's Alley, or Rascal's Corner. They are the sons of one Beastly, whose mother bore them in Flesh Square: they live at the house of one Shameless, at the sign of the Reprobate, next door to the Descent into the Pit, whose retainers are Mr. Flatter, Mr. Impiety, Mr. False-Peace, Mr. Covetousness, who are housed by one Mr. Simple, in ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Gyneura would not now be seene, she sent him word she scorn'd his fauning flattrie, And much did greeue that shee so fond had beene, to yield her hart to such deceitfull battrie: Bid him (quoth shee) goe flatter where he list, I like not I, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... there is nothing between you and that girl who used to be at Joll's. I say nothing about our hopes for you, but you have your own career to look to; and as I know you are too honourable to flatter an ignorant girl when you mean nothing, so I trust you are too wise to be caught by a foolish fancy. Forgive a staid matron (of one week's standing) for writing so plainly, but what I saw made me uneasy—without ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... observing every day more and more the designe I have to instruct my self, retarded by reason of an infinite number of experiments which are needful to me, and which its impossible for me to make without the help of others; although I do not so much flatter my self, as to hope that the Publick, shares much in my concernments; yet will I not also be so much wanting to my self, as to give any cause to those who shall survive me, to reproach this, one day to me, ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... It is well known that the foot is less well formed in the Negro than in the European. The arch of the instep, the perfect conformation of which is essential to steadiness and ease of gait, is less elevated in the former than in the latter. The foot is thereby rendered flatter as well as longer, more nearly resembling the monkey's, between which and the European there is a marked difference in this particular."—From "A Treatise on the Human Skeleton" by Dr. Humphry, Lecturer on Surgery and Anatomy in the Cambridge University ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... contradict your thoughts; but your actions may contradict your words. So when I ask you if you can love me, you must say no, but you must love me too. If I tell you you are handsome, you must deny it, and say I flatter you. But you must think yourself more charming than I speak you: and like me, for the beauty which I say you have, as much as if I had it myself. If I ask you to kiss me, you must be angry, but you must not refuse me. If I ask you for more, you must be more angry,—but more complying; and ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... kingdom for his excellent talents and virtue. He had the highest friendship for Grotius, who ardently wished that great man might receive the reward of the signal services he had done the State: "But, he writes to Du Maurier[134], those who know the court, dare not flatter themselves with so much good luck." While the seals were vacant the Constable De Luynes did the office of keeper: they were at length given, not to the President Jeannin, but to De Vic, who had on all occasions given Grotius proofs ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... any prince in Christendom; and to justify to the world the people of England, whose love of their just and natural rights, with their resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when it was on the very brink of slavery and ruin. If these papers have that evidence, I flatter myself is to be found in them, there will be no great miss of those which are lost, and my reader may be satisfied without them: for I imagine, I shall have neither the time, nor inclination to repeat my pains, and fill up the wanting part of my answer, by tracing ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flatter'd its rank breath, nor bow'd To its idolatries a patient knee— Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles—nor cried aloud In worship of an echo;—in the crowd They could not deem me one of such; I stood Among them, but not of them; in a shroud Of thoughts which were not of their thoughts, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... 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 a fool ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... this persistent 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 hand, there are books which are depressing. Their ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... 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
... our hypocrisy so great that we actually flatter ourselves upon our great humanity, because we have saved from starvation those whose danger of starvation we have caused?... The hypocrisy of these excuses is almost more loathsome than the cruelty itself.... We have set ourselves to punish this country, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... native sweetness and gracefulness so eminent in this poet, the ancients gave him the appellation of the Attic bee. Whoever is thoroughly imbued with the feeling of this peculiarity may flatter himself that a sense for ancient art has arisen within him; for the affected sentimentality of the present day, far from coinciding with the ancients in this opinion, would in the tragedies of Sophocles, both in respect of the representation ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... too ill or sad to make me pretty compliments, Mr. Chillis. Do you know, I think I have grown quite vain since I have had you to flatter me. We constitute a mutual ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... in that his politest tone, "I think it certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that last botte was a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it. Three years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the greatest state of alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its way in the old house. People became accustomed to the spectacle of Miss Webster rejuvenated, and forgot to flatter. It may be added that men forgot to propose, in spite of the four millions. Deeper grew the gulf between the two women. Once in every week Abby vowed she would leave, but habit was too strong. Once in every week Miss Webster vowed she would turn the companion out, but dependence on the younger woman ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... the roan jennet whereon the King doth daily ride.' In this picture King James is represented on the identical roan jennet. In the background of the picture are seen two or three suspicious-looking figures, as if watching the success of some plot. These may have been put in by the painter, to flatter the King, by making it be supposed that he had actually escaped, or successfully combated, some serious plot. The King is attended by a numerous band of courtiers and attendants, all of whom seem moving forward to arrest the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... no reason why you can't do my work and write novels on the side. We both know a dozen fellows who are doing it. We've got to have this article, and you're the only man we dare trust alone on it, if it will flatter you any to ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... despised by the very fools they humor?" said 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 ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... follow a certain law, because we see no reason why it should deviate from that law in one way rather than in another. This is called the Principle of the Sufficient Reason;(239) and by means of it philosophers often flatter themselves that they are able to establish, without any appeal to experience, the most general ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the yolk mass, but the little chick itself is made out of the cells along the central line of the original plate, from which it folds at the sides and in front and behind so as to lie somewhat above and apart from the flatter enclosing cell layers ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... 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 ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... me great pain to think there should arise any Disputes between us and North Carolina, & I flatter myself when North Carolina states the matter in a fair light she will be fully convinced that necessity and self preservation have Compelled Us to the measures we Have taken, and could the people have discovered that No. Carolina would Have protected and Govern'd them, They ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... honest to flatter, Deerslayer," returned the girl, gratified at this admiration more than she would have cared to own. "One of the chief reasons of my respect for you, was your ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... vaguely repelled and could not help hoping that he would never see Mollie again. He was just the man to be dangerous to Mollie; handsome, polished, ready of speech and perfect in manner, he was the sort of man to dazzle and flatter ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... invitation. Mrs. Cavendish gave me some tea, and her few quiet remarks heightened my first impression of her as a thoroughly fascinating woman. An appreciative listener is always stimulating, and I described, in a humorous manner, certain incidents of my Convalescent Home, in a way which, I flatter myself, greatly amused my hostess. John, of course, good fellow though he is, could hardly be called ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... tell your masters all that you see and hear. Do not flatter them. Let it be the truth. Say that men talk everywhere, more and more openly. Tell them that you heard John Hampden say that the King's Star Chamber was an abomination, that the King soiled his majesty in treating Mr. Prynne ...
— Oliver Cromwell • John Drinkwater
... Pulse 104. Respirations 24. Abdomen flatter; general respiratory movement; tenderness now mainly localised to an area 2-1/2 inches in diameter, to the left of the ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... negative 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 hint that I could have made ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... much," said Mr. Storm. "I'm afraid you flatter me, madam. I make no such pretension. It's kind of you to think of promoting me, but this is my place. I shouldn't feel at home going first class, I assure you. I haven't either the manners or the clothes to ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... "Really," he said, "you flatter me. Will you not try these cigarettes? They are the best; they are made from tobacco grown especially for the Sultan's household, and it is death to export them. I understand that the cigarette habit has grown very much ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... a kitten, triumphantly, laying a passive mouse at the feet of her mother. "I flatter myself I am coming on with a reasonable degree of rapidity. What will become of the minor quadrupeds when I have attained my full strength and ferocity, it is ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... tool, ready to obey their least desire, to flatter them, to try and guess beforehand what would give them most pleasure. Huguenots were brought before her: she called them names. Confronted with Gauffridi, she told forth by heart her grievances against him, better than the King's own officers could have done. This did ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... to Julian, and with honied guise Flatter'd him to restore the risen maid; Seek ye to charm the eagle of his prize, Within his eyrie on the mountain laid; But Love, more strong, all sapping art defies, Nor ever from its fixed trust is sway'd! They came with arms, they came ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... that might oppose his Rage; but nothing weigh'd so greatly with him as the King's old Age, uncapable of injuring him with Imoinda. He would give Way to that Hope, because it pleas'd him most, and flatter'd best his Heart. Yet this serv'd not altogether to make him cease his different Passions, which sometimes rag'd within him, and soften'd into Showers. 'Twas not enough to appease him, to tell him, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... as "public opinion," certainly no sign among the lower classes of any opinion favorable to revolution. In Great Britain alone was there a constitutional monarchy, and in the early days of the French Revolution, so long as British statesmen could flatter themselves that their neighbors across the Channel were striving to imitate their political system, these same public men sympathized with the course of events. But when it became evident that the Revolution was going further, that it aimed at a great social leveling, that it was a movement ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... turned towards me sharply. She peered right through me, as if she were a Roentgen ray. I could see she was asking herself whether this was a conspiracy, and whether I had come there on purpose to meet 'Harold.' But I flatter myself I am tolerably mistress of my own countenance. I did not blench. 'How do you know?' she asked quickly, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Cyrus was that he should wait for two days. Callicratidas was annoyed at the rebuff: to dance attendance at the palace gates was little to his taste. In a fit of anger he cried out at the sorry condition of the Hellenes, thus forced to flatter the barbarian for the sake of money. "If ever I get back home," he added, "I will do what in me lies to reconcile the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians." And so he turned and sailed back to Miletus. From Miletus he sent some triremes to Lacedaemon to get money, and convoking the public assembly ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... others whose centre is self. Their whole life looks so mean and low. Life over, the Ego alone left; and what a poor, wretched, snivelling creature after all—this what we pampered, this what we thrust forward for others to admire and flatter! If we were not in much the same case, we might be able to view it in others with somewhat different eyes. And yet do you know that, as a matter of fact, our Ego is dead—self is not—and the devil's greatest ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... Yates, but since receiving yours remember that I did not get to finish it at the time, and have neglected it since. The fact is that since I took command of this regiment I have had no spare time, and flatter myself, and believe I am sustained in my judgment by my officers and men, that I have done as much for the improvement and efficiency of this regiment as was ever done for a command in the same length of time.—You will see that I am in Missouri. Yesterday I went out ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... nature durst bestow without undoing, Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then, And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in. This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness; In all the bravery my friends could show me, In all the faith my innocence could give me, In the best language my true tongue could tell me, And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the spring of 1914 when Edward was sixty-one and Miss Crewe Was ninety-three. Edward, after paying her money to Miss Crewe, might flatter himself on the possibility of having some fifty pounds a year for himself, that is to say, if his picture sales did not decline. A single man can, however, get along, more or less, on fifty pounds ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... to hide a touch of embarrassment. Jim was not trying to flatter; she saw he was naively following a new ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... comrades south of the Tugela one day, and the answering flashes came back, "You are heroes; not——" Here the message was interrupted by clouds, and lost in a series of confused dashes which the receiving signaller could not read. We flatter ourselves, however, that the missing words ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... condition of 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 be given possession. We tried to discourage them, assuring them that ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... Prince to those Whose Trade it is to cheat, deceive, and flatter? Who rarely speak the Meaning of their Hearts? Whose Tongues are full of Promises and Vows? Whose very Language is a downright Lie? Who swear and call on Gods when they mean nothing? Who call it complaisant, polite good Breeding, To say Ten ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... of leather on the floor with an angry gesture. "Yet I know who has been playing tricks here, and why I am no longer wanted. It is because I do not flatter and toady as certain people do. I am in the habit of speaking the truth in all places and to all persons," he continued proudly, "God be with these children, for my leaving them will benefit them little, whereas I—well, by God's ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... it. The old she-wolf is always moving; she never tires; she tramps along all the hollows in the Black Forest. We must not flatter ourselves with vain hopes. If, perhaps, she has stopped on her journey, so much the better for us; and if she still keeps going, we won't let that discourage us. Come on ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... should keep a fair, young, single woman in his house: but it growing late, and no preparation for her departing, she took the courage to say—'Sir, I am so extremely obliged to you, and have received so great a favour from you, that I cannot flatter myself it is for any virtue in me, or merely out of compassion to my sex, that you have done this; but for some body's sake, to whom I am more engaged than I am aware of; and when you passed your parole for my liberty, I am not so vain to think it was for my sake; therefore pray ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... secret of success; the point is to exploit the work of somebody else. A newspaper proprietor is a contractor, we are the bricklayers. The more mediocre the man, the better his chance of getting on among mediocrities; he can play the toad-eater, put up with any treatment, and flatter all the little base passions of the sultans of literature. There is Hector Merlin, who came from Limoges a short time ago; he is writing political articles already for a Right Centre daily, and he is at work on our little paper as well. I have seen an editor drop ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... lines!" would his praetorship have cried out. "Why, I can live well and enjoy life; and I flatter myself no one in Rome ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... his head. "Do not flatter me, Henry; I have not merited such praise for performing a mere act of duty, which we all owe to each other. Has not God himself commanded us to succour a fellow-creature in distress; even if it were an enemy that stood in ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... Caithness, upon the east, to the island of Jura, on the west; this traverses a mountainous country destitute of coal, and, so far as I know, of any marks of marine bodies. But, on each side of this great alpine ridge, we find the hard country skirted with one which is lower, flatter, or of a softer nature, in which coal is found, upon the one side, in the shires of Fife, Clackmannan, and Stirling; and, on the other, in that hollow which runs from the Murray Frith south-west, in a straight line, directed upon ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... in Bigot's mind which Angelique could not fathom, as little did Bigot suspect that, when Angelique seemed to flatter him by yielding to his suggestions, she was following out a course she had already decided upon in her own mind from the moment she had learned that Cecile Tourangeau was to be at the festival of Belmont, with unlimited ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... happiness instead of misery, she might have had the widowed Sir Arnold for a husband and have been the Archbishop of Canterbury's cousin, high in favour with the winning side in the civil war and united to a man who would have known how to flatter her cold nature into a fiction of feeling, instead of wasting on her the almost exaggerated respect with which a noble passion envelops its object, but which, to most women, becomes ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... pagan motives, they succeed in capturing the wandering attention on some sacred subject, by overloading it with a luxury of ornament and an exuberance of gesture unknown to the primitives. The treatment may be free, it is even necessary that it should be so in order to flatter the taste of the period, but the repertory of subjects becomes more and more limited. Brilliant colours, floating draperies, powerful draughtsmanship, become the obedient servants of a stern and dogmatic mind. The pagans exalted sensuousness, the mediaeval ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... approaching. 'Do not attempt to deceive me,' said she, 'I feel that I cannot long survive. I am prepared for the event, I have long, I hope, been preparing for it. Since I have not long to live, do not suffer a mistaken compassion to induce you to flatter my family with false hopes. If you do, their affliction will only be the heavier when it arrives: I will endeavour to teach them resignation ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... design'd; "And comest thou then, young veteran in deceit, To make thy work of perfidy complete, To earn by Vasa's death one title more, And revel in another patriot's gore?— And think'st thou still to flatter and deceive, By fables madness only can believe?— Thy wealth is useless now—this ruined state Has long in vain required her traitor's fate; She bids me, when I can, avenge her woes, And wreak her wrongs where'er I meet ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... o'clock when the anchor dropped, and in a few minutes after small boats crowded alongside to take us ashore. Until you are rowed in a sampan in style, never flatter yourself you have known the grotesque in the way of transportation. Fancy a large, wide canoe, with a small cabin in the stern, the deck in front lower than the sides, and on this four creatures, resembling nothing on earth so much as the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... greater quantity in the lower lands than in the higher, will call for a greater number of drains. It is found, too, that an independent discharge or relief of the water coming from the hill, at B, should always be provided, in order to avoid any impediment by the slower flow of the flatter drains. ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... constantly apologizing to foreigners for America, for its institutions, for its social life, and for themselves as belonging to it, is a fact which no one ever thinks of disputing. In this faculty for disparaging our own country we may flatter ourselves that we have no equals. The Chinese may come near us in their obsequious assurances as to the utter unworthiness of everything pertaining to them, but with the difference that they, probably, are inwardly profoundly convinced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... ideal merge into each other, and even the most practical beliefs turn upon the notion that the world was created for ourselves, and that the general system of things is bound to furnish circumstances and incidents which shall flatter our unsatisfied desires. It seems a pity that it should not fall to the lot of the critic to write down his impression of new books at this epoch, when he is most fitted to enjoy them. When romance and other delights have blankly vanished—"gone ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... horses were once more trotting. The wind was colder, the night darker, the foot-hills flatter. And the sky was now a wonderful deep velvet-blue blazing with millions of stars. Some of them were magnificent. How strangely white and alive! Again Madeline felt the insistence of familiar yet baffling ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... "They do it to flatter," ses old Sam, looking as if 'e knew all about it. "You wait till you are my age, Joe; then you'll know; why I should ha' been married dozens o' times if ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... presume then, my lord," said he, "to beg, I may have leave to declare myself the Princess's knight, and that I may serve and adore her in that quality. I am not ignorant," continued he, "of the temerity of my wishes, but if a crown be wanting to deserve her, let me flatter myself with the hope that this sword, already successful over your enemies, may one day, enforced by love, make my fortune worthy of the glory to which I aspire." The joy which appeared in the face of the Count at this demand, would be impossible to represent: he raised ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... would not flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame; she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make"; and, with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... I was often boycotted, and occasionally brought before the magistrates. In the latter case, an indirect charge was invariably brought against me in order that certain individuals might take "revenge out of me." But I flatter myself that I had as often a friend behind me to save me from "durance vile." On one occasion I was hauled up for refusing to quit the old Crown Inn, Church Green. I had occasion to go to the place where, it seemed, there had been a row a few minutes previously; indeed, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... bear the truth. If one doesn't flatter you the whole time and play on the tuneful lyre of love, you at once begin ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... quitted my occupation on the Bench. I considered this to be a far more dignified way of making my exit than meeting face to face the whole of the court and its practitioners and officers, and leaving it to the eloquent and friendly speech of the Attorney-General to flatter me far beyond my deserts in the customary farewell address which he would have offered to me. I thought it better to rely upon the expressions and conduct of those who knew me well, and to feel that they appreciated the discharge of the many arduous duties ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... are born as to their property, only without right of change or modification; neither can they break away from them. There is no excuse if an intelligent man in such a situation does not comprehend all the religions thus in daily practice; or if one does comprehend them he should not flatter himself possessed of any superior intellect.... The Rajah, my father, died, and I mounted his silver throne, and for ten years administered justice in the Hall of Durbars to which he had been used, he and his father's father, Children of the Sun, most pure of blood. By that time ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... bowed heads and the backs of chairs. There were over thirty people at the table, and the peculiarly restrained noisiness of their knives and forks on the plates proved that they were a discreet and a correct people. Their clothes—blouses, bodices, and jackets—did not flatter the lust of the eye. Only two or three were in evening dress. They spoke little, and generally in a timorous tone, as though silence had been enjoined. Somebody would half-whisper a remark, and then his neighbour, absently fingering her ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... to the friars and patrons to the seculars. The origin of this partiality must be found in the old-time fight between the bishops and the regular curas—who defend their rights with tenacity; while the natives are submissive and most humble to the prelates and flatter them. Notwithstanding the protection of the bishops, the seculars have generally had a very bad reputation; and many private persons, of every class and in every epoch, have openly ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... mischievous supreme Farceur who, safely shrouded in invisibility, continues to perpetrate so poor and purposeless a joke for his own amusement and our torture, we need not, for that matter, admire his wit or flatter his ingenuity! For life is nothing but vexation and suffering; are we dogs that we should lick the hand that ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... an angry voice, pointing with his outstretched arm to the easy-chair, "do not flatter me in this room. I wish I had known Frederick the Great, for I believe we should ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... won't die. She's got the Tracy constitution, which nothing can kill. Don't fret about your room. Maude liked being there. Nothing could keep her away. And don't flatter yourself that it was all love for you which took her there so much, for it wasn't. She is just mashed with Harold, while he—well, what can a young man do when a pretty girl—and Mamie is pretty—when she gushes at him all the time? It is a regular flirtation, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... people may do I cannot tell; but I am inclined to be satisfied with this concession; particularly as I believe that, if we press the thing further, they will resign, and we shall have no Bill at all, but instead of it a Tory Ministry and a dissolution. Some people flatter me with the assurance that our large minority, and the consequent change in the Bill, have been owing to me. If this be so, I have done one useful act at least in ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Cro'nest stock might bring As high as Butter Hill is, Which, patronized by Willis, Leaves cards now as 'Storm-King!' Can't some poetic swell-beau Re-christen old Crum Elbow And each prosaic bluff, Bold Breakneck gently flatter, And Dunderberg bespatter, With ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... not of the number of those who flatter war; when the occasion presents itself, we tell the truth about it. War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the width of a tooth apart. When of full size, these leeches are about two inches long, but reaching to six inches when extended. Mr. Thwaites, to whom I am indebted for these particulars, adds that he saw in a tank at Colonna Corle leeches which appeared to him flatter and of a darker colour than those described above, but that he had not an opportunity of examining ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... 'Around me they flatter and fawn—The young and the old, The fairest are ready to pawn Their hearts for my gold. They sue me—I laugh as I spurn The slaves at my knee, But in faith and in fondness I turn Unto thee, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be orderly, and orderly I am. I must have everything down in black and white, or I should go mad! Here is my commercial library: Daybook, Ledger, Book of Districts, Book of Letters, Book of Remarks, and so on. Kindly throw your eye over any one of them. I flatter myself there is no such thing as a blot, or a careless entry in it, from the first page to the last. Look at this room—is there a chair out of place? Not if I know it! Look at me. Am I dusty? am I dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless pauper, or am I not? Mind! I take no credit ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... excellent and benevolent William Allen, of the Society of Friends, wrote to Sir Patrick Ross, the Governor of the Colony, with whom he was on terms of friendship, soliciting him to use his influence in persuading Mr. Wood to consent: and I confess I was sanguine enough to flatter myself that we should thus at length prevail. The result proved, however, that I had not yet fully appreciated the character of the man we had ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... cook drew her slight figure up and said with an air of offended dignity, "I flatter myself that I am quite capable of making excellent toffy, Richard Blake, and am well aware ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... news Miechal writ Gibson, might be false; because I have not heard anything of it from yourself, nor from my uncle, who, I flatter myself, would writ a line to give me so much satisfaction: but I hope all my doubts will vanish if your ladyship does me the favour to confirm what will be so great a content to us. If I could but ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... the nomination was Sam Robinson, who owned the hotel at Woodsdale, and had invested considerable money there. Robinson was about forty years of age, and was known to be a bad man, credited with two or three killings elsewhere. Wood had always been able to flatter him and handle him; but when Cross was declared as the nominee for sheriff, Robinson became so embittered that he moved over to Hugoton, where he was later chosen town marshal and township constable. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... be out all night in hiding, and in the morning they would come back and take their beatings. David comfortably reflected that Uncle Reuben couldn't do him much harm, and, though Louie could hardly flatter herself so far, her tone, also, in the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... forced to see it glide away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that is not all. If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or deeds done in a moment of weakness or temptation, can I flatter myself that I have acted ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... irreconcilable conservative. "I don't want him to flatter himself over having run the whole fiesta, no! Let me ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... things to you, that you may not flatter yourself by a false confidence of being able to resist the power of his majesty, who is able if it should so please him to employ irresistible force in repressing the commotions and disorders of Peru, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... it is, sir. It's so much flatter. Why, you can't hardly find a place to land here, without getting your ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... cried, checking with a gesture his flow of unexpected eloquence. "I declare! you are not so slow as you seem. I will tell you just how much of a sorceress I am. I thought to flatter you by saying a great lady had given you the ring, and lo, I was right unless you are adroitly leading me to believe in my own sorcery. Is she a great lady? ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... according to the manner in which it was pronounced, naturally always behind the General's back, for it went very hard indeed with the man who ventured to pick a quarrel with him, and still harder, if possible, with anybody who tried to flatter him. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Often he played the double spy, for England and for Rome. Lennox may well have been puzzled, he may have said so, but the report rests on the evidence of one who did not hear his words, who wished to flatter the scepticism of James's English enemies, and whose character (though on one point he is unjustly ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... miles along the coast, the cliffs suddenly gave way to flatter ground; here we turned inland in a north-easterly direction. Reports reached us that about 200 enemy infantry (with transport) were in a wood on our right flank. "No. 1" Section and one squadron of Poona Horse were detailed as "flank guard" to prevent ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... idea," he said, in a complacent tone. "Of course we have to keep everything as secret as possible, and I flatter myself—" ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... itself; it reverberates—it recalls, commemorates, resuscitates something else. At least half the merit of everything you enjoy must be that it suits you absolutely; but the larger half here is generally that it has suited some one else and that you can never flatter yourself you have discovered it. It has been addressed to some use a million miles out of your range, and has had great adventures before ever condescending to please you. It was in admission of this truth that my discriminating friend who showed me the Claudes found ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... plainer, although each breast-stroke—the pleasure of a while agone, but oh! such a tax now—must have lessened the distance. Even to that excursion there came an hour of accomplishment and repose; but to this, of pen over paper, I cannot flatter myself that the hour is yet. I have to abandon the work incomplete. As it has happened to me before, the theme has expanded under my hands, and I shall have to rise from my desk before I penetrate to the Carlist headquarters, of which I had to say ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... guilty of falling into the too common practice of indulging in scandal, the practice of talking of men disparagingly, of running down their character behind their backs. I by no means wish you to flatter any man, whether present or absent, or to speak favourably of character or of conduct which does not deserve it. But beware of detraction. Nothing is more unamiable in any man, especially in a young ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... was completely dressed, she consulted her glass and women upon her adjustment; and when she found she wanted no charms to flatter the foolish passion of the African magician, she sat down on a sofa expecting his arrival. The magician came at the usual hour, and as soon as he entered the great hall where the princess waited to ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... dear prince had another motive behind. At the end of the interview he said, "Madame, you would not have been as you now are had you been more conciliatory towards me. I know the king, and know how to manage him. I flatter myself that you would have been now presented had you deigned to hear my advice." "Did I reject it? Was I wrong in declining to have mademoiselle Guimard as ambassadress? Were you assured of her silence? Might she not have compromised us?" "You ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... "Nonsense! Don't flatter," cried West. "I can ride a bit, sir; but Ingleborough rides as if he were part of a horse. He's accustomed to taking long rides ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... a plain and honest man, That will not flatter with too many wordes; Some shriltong'd fellowes would have cogd and faind, Saying, ile draw the ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Let no wise man flatter himself with the strength of his own judgment, as if he was able to choose any particular station of life for himself. Man is a short-sighted creature, sees but a very little way before him; and as his passions are none of his best friends, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... popular assemblies; it was critical, exacting, intellectual, in a still higher degree. No audience has been more swayed by passion; none has been less swayed by the pretence of it. Always accessible to flattery, Athens counts as her two greatest orators the two men who never stooped to flatter her. The regal tones of Pericles, the prophetic earnestness of Demosthenes, in the response which each met, bear witness to the greatness of those who heard them. Even Cleon owed his greatest triumphs to the plainness with which he inveighed ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... freshness and gayety of an idyl. His description of the sweet smell wafted to the voyagers from the American shore, as from some delicate garden abounding with all kinds of odoriferous flowers, was noticed by Bacon, and utilized by Dryden to flatter one of his patrons." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... There was a subdued lustre in the scene and an air as of the shining trains of dresses tumbled over the carpet. At the furthest end of the room sat Mrs. Capadose, rather isolated; she was on a small sofa, with an empty place beside her. Lyon could not flatter himself she had been keeping it for him; her failure to respond to his recognition at table contradicted that, but he felt an extreme desire to go and occupy it. Moreover he had her husband's sanction; so he crossed the room, stepping over ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... it all, and was disgusted to find that his enemy thus became the hero of the hour. It was, indeed, the opinion generally of the Liberal party that Mr. Gresham had not said much to flatter his new Chancellor of the Exchequer. In praise of Plantagenet Palliser he had been very loud, and he had no doubt said that which implied the capability of Mr. Bonteen, who, as it happened, was sitting next ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... "I flatter myself," said the ex-Lord Mayor, "that, while in office, I did my humble best to maintain the traditions of the City, and I was fortunate enough to have the honour of receiving more than the average number of celebrities as guests. But I had one great disappointment, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... would a negative 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 hint that I could have ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said he, in that his politest tone, "I think it certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself that last botte was a successful one. I tell you how I came to think of it. Three years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge sent for me in the greatest state of alarm about her son Gretna, whose affair you remember, and implored me to use my influence with the young gentleman, who ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have shown that you possess true heroism. I see how very much wiser you are than I; and I solemnly promise to attempt no more violence, where personal violence is not offered to us. But to say that I could exchange my weapons for yours, I cannot. I never shall learn to dissimulate and flatter." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... who is on board, desires to be remembered to you. He does not like much to stay here, after my departure. Indeed, we all draw so well together in the fleet, that I flatter myself the sorrow for my departure ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... very slow work, sir, I think," observed Dicky to his superior, with whom, bye-the-bye, he felt himself in a ballroom on the most perfect equality. "I vote we shove forward, and look out for partners. There are lots of pretty girls, and I flatter myself that if they were asked they would prefer ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bigot's mind which Angelique could not fathom, as little did Bigot suspect that, when Angelique seemed to flatter him by yielding to his suggestions, she was following out a course she had already decided upon in her own mind from the moment she had learned that Cecile Tourangeau was to be at the festival of Belmont, with unlimited opportunities of explanation ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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 ...
— 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.
... impelling the vessel to retrace her mistaken path. The manoeuvre required the utmost attention, and the nicest delicacy in its direction. But her young Commander proved himself, in every particular, competent to his task. Here, a sail was lifted; there, another was brought with a flatter surface to the air; now, the lighter canvas was spread; and now it disappeared, like thin vapour suddenly dispelled by the sun. The voice of Wilder, throughout, though calm, was breathing with authority. The ship itself seemed, like an animated ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... or Englishman—for whom Mr. Trench wrote his "book," is it strange or wonderful that the Catholic people, so treated, would rejoice—would have bonfires on the hill tops at their deliverance from such conduct? I flatter myself that you, my lord—that the learned reading public—that the English people would sympathise with any people so treated for conscience' sake; and having pronounced the sentence of condemnation ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... ago. Then I had something to say about flowers to an agricultural bureau scientific, and about the chemistry of something to a savant or savan, or a word like that, of the Smithsonian Institution. I tell you, sisters, it was sharp work; but I flatter myself you were not in any ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... she is fully adequate to the maintenance of all her interests. In discharging the responsible trust confided to the Executive in this respect it is my settled purpose to ask nothing that is not clearly right and to submit to nothing that is wrong; and I flatter myself that, supported by the other branches of the Government and by the intelligence and patriotism of the people, we shall be able, under the protection of Providence, to cause all our just rights ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... and thin and for the most part healthy; or if any malady come thereof, at any rate 'tis not the gout, the wonted remedy for which is chastity and all beside that belongs to the regimen of a humble friar. They flatter themselves, too, that others wot not that over and above the meagre diet, long vigils and orisons and strict discipline ought to mortify men and make them pale, and that neither St. Dominic nor St. Francis went clad in stuff dyed in grain or any other ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... am going to stay by my own fireside?" said Meta, trying to laugh, but not very successfully. "Seriously, I have much to do here. When poor Flora gets well, she must be spared all exertion for a long time to come; and I flatter myself that they want me at Stoneborough sometimes. If your father can bear to spare you, there is no doubt that ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... laugh and drink, to find himself in his shirt without feeling either better or worse there, and will have the same occupations. But these preparatory ideas are to better to fix in the understanding that this two-footed soul will always accept as true those things which flatter his passions, caress his hates, or serve his amours: from this comes logic. So it was that, the first day the above-mentioned Carandas saw his old comrade's children, saw the handsome priest, saw the beautiful wife of the dyer, saw ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... inevitable if the present state of things continues. Has the agitation and discussion of the question of African slavery, in the free States, resulted in any good, or is it ever likely to result in any? I flatter myself that I have clearly shown, in the following pages, that hitherto its consequences have been evil and only evil, and that nothing but evil can grow out of it in future. I think that I have adduced historical facts which clearly and indisputably prove that northern agitation ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... week," he replied enthusiastically. "I'll sit for you as a study in Disappointment, Flat-busted, or Return from the Races. The title doesn't matter, because I'll be such an excellent study for any sort of man whose hopes have all been knocked flatter than ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... lineal representative of the Howards or Percys to exhibit himself in the character of a mountebank, as have got me to trust my person on the pinnacle of a three-legged stool. The rule of three is all very well for base mechanical souls; but I flatter myself I have an intellect too large to be limited to a ledger. "Augustus," said my poor mother to me, one day while stroking my hyacinthine tresses—"Augustus, my dear boy, whatever you do, never forget that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... report was received from aloft that all was clear ahead, and the explorers began to flatter themselves that they had fairly entered the polar sea. Several headlands were passed, and wide openings to the north and south. With a strong breeze from the eastward, running on until midnight, they found themselves in latitude ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... warm my hands, when they did not need it, and inquire after the health of my mother and grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles, and admire my clothes, and wish her little Jane was old enough to run to school with me, and flatter me on the beauty of my hair and eyes and complexion, in such a way that very few children would have been so stupid as not to have seen through it. Could you not have said something to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... carrying on war by Civilized nations, however it is not improbable that Gians may have exaggerated matters greatly being notoriously known for a disaffected person and concerned in sending Prisoners away with Intelligence to the Enemy at the time Captain Bird came out as we ware then informed. I flatter myself that I may by this time have an answer to the Letter I had the honor of writing to the Commandr. in Chief on leaving Detroit. Mr. Elliot is to be the Bearer of this who will be able to give you any farther information necessary ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... themselves, that at another year they cannot arrive. Though every funeral that passes before their eyes evinces the deceitfulness of such expectations, since every man who is born to the grave thought himself equally certain of living at least to the next year; the survivor still continues to flatter himself, and is never at a loss for some reason why his life should be protracted, and the voracity of death continue to be pacified ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... attributes are terms coined by people of their own damaging class, people with low motives, with even brutish morals. It is time that this age of ours, so rich in theoretic if impracticable humanitarianisms, forebore to flatter the spirits which work against it in its efforts toward higher and wiser achievement. The anarchists hanged in Chicago were men of mistaken purpose and fatuous belief. But at least they were conceivably sincere, however dangerous to peace and order. These czars and tycoons of finance, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... I do not wish, in paying my homage to the other sex, and in glorifying its possible power over ours, to be confounded with those thoughtless and trivial rhetoricians who flatter woman with a false lip worship; and, like Lord Byron's buccaneers, hold out to them a picture of their own empire, built only upon sensual or upon shadowy excellences. We find continually a false enthusiasm, a mere bacchanalian inebriation, on behalf of woman, put forth by modern verse ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Don't flatter yourself, Sammy my lad! Not by no means it ain't. I wouldn't like to have to stand up to all I could ackchelly bear. It's God, not us, knows how much we can stand, an' when He gets in the good licks on ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... peopled exclusively by Quakers would have been unsatisfactory. It is a prevailing tendency of man, having hit upon a truth, to begin to theorize upon it, and, as the phrase is, run it into the ground. Quakers would not fight, would not take an oath, would not baptize, or wear mourning, or flatter the senses with pictures and statues. A Quaker would resist evil and violence only by enlightening them. He would not be taxed for measures or objects which he did not approve. He could see but one way of reforming the world, and thought that God was equally circumscribed ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... beef-suet finely shred, and a nutmeg grated, a little salt, some currants, and then beat some eggs in a little sack, and some sugar, and mix all together, and knead it as stiff as for manchet, and make it up in the form and size of a turkey-egg, but a little flatter; then take a pound of butter, and put it in a dish, and set the dish over a clear fire in a chafing-dish, and rub your butter about the dish till 'tis melted; put your puddings in, and cover the dish, but often turn your puddings, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... the wounds of fallen virtue, with a base and a cowardly insult, or smooth the face of prosperous villany, with the paint and washes of a mercenary wit; never did he spare a sop for being rich, or flatter a knave for being great. He had a wit that was accompanied with an unaffected greatness of mind, and a natural love to justice and truth; a wit that was in perpetual war with knavery, and ever attacking those kind of vices most, whose malignity ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... went to rest, and never rose again, but died in the midst of their honor a painless and tranquil death. "What," said Croesus, angrily, "and dost not thou reckon us amongst the happy men at all?" Solon, unwilling either to flatter or exasperate him more, replied, "The gods, O king, have given the Greeks all other gifts in moderate degree; and so our wisdom, too, is a cheerful and a homely, not a noble and kingly, wisdom; and this, observing the numerous ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... three minutes this outside crowd did not know that anything special had happened. When they did, the news was at the moment received in silence. The soldiers in whom Rossi had trusted, whom he had hoped to flatter and bribe, stood at their posts and said not a word. Neither they nor any one asked, "Who did this? Where is he gone?" The sense of the people certainly was that it was an act of summary justice on an offender whom the laws could not reach, but they felt it to be indecent ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to take me up to the clubroom so's I can see that picture of Major Hardee that he presented the club with? Everybody says it's just lovely. Sarah T. says it's perfectly elegant, only not quite so handsome as the Major reelly is. She says it don't flatter him none." ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Mabel's letter in mind, gave her guest some attention; but for the life of her could not see that he paid her any beyond what he had for the others or for his dinner. He joined Pierson at her side, and made no effort to oust him. He did not flatter her by recalling Lancelot; he seemed rather to muse out loud. James with his coat-tails to the fire was quite at his ease—and when Urquhart offered to drive her down to Westgate for the half-term (which she herself mentioned), it was James who said, "Capital! That will be jolly for you." "But ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... "You have entrapped me; and the deepest folly that I know would be to hope for justice in such clutches. I am to be sacrificed because, forsooth, I am dangerous to the conspiracy that you have afoot; and well can I foresee what the conspiracy designs. . . Yet did I flatter you overmuch, my Lord of Buckingham; it is no creature of your brain, this scheme whose end is treason. You are too vain and empty-headed to be of any service except to aid its execution—and then, later, to be the leading figure at your own. Your sires were overmuch ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... whims and served his interests. When Pericles had married a rich widow and she had kicked Peter out, there had come the Temple of Jimjambo, where the "Old Man" had been Tushbar Akrogas, the major-domo—terrible when he was thwarted, but a generous dispenser of favors when once you had learned to flatter him, to play upon his weaknesses, to smooth the path of his pleasures. All these years Peter had been forced to "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee"; it had become an instinct with him—an instinct that went ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... "you overrate your own powers, and over-estimate my vanity. You are flattering yourself now, you can't flatter me, for ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to your promise," returned the old gentleman, "and when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From what you say of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you with the hope that you will gain much by the undertaking. And I tell you beforehand that you will find it not a ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is a kind of physiognomy in the title of a book by which a skilful observer will know as well what to expect from its contents as one does reading the lines. I flatter myself this claim will be disproved ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... have, so I have—that Jenkins girl—the daughter of poor Tom Jenkins, who died in the autumn; but, bless you, she's no good; she don't even know the meaning of drawing on a customer! You see, Miss Reed, I don't mean to flatter you, but you have got the tact, and just when the sales are beginning you will be invaluable. I can offer you a percentage on all the remnants you dispose of. Come, now, that's a bargain; you'll be right welcome ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater compliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making. Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried to flatter. Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the bottom, there is room for a life's reflection to flash through the mind—in the twinkling of an eye H. agonizingly felt that she was sitting on a hat, that the hat was being jammed, that it was getting flat and flatter every second, that the meek man was howling in French; and she was just thinking of her husband and children when she started to her feet, and the nightmare was over. The meek man, having howled out his French sentence, sat aghast, stroking his poor hat, while his wife opposite was in convulsions, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he'd wag his tail and go back to his den—all this being evidently done to show that he was as vigilant as ever—a sort of protest, that said, "Don't believe one word about my being blind and toothless, still less flatter yourself that the place is secure. It requires all my activity and watchfulness to protect; but go back in peace, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... may be taken as a sample of the case. Mr. Ince, the counsel on the other side, was constantly practising in the Rolls' Court, knew all the judge's peculiarities, how to flatter and humor him on the one hand, and how to irritate him against his opponent on the other. Nor was Mr. Ince above using his influence with the Master of the Rolls to obtain an unfair advantage, knowing that whatever he said would be believed against any contradiction ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... of this gate is for this cause here made mention of, to wit, to encourage them that would gladly enter thereat, according to the mind of God, and not to flatter them that are not for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 would go on under natural influences, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... is served by the death of such men, what example is proclaimed? The cause for which they die is unknown to the idle and the foolish, hateful to the turbulent, loved by the upright. The only lesson we can draw from such scenes is to flatter the persecutor, or else to imitate ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... path in dry weather is inferior to a plank runway and when the ground is soft or muddy the loss in efficiency of the men is serious. Where the runway must rise to the mixing board, give it a slope or grade seldom steeper than 1 in 8, and if possible flatter. Make a runway on a trestle at least 18 ins. wide, so that men will be in no danger of falling. See to it, also, that the planks are so well supported that they do not spring down when walked over, for a springy plank makes ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... assure your Excellency that I well know how to appreciate the great confidence which His Majesty's Government has placed in me, in granting the privilege of personally witnessing the state of my brethren in Russia. The influence which I flatter myself that I have with them, I have exercised for the purpose of strengthening them in their continual efforts to meet the wishes of ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... man, and myself. I shall be very happy to visit St. Petersburg and to become the coadjutor of Mr. Lipoftsoff, and to avail myself of his acquirements in what you very happily designate a most singular language, towards obtaining a still greater proficiency in it. I flatter myself that I am for one or two reasons tolerably well adapted for the contemplated expedition, for besides a competent knowledge of French and German, I possess some acquaintance with Russian, being able to read without much ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... back you to win. But as far as 'worldly advantages' are concerned, do not trust to wealth for a moment. Do not flatter yourself that there will be any kind of a bargain, as if you were marrying a Persian girl. There is nothing venal in that young ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... Carolina. The administration of Governor Tryon embraces an important period in the history of the State. He was a soldier by profession, and being trained to arms, looked upon the sword as the true scepter of government. "He knew when to flatter, and when to threaten. He knew when 'discretion was the better part of valor,' and when to use such force and cruelty as achieved for him from the Cherokee Indians, the bloody title of the 'Great Wolf of ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... state of families, living in deserts, with no other occupation than the mere animal search for food, may still be seen in that ancient quarter of the globe; but in America such things are new and strange, unknown and unsuspected, and discredited when related. But I flatter myself that what is discovered, though not enough to satisfy curiosity, is sufficient to excite it, and that subsequent explorations will complete ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... was just as our deceased friend would, if living, have wished it to be; for he was, as you know, not altogether indifferent to this kind of observances[46].' It would, indeed, be presumptuous in me to flatter myself that in this edition everything is as Johnson and Boswell would, if living, have wished it. Yet to this kind of observances, the observances that can be shown by patient and long labour, and by the famous press ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Flank flanko. Flannel flanelo. Flap klapo. Flare brilego. Flash (lightning) fulmo. Flash (of wit) spritajxo. Flask boteleto. Flat plata. Flat (music) duontono sube. Flatten platigi. Flatter flati. Flatterer flatulo. Flattering flatema. Flavour gusto. Flaw difekto. Flax lino. Flay senhauxtigi. Flea pulo. Flee flugi. Fleece sxaflano. Fleecy laneca. Fleet (quick) rapida. Fleet sxiparo. Flesh (meat) viando. Flesh karno. Flexibility fleksebleco. Flexible ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and, until this newest freak of his—and he has got me guessing as to what it means—I admit I thought he was quite as likely to lick me as I was to lick him. I've watched him pretty closely and I am a pretty fair judge of a man, I flatter myself. Did he tell you that, a while ago, I offered him a place ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hands, flushed. She was pleased that he said, so simply, that she was a remarkable woman. He would not say that to flatter her—he was far too self-opinionated and objective by nature. He said it as he would say a piece of sculpture was remarkable, because he knew it ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... probably we may have old Thwaite on our side. From what you say, it is quite possible that at this very moment the girl herself may be on our side. Let her remain at Yoxham as long as you can get her to stay, and let everything be done to flatter and amuse her. Go down again yourself, and play the lover as well as I do not doubt you know how to do it." It was clear then that the great legal pundit did not think that an Earl should be ashamed to carry on his suit ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable to comprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were valueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air his knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep. From what I have heard him say on the subject of ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Sir Charles," was the reply. "You flatter me. It was one of those things which look greater than they are. Nobody here knew Bracegirdle but Mr. Cibber; Mr. Cibber cannot see well without his glasses, and I got rid of one of the candles; I ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... mother and sister know nothing of what you have undergone. Had they, their suffering and alarm would have been great. But do not flatter yourself that the arrest of Count Monte-Leone is unknown to them. One of the Neapolitan papers informed them yesterday of that fact; and I do not hide from you, that in my presence, your mother deplored your unfortunate intimacy with one ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... peau de chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has just managed to live on the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of Atropos were not more fatal to human life than the long scissors which cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts took the poetical form, in the contemplation of these changes and their melancholy consequences? If the entire poem, of several hundred lines, was "declined with thanks" by an unfeeling editor, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Berg has told me some things in your favor that you have omitted. I cannot flatter myself now that my love is stronger than yours, but you are stronger, you are braver. What is the secret of your strength? Your religion seems to do you more good ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... he could. It was inevitable that she must be hurt, even if he had married, not giving her what he had given this dompteuse. After all, was it so terrible? It could not affect her much in the eyes of the world. And her heart? He did not flatter himself. Yet he knew that it would be the thing—the fallen idol—that would grieve her more than thought of the man. He wished that he could have spared her in the circumstances. But it had all come too suddenly: it was impossible. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... then he remembered the precise words of the request which Des Cadoux had preferred the night before, but which, at the time, he had treated lightly. "Ma foi, you do not flatter me!" he cried. "Am I a murderer, then? Come, come, Citizen, here is the letter that you are to carry. It is addressed to Mademoiselle de Bellecour, at Treves, and encloses Ombreval's farewell ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Sleep! refus'd thy call, Sleep! that with sweet refreshment smiles on all,— When, till the morn, thine eyes, unclos'd and damp, Trac'd thy sad semblance in the glimm'ring lamp,— When from thy face Health's latest relic fled, Where Hope might flatter, with reluctant tread,— Still, darting forward from the weight of woe, Thy soul with all its energy would glow; Still with the purest passion wouldst thou prove The glow of friendship and the warmth of love. And ah! to sacred Memory ever nigh, Thy wit and humour claim the ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the breadth of the Andes has no doubt contributed to give so much importance to the granitic plains that extend on their eastern side. Unceasingly confounding the tributary streams of the Amazon with those of the Orinoco, or (as the lieutenants of Raleigh called it, to flatter their chief) the Rio Raleana, to the latter were attributed all the traditions which had been collected respecting the Dorado of Quixos, the Omaguas, and the Manoas.* (* The flight of Manco-Inca, brother of Atahualpa, to the east of the Cordilleras, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry no such blood had intermingled. This occurred in the valley of the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, than any other tribes ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... the Foibles and narrow Whims of a perfect Humourist. But, on the other hand, he stands upon a very enlarged Basis; Is a Lover of Reason and Liberty; and scorns to flatter or betray; nor will he falsify his Principles, to court the Favour of the Great. He is not credulous, or fond of Religious or Philosophical Creeds or Creed- makers; But then he never offers himself to forge Articles of Faith for the rest of the ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... don't mean to insinuate that I have but one friend!" answered the sister, with another roguish twinkle of her mischievous eye; "because, dear brother, I have a great, great many, I flatter myself; but to tease you no longer, I have seen her, and she is just as winning ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... "No, we do not flatter," responded Woronzow, the chamberlain of the princess, "we only love truth! You ask if we have ever seen any thing more beautiful than your private secretary, and we answer that we have ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... district which is 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 is the sudden and ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... family affair it once was, either," retorted Fouche, "and you'll find it out before long. However, we've got to do the best we can. Swear off your old ways and come out as a man of Peace. Flatter the English, and by all means don't ask your mother- in-law Francis Joseph to send back the only woman you ever loved. He's got her in Vienna, and he's going to keep her if he has to put her in a ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... other children, you will in time make up your mind to let me keep Johnnie entirely as mine. It puts a new value into life,—this chance of having an immortal intelligence placed in my hands to train. It will be a real delight to do so, and I flatter myself the result will surprise ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... High Admiral he received a memorial from me by the hands of Sir Robert Preston, and though it had not the effect, of procuring my restoration at that time, yet from the gracious manner in which, I am assured, it was received, I did flatter myself that his Majesty would have pleasure in the opportunity, which appeared to present itself when your lordship's Administration was formed, of originating a measure which all would consider gracious, and most, I hope, believe to be perfectly just. In reference ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... parenthese, will be thought cool language by persons who entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an idolatrous devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. I felt a conscientious solicitude for Adele's welfare and progress, and a quiet liking for her little self: just as I cherished towards Mrs. Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness, and a pleasure in her ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... 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 with you at present, but will leave you to reflect on ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... here," she replied. "But the photographer said if I wanted to be a success I'd have to learn to flatter people more. He said that he learned ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... and debate. Women's tactics are reduced to three shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge, this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man's vanity to console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for virginity. She must have thought that I thought her very innocent. My good faith is like to become an ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... swerving. Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing, Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking; So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, Comes home again, on better judgment making. Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter In sleep a King; but waking, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... has the slightest control over him—neither father, mother, nor tutor. The Marquis makes excuses for his bringing-up by saying that, having had a very severe, rod-using father himself, he was determined that if he ever had a child he would spare the rod. He can flatter himself that he has thoroughly succeeded in spoiling ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... funny; the gloating over realistic pictures of life as it is found, because life as it is found is a more absorbing study than that of geology or chemistry; the tasting of redundant scenes of love and intrigue, which flatter the reader like experiences of his own,—these excesses he was not willing to admit to his art, a magic that served his literary palate with still finer food. He wrote with temperateness, and in pitying love of human nature, in the instinctive ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... sometimes grave and sometimes comic, but never-failing. He describes solicitors (or suitors) at Court, all pushing their fortune. "Some singis, some dancis, some tells storyis." Some try to make friends by their devotion, some have their private advocates in the King's chamber, some flatter, some play the fool— ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... so; but I do not flatter myself that it is so with me; and I do not think that it would be so with any man over you. Perhaps I may assure you that, as far as I know myself at present, all my future happiness must depend on your answer. It will not kill me—to be ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Observatory, in a bare room, principally furnished with his own trunks and papered with his own despicable studies. No man has less taste for disagreeable duties than myself; perhaps there is only one subject on which I cannot flatter a man without a blush; but upon that, upon all that touches art, my sincerity is Roman. Once and twice I made the circuit of his walls in silence, spying in every corner for some spark of merit; he, meanwhile, following close at my heels, reading the verdict in my face ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... listen! Another time you shall hear more.— Yes, I tell you, as good as banished these eleven months. But the old man already begins to lament the hasty step, which, however, I flatter myself (with a smile) is not entirely his own. Amelia, too, is incessantly pursuing him with her tears and reproaches. Presently he will be having him searched for in every quarter of the world; and if he finds ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the rack, Jested to capture a hearing and laughed when they jested back: So would deceive them awhile, and change and return in a breath, And on all the men of Vaiau imprecate instant death; And tempt her kings—for Vaiau was a rich and prosperous land, And flatter—for who would attempt it but warriors mighty of hand? And change in a breath again and rise in a strain of song, Invoking the beaten drums, beholding the fall of the strong, Calling the fowls of the air to come and feast ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... stranger than in my proper person; for in the latter case, I deemed it probable that your delicacy and kindness might tempt you to conceal whatever was calculated to wound my feelings, and to exaggerate anything that might tend to flatter or to soothe them. Thank Heaven, I now learn that I have a right to the name my boyhood bore, and that my birth is not branded with the foulest of private crimes, and that in death my father's heart yearned to his too hasty but repentant son. Enough of this: I have ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ingenuous and 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 way ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... tell me you've many who flatter, Because of your wit and your song: They tell me—and what does it matter?— You like to be praised by the throng: They tell me you're shadowed with laurel: They tell me you're loved by a Blue: They tell me you're sadly immoral— Dear Clarence, that cannot be true! But to me, you ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... three-legged stool behind the old writing-desk. I never saw anything like her in my life. Everything she thinks, she says, and as to flattering her, it can't be done. I've told her a dozen times at least that she was beautiful, and she didn't mind it any more than Rose does when I flatter her. Still, I fancy if I were to talk to her of love it might make a difference, and perhaps I shall ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... — That this should be Even she . . . God, how with time and change Thou makest thy footsteps strange! Ah, now I know They play upon me, and it is not so. Why, 't is a girl I never saw before, A little thing to flatter and make weep, To tease until her heart is sore, Then kiss and clear the score; A gypsy run-the-fields, A little liberal daughter of the earth, Good for what hour of truancy and mirth The careless season yields Hither-side the flood of the year and yonder of the neap; Then thank ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... that followed he made excellent progress in the affections of the officers of L'Heureuse. He had a face full of bonhomie, an engaging knack of seeming to flatter his companions while he merely listened to their talk, a fund of anecdote, and (as we know) a voice for singing that conciliated all who had an ear for music. All these advantages he used. For the next ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... invaluable to the old lady,—alter her gowns and make and trim her hats, etc. "You're clever, and from helping me sew you have become proficient and have acquired considerable knowledge of dressmaking. If she's miserly and won't buy new, my child, you can flatter her by remodeling her old gowns, etc. Then she'll grow to depend on you. She'll consider you a good manager and feel that her money will not be wasted by you. Then, when you marry we'll go abroad to associate with peers and duchesses and members of the nobility. You'll feel ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... referred to in a note from a correspondent at Albany, in which we find the following sentences: 'If received, I hope it was not amenable to the censure in a late number of the KNICKERBOCKER, of certain correspondence, for having been written 'too carefully.' Now I do flatter myself upon so writing, that compositors can have no excuse for blunders, though I am well aware that to be esteemed a Genious, one's chirography should very nearly approach unintelligibility. If this be true, the patience ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... must have some idle mirth in 't, Else it will never pass. I am in love, In love with Corombona; and my suit Thus halts to her in verse.— [He writes. I have done it rarely: Oh, the fate of princes! I am so us'd to frequent flattery, That, being alone, I now flatter myself: But it will serve; 'tis seal'd. [Enter servant.] Bear this To the House of Convertites, and watch your leisure To give it to the hands of Corombona, Or to the Matron, when some followers Of Brachiano may be by. Away! [Exit Servant. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... sagacity. His cunning had influenced him to repel, with an assumption of ignorance, Luna's broad hints of guilty complicity; but his sagacity failed utterly to comprehend Pierre's more cunning silence. Pierre was actively acquainted with Morrison's weak points, and while he ceased not to flatter them he never neglected to gather rewards for his labour. If the fabled crow had had the wit to swallow his cheese before he began to sing he would at least have had a full stomach to console himself for being duped. This is somewhat prognostical; but even so, it is not safe to jump ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... is some sort of a Cape Horn for all. Boys! beware of it; prepare for it in time. Gray-beards! thank God it is passed. And ye lucky livers, to whom, by some rare fatality, your Cape Horns are placid as Lake Lemans, flatter not yourselves that good luck is judgment and discretion; for all the yolk in your eggs, you might have foundered and gone down, had the Spirit of the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... hatred was tempered with Corsican guile. Toussaint had requested that the Haytians should be under the protection of their former mistress. Protection was the last thing that Bonaparte desired; but he deemed it politic to flatter the black chieftain with assurances of his personal esteem and gratitude for the "great services which you have rendered to the French people. If its flag floats over St. Domingo it is due to you and your brave blacks"—a reference to Toussaint's successful ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... inhabitants of the country, some of the troops of the colony, and every Canadian that was able to bear arms, besides several nations of savages, had taken the field in a very advantageous situation,—I could not flatter myself that I should be able to reduce the place. I sought, however, an occasion to attack their army, knowing well that with these troops I was able to fight, and hoping that a victory might disperse them." Then, after recounting the events of the campaign with admirable clearness, he ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... black 'un, new done, that he saw with; the other was tied up), I give him warning that he'd better take that umbereller and patten to the Hackney-coach Office before he repents it. He was a young man in a weskit with sleeves to it and strings behind, and needn't flatter himsef with a suppogition of escape, as I gave this description of him to the Police the moment I found he had drove off with my property; and if he thinks there an't laws enough he's ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... first hotel his search had no reward. But in the second he found a Pulaski City man, whose acquaintance he had never previously prized, yet from whom he now hid four-fifths of his surprised delight and still betrayed enough to flatter the fellow dizzy. John took him back to his own hotel for breakfast, made sure he had only to ask a loan to get it, and let him go at last, unable to get the request ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Maghavat, and adopt an understanding established on certitude and truth. The gods, men, the Pitris, the Gandharvas, the snakes, and the Rakshasas, were all under my sway in days gone by. Thou knowest this, O Vasava! Their understandings stupefied by ignorance, all creatures used to flatter me, saying, "Salutations to that point of the compass whither Virochana's son Vali may now be staying!" O lord of Sachi, I do not at all grieve when I think of that honour (which is no longer paid to me). I feel no sorrow for this fall of mine. My understanding is firm in this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... began to encourage him against the fear of death, he seemed to make so light of it that I wondered at him. He gave God thanks, he never feared death; and the manner of death, though to others it might seem grievous, yet he had rather die so than of a burning fever. I wished him not to flatter himself, for this extraordinary boldness, I was afraid, came from some false ground. If it were out of a humour of vain glory, or carelessness of death, or senselessness of his own state, he were much to be lamented. He answered that he was persuaded ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... curiosity to know how it had come to pass, and there was rather too apparent a hope that something was going wrong. Their first inquisitive look was met by Lady Cecilia's careless glance in reply, which said better than words could express, "Nothing the matter, do not flatter yourselves." Then her expertness at general answers which give no information, completely baffled the two curious impertinents. They could only learn that the day for the marriage was not fixed, that it could not be definitively named till some business should be settled ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... commanded Dacian that they should put him in a caldron full of molten lead, and when St. George entered therein, by the virtue of our Lord it seemed that he was in a bath well at ease. Then Dacian seeing this began to assuage his ire, and to flatter him by fair words, and said to him: George, the patience of our gods is over great unto thee which hast blasphemed them, and done to them great despite, then fair, and right sweet son, I pray thee that thou return to our law and make sacrifice to the idols, and leave thy folly, and I shall ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... see others whose centre is self. Their whole life looks so mean and low. Life over, the Ego alone left; and what a poor, wretched, snivelling creature after all—this what we pampered, this what we thrust forward for others to admire and flatter! If we were not in much the same case, we might be able to view it in others with somewhat different eyes. And yet do you know that, as a matter of fact, our Ego is dead—self is not—and the devil's greatest lie is to make us believe in this self? For do not you and I belong ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... 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 girl made her ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... Coffee-House daily bestows! To read and hear how the World merrily goes; To laugh, sing and prattle of This, That, and T' other; And be flatter'd and ogl'd and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Originally non-extant, it has become at length, after aeons of struggle, the chief concern of man, the "business of all men in common," as Locke puts it, all of which philosophy is tantamount to saying, that morality is merely a flatter of history. When you know its history, you know everything, very much as a photographer might claim to exhaustively know an individual man, because he had photographed him every six months from his cradle to his grave. A very inadequate ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... "But don't flatter yourself I care, or am jealous, because this scene has humiliated and angered me. You're not worth a moment's jealousy, ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... a fifth above, will vibrate 150, if tuned so that no waves are heard; but for reasons which will be fully explained later, the fifth cannot be tuned with mathematical precision. On account of certain peculiarities in our tempered scale, the fifth must always be left somewhat flatter than perfect. This fact is always learned with some ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... nothing like it. Flatter the peasant and you will be almost sure to move him. Say, 'Ah, what a time that was when you had the old wine in your cellars!' He will say, 'Nest-ce pas, monsieur?' and brighten up at the thought of it. Then you will continue: 'Yes, indeed, that was a wine worth drinking. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... recommended to bequeath them in turn to his son Howell if he were deemed worthy of the trust. "It is my most ardent desire that in whatsoever hands fortune may place said negroes," the will enjoined, "that all the justice and indulgence may be shown them that is consistent with a state of slavery. I flatter myself with the hope that none of my relations or connections will be so ungrateful to my memory as to treat or use them otherwise." Surely upon the death of such a master the slaves might, with even more than usual ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... neighborhoods at that same date, and evidently in an aggressive, high kind of humor. For "while his ships and army were doubling the Mull of Cantire, he had his own boat set on wheels, and therein, splendidly enough, had himself drawn across the Promontory at a flatter part," no doubt with horns sounding, banners waving. "All to the left of me is mine and Norway's," exclaimed Hakon in his triumphant boat progress, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... and it really doesn't matter If you crowd me in the street cars till I couldn't well be flatter; I'm only a consumer, and the strikers may go striking, For it's mine to end my living if it isn't to my liking. I am a sort of parasite without a special mission Except to pay the damages—mine is a queer position: The Fates unite to squeeze me till I couldn't well be ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... playfully. "I am delighted to pool distresses with you," he said, "but don't try to flatter me. Women laugh at me," he added, ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... him, Druce, he's mashed flatter than a stinking tin-can on a rock, can't move a motor. Bring that junk in here ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... the mattress," said Evan, coolly meeting his gaze. "Very thoughtful of you." He counted them ostentatiously. "Six of you—and a couple of deckhands in reserve. You flatter me, gentlemen!" ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... that you go to that charlatan, Howard Prince, in Californian Street to be faked up. I must be brutal—it's no use being anything else to women of your sort. You've got a certain species of eczema, and you flatter yourself that no one but you and Prince are aware of it. What have you got to say now, Miss Barlow?' But Ella Barlow had fainted. When she came to, which I managed after vigorous application of salts and water—the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... "I don't flatter myself they'll do that," burst out Lorna. "They're so happy they never think about me. Mrs. Clark, you don't know my home. I've nobody—nobody except my father. The others have brothers and sisters and friends, and all they want—and I ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... reading and late hours: the midnight oil, you know, must be supplied, and will be paid for; the nervous system gets strained to excess, and you have to call in the doctor. Well, what does he do? Why, he prescribes a regular course of tonics; and I flatter myself that I am a very docile patient, and take my bitter beer regularly, and without complaining." In proof of which Mr. Charles Larkyns took a ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... yesterday your letter of three sheets: I began to flatter myself that the storm was blown over, but I tremble to think of the danger you are in! a danger, in which even the protection of the great friend you have lost could have been of no service to you. How ridiculous it seems for me to renew protestations of my friendship for you, at an instant ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... boracits which they contain. Two other formations, far anterior to the three we have just mentioned, are the transition gypsum (ubergangsgyps) of Aigle, and the primitive gypsum (urgyps) of the valley of Canaria, near Airolo. I flatter myself that I may render some service to those geologists who prefer the knowledge of positive facts to speculation on the origin of things, by furnishing them with materials from which they may generalize their ideas on the formation of rocks in both hemispheres. The relative antiquity ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... in his very lack of reverence, in his impertinent assumption of equality, in his refusal to pay her the condescending homage due feebleness and old age, that seemed to flatter her. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Mr. Parr!" he said. "Now that I know the truth, I tell you frankly I would face poverty and persecution rather than consent to your offer. And I warn you once more not to flatter yourself that existence ends here, that you will, not be called to answer for every wrong act you have committed in accumulating your fortune, that what you call business is an affair of which God takes no account. What I say may ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... constantly deave me And bids me beware o' young men; They flatter, she says, to deceive me; But wha can think ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... husband will I tell: God let his soul never come into hell. And yet was he to me the moste shrew;* *cruel, ill-tempered That feel I on my ribbes all *by rew,* *in a row And ever shall, until mine ending day. But in our bed he was so fresh and gay, And therewithal so well he could me glose,* *flatter When that he woulde have my belle chose, Though he had beaten me on every bone, Yet could he win again my love anon. I trow, I lov'd him better, for that he Was of his love so dangerous* to me. *sparing, difficult We women have, if that I shall not lie, In this matter a quainte fantasy. Whatever ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... you flatter yourself. You have lied over the reason. Pip, remember that I know you as you don't know yourself. You have been everything to me, though you are—(Fan-guard.) Oh, what a contemptible Thing it is! And so you are merely ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... was for the time averted. They began, very prematurely, as the result showed, to be confident of success, and talked of punishing Philip for his presumption. In this they were encouraged by certain foolish orators, who sought to flatter the national prejudices. Demosthenes in this oration strives to check the arrogance of the people; reminds them of the necessity of defensive rather than offensive measures, and especially of the importance of preserving their allies. ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... the lower class. Their skins, too, were much darker in color, though there was considerable variation in this respect. Among them were a sprinkling of men of entirely different type, almost black in hue, with thicker lips and flatter features. These were Ethiopians, whose land lay beyond that of Meroe and who had also felt the weight and power of the ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... 1770.—My poor little George is come to see me to-day, he seems pretty well, tho' he had a fit lately; it was near a twelve-month since he had one before, so was in hopes they had left him, but must not flatter myself so now. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... the power of the Gospel, that his glory may be seen in his Temple. Because of these things is there great wrath from the LORD against these Kingdoms, and this controversie shall be continued until we really turn away from our crooked paths. Therefore as we wish that none of this Land may flatter themselves in their evil wayes, but repent and amend, so we desire our Brethren of England to consider what hath been the bitter fruits of their slow progresse in and neglect of the Work of Reformation, and of their connivance ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... not get along so well. He was a man of harsh manner, who did not have the patience or the inclination to flatter with fine promises. Lovelace wanted everyone to understand that he was master. Very soon, when the people said they thought they should have the right to control their own affairs, the Governor told them that he did not think it was best for them to have too much to do with the governing ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... a man of the world," she answered, "and are trying to flatter me,—a woman of sixty! My dear child," she went on, "let me tell you that you are here among persons who believe strongly in God; who have all felt his hand, and have yielded themselves to him almost as though they ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... with you," he said,—"you know that very well; but you mustn't quarrel with me, if I talk honestly with you; it isn't everybody that will take the trouble. You flatter yourself that you will make a good many enemies by leaving your old communion. Not so many as you think. This is the way the common sort of people will talk:—'You have got your ticket to the feast of life, as much as any other man that ever lived. Protestantism ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... minutes this outside crowd did not know that anything special had happened. When they did, the news was at the moment received in silence. The soldiers in whom Rossi had trusted, whom he had hoped to flatter and bribe, stood at their posts and said not a word. Neither they nor any one asked, "Who did this? Where is he gone?" The sense of the people certainly was that it was an act of summary justice on an offender whom the laws could not reach, but they felt it to be indecent to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... passed in the street; a young man who smiled and nodded. It was the boy, Lorry. He had been working on the car that morning. She had watched him work, rather enjoying his energy. A healthy young animal as unsophisticated as a kitten, and really innately kind and innocent of intent to flatter. He was not at all like the bright young savage who had roped and almost choked to death ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... although she possessed none of Sabine's indescribable charm, she had had numbers of admirers and would-be lovers and was in every way fitted to cope with any man. This evening, she had determined so to soothe, flatter and pet Henry that he should go to bed not realizing that there was any change in himself, but should be in reality completely changed. Her preparations had been swift but elaborate. She had rushed to Madame ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... "Ah! do not flatter me, Alfred Stevens, do not deceive me. I am too willing to believe you, for it is so dear a feeling to think that I too am a poet. Yet, at the first, I had not the smallest notion of this kind: I neither knew what poetry was, nor felt the desire ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... shall not take upon myself, however, to say, whether we are, from the circumstance, to infer, that the whole members of this family have no just claim to be descended from the Chitaur colony, but were impure mountaineers, who had this pedigree invented to flatter them, when they turned from their impure ways, and were induced to follow the Brahmans. It is possible, that the first chief of the Rising family, who obtained that country as an appanage, may have been of illegitimate birth, and that, his mother being impure, he may ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... wicked woman's contrivances, he thinks himself disinherited of his whole fortune, ill-treated, and neglected by a father, he never had in thought offended! He could give an opportunity to a sincere friend, who would not flatter him, to say, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... have thrown her very name away as a faded flower, she will be praying, hoping, fearing for you; though all men deny you, yet will not she. Yes, Mr. Burr, if ever your popularity and prosperity should leave you and those who now flatter should despise and curse you, she will always be interceding with her own heart and with God for you, and making a thousand excuses where she cannot deny; and if you die, as I fear you have lived, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the Spirit says to the church at Ephesus. After reviewing the good qualities and characteristics of this church, much to their praise and credit, he does not flatter their vanity, by intimations or otherwise, to think themselves all right and in need of nothing; but "I have this AGAINST thee, that thou didst leave thy first love. Remember therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent." It is truthfully said "our best friends are those who warn us ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Fraught with bold warriors, and a boundless store O thou! whom age has taught to understand, And Heaven has guided with a favouring hand! On god or mortal to obtrude a lie Forbear, and dread to flatter as to die. Nor for such ends my house and heart are free, But dear respect to ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... bread and salt, as becomes a Tartar who welcomes a friend. It was lucky for me that I had some little training in public speaking, and that "Polkovnika Franka" could make such excellent translations, or we might not have made such a good impression as I flatter myself we ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... As for me, I flatter myself that I was equally admirable in my own metier. I was assorting a motley collection of guide-books, novels, maps, smelling-salts, and kodaks when he came in, and was dying to look up, but I remained as ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... whom descended the four noble families of the Pomponii, Pinarii, Calphurnii, and Mamerci, which for this reason took the title of Rex, that is, king. Others again say that these pedigrees were invented to flatter these families, and state that the Pompilian family descends not from Tatia, but from Lucretia, whom he married after he became king. All, however, agree that Pompilia married Marcius, the son of that Marcius who encouraged Numa to accept the crown. This man accompanied Numa to Rome, was made ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... anaemic or consumptive. And there's no sense at all in getting cross with us about it, because we cannot help it. We are doing our best. In another hundred thousand years or so, provided all goes well, we shall be the perfect man. And seeing our early training, I flatter myself that, up to the present, we have ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... lesson, Prout. They need a sharp lesson, if only to bring down their over-weening self-conceit. Were I you, I should devote myself for a week to their little performances. Boys of that order—and I may flatter myself, but I think I know boys—don't join the Bug-hunters for love. Tell the Sergeant to keep his eye open; and, of course, in my peregrinations I may ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... pleasant or lasting without folly; so much so, that a people could not stand its prince, nor the master his man, nor the maid her mistress, nor the tutor his pupil, nor the friend his friend, nor the wife her husband for a moment longer, if they did not now and then err together, now flatter each other; now sensibly conniving at things, now smearing themselves with some honey of folly.' In that sentence the summary of the Laus is contained. Folly here is worldly wisdom, resignation and ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Wire tail same as in mounting. Wrap leg bones with cotton, tow, or excelsior according to size of specimen. Turn the skin back over a core of one of these materials, wrapped upon a splinter or stick, to size of natural body, but somewhat flatter. Sew up abdominal incision neatly. Catch the lips together with two or three stitches. Lay specimen, belly down, upon a soft-wood board. Pin fore paws alongside of the face and hind feet alongside ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... she knows their tongues are venal, sold to flatter wealth and power, And to crouch with serpent homage in the dust at Fortune's shrine, Ready to revile and slander if calamity should lower, And to flout as base, deceitful, what they ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... him to heel. It all rested on the fortuity of her getting five minutes alone with him. Granted this, she would have a chance. There are ways given to women whereby men of his type can be placated. She would have to flatter him by abasing herself, by throwing herself upon his mercy. But since this must be done, she was prepared ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... during the week, the market has been somewhat flatter in goods suited for the Eastern markets, in consequence of merchants being anxious to receive their advices by the Indian Mail before extending their transactions materially at present prices. In the Yorkshire woollen markets a fair trade continues to be done; and in Bradford a very active ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... agreed Steve. "I'll lie a little flatter, because the sun and the wetting has made my head ache. They're ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... preference for luxury. The principal diversion my ingenious mind discovered to while away my time with was a fiddle (an elderly one), which I routed out of a lumber closet, and from which, after due invocations to St. Cecilia, I drew such diabolical sounds as I flatter myself were never excelled by Tartini or his master, the devil himself. I must now close ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Comte did, indeed, profess to furnish a central law of belief. It is due, he said, to the tendency of man to flatter his own personality by foisting its image upon the universe. This, however, is but one way of saying that it is wholly gratuitous,—that it has no root in the truth of the world. But universal truth and universal law ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rise from their seats in affright, To see if the warner has told them aright, As they flatter themselves that it may be mere fancy, Or put little faith in the toad's necromancy; They find he speaks truly, the storm is approaching, Dark clouds o'er the beautiful blue are encroaching, The tempest lays low the tall grass in the field, To the furious blasts even forest-trees yield; ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... person in this respected audience whose mind is in such voluntary slavery as to induce the adoption of such a course. I see before me minds which sparkle in every look, and thoughts which are ever active, to acquire what is true, and adopt what is useful. And I flatter myself that the time spent in the investigation of the science of language will not ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... is staying to nurse her, and does not intend going home until he has escorted her back to Palermo. His zeal for the public service," she continues, "seems entirely lost in his love and vanity, and they all sit and flatter ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... abilities would enable me, for where that has been concerned the attention to my health, which I was most sensible was in the most imminent danger, has never swerved me a single half-mile out of the road of duty; so that I flatter myself I shall leave behind that character that it has ever been my utmost ambition to attain, which is that of an honest and faithful servant to the public whom I had ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... speaking of the "profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians" (p. 126) to arouse righteous anger against a certain class, to flatter his audience, or did he have some ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... sovran woman never made that discovery for herself—I believe it was a man in his mere man mood who first confided the secret to some young wife in distress—somebody else's young wife. [Laughter.] Feed him and flatter him. Why not? Is there anything more delightful in this world than to be flattered and fed? Let us do as we would be done by. It seems to me sometimes that it is impossible in reviewing our social relations ever ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... dearly! She has loved me dearly!" On his death-bed he wrote a letter to Bonaparte telling him that his daughter was in nowise responsible for his book, but it was never answered. It was enough for Napoleon to know that she did not flatter him; therefore he wished her out ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... this that possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the spirits that lie hidden in great work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is a sealed cabinet of mystery,—an unfamiliar musical instrument from which the player, however much he may flatter himself, can draw none but confused tones. How different a painting looks when seen in a good light, as compared with some dark corner! Just in the same way, the impression made by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... he'd have to modify. I sing alone sometimes, But singing isn't easy! Tra la, la, tra, la la! Still it isn't voice that I lack, I think, Tra la la, tra la la, No, 'tis the method. Of course one can't have everything. I sing pretty badly, But dance agreeably, And I do not flatter myself; Dancing shows off my advantages. 'Tis my one great attraction, But dancing isn't easy. Tra ...
— The Tales of Hoffmann - Les contes d'Hoffmann • Book By Jules Barbier; Music By J. Offenbach
... of the Levant, cooled in snow. The worthy Consul was smoking his chibouque, and his daughter, as she rose to greet their guest, let her guitar fall upon the turf. The original of the portrait proved that the painter had no need to flatter; and the dignified, yet cordial manner, the radiant smile, and the sweet and thrilling voice with which she welcomed her countryman would have completed the spell, had, indeed, the wanderer been one prepared, or capable of being enchanted. As it was, Mr. Ferrers, while he returned ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... hour she had named I called on her, wearing my great coat, and with a sword for my only weapon. I found Nina with her sister, a woman of thirty-six or thereabouts, who was married to an Italian dancer, nicknamed Schizza, because he had a flatter ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... off by death and marriage, and of those whose value may be unexpectedly increased by a legacy, or a sister or brother's decease. Particular attention will be paid to rich widows.—The first part of this truly useful work is nearly ready for the press; and we flatter ourselves that its arrangement and execution will excite universal applause. The particulars concerning each lady will be distributed under four heads; the first will be devoted to her fortune and expectations; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... oyster has a deep or spoon-shaped attached valve, and a flat or flatter free valve. This form, or a modification of it, we find to be characteristic of all pelecypods which are attached to a foreign object of support by the cementation of one valve. All are highly modified, and are strikingly different from ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the man she loved, for ever; and Monsieur D'Arblet had been kind to her; he had pitied her for being tied to a husband who drank and who gambled, and Helen had allowed herself to be pitied. D'Arblet had charming manners, and an accurate knowledge of the weakness of the fair sex; he knew when to flatter and when to cajole her, when to be tenderly sympathetic to her sorrows, and when to divert her thoughts to brighter and pleasanter topics than her own miseries. He succeeded in fascinating her completely. Whilst her husband was occupied with his own disreputable ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... eternal mind, and not in those political regulations or priestly and judicial formalities which express the perverted desires and artificial devices of men. The wearing of a certain dress, the bending of the knee, the muttering of a phrase, may flatter an earthly sovereign and gain a seat at his banquets. But it is childish folly to fancy any such thing of God. It is absurd to suppose that he has two schemes of government, one for the present state, another for the future; one for the elect, another for the reprobate; one for those who gaze ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... do. We have laid snares for the innocent heart; and have not scrupled by the too-ready sword to extend, as occasions offered, the wrongs we did to the persons whom we had before injured in their dearest relations. But yet, I flatter myself, sometimes, that I have less to answer for than either Lovelace or Mowbray; for I, by taking to myself that accursed deceiver from whom thou hast freed me, (and who, for years, unknown to me, was retaliating upon my own head some of the evils I had brought ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... and by I discoursed largely, and in short he gives me good counsel, but tells me plainly that it is my best way to study a composition with my uncle Thomas, for that law will not help us, and that it is but a folly to flatter ourselves, with which, though much to my trouble, yet I was well satisfied, because it told me what I am to trust to, and so ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... whether she will think it worth while to make the attempt," observed Mr Deane. "Jack is in no way suited to her, whatever he may flatter himself is the case. However, let the lad go; he can come to no harm, at all events; and Mistress Alethea may give him a taste for better society than he seems ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... that white-veiled witch stares at me with her golden eyes?" said Nick. "Wish I could flatter myself she ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... vice; and we look in our experience, and find no vital congruity in the wisest rules, but at the best a municipal fitness. It is not strange if we are tempted to despair of good. We ask too much. Our religions and moralities have been trimmed to flatter us, till they are all emasculate and sentimentalised, and only please and weaken. Truth is of a rougher strain. In the harsh face of life, faith can read a bracing gospel. The human race is a thing more ancient than the ten commandments; and the bones and revolutions of the Kosmos, in whose ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... end. He, who had been defrauded of his life's happiness by a Baron's daughter, yearned to move the King to raise him to the rank of Baron. He loaded the Secretary Slick with gifts and favors, and seeing that his Majesty was graciously pleased to smile on me, his ward, he would be at much pains to flatter me, calling me his "golden hair" or "Blue-eyes;" and enjoin it on me that I should make mention of him to the King as his Majesty's most faithful servant, ever ready for any sacrifice in his service, at the same ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... done full justice to the advantages of your own actual position in this respect. You have overlooked the great work immediately before you. We have no magic talisman to offer you in carrying out that work. We shall not flatter you with the promise of unlimited success; we shall not attempt to gratify any personal ambition of public honors. We have no novel theories or brilliant illusions with which to ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... wet Bottles, many Vessels of good Drink are spoiled: but if the Bottles are clean and dry, yet if the Corks are not new and found, the Drink is still liable to be damaged; for if the Air can get into the Bottles, the Drink will grow flat, and will never rise. I have known many who have flatter'd themselves that they knew how to be saving, and have used old Corks on this occasion, that have spoiled as much Liquor as has stood them in four or five Pounds, only for want of laying out three ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... "We flatter ourselves we do look pretty fine," Burns admitted, eying his wife with satisfaction. "That gauzy gray thing Ellen has on strikes me as the bulliest yet. If I could just get her to wear a pink rose in her ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... may beleive you flatter me, But say thou dost and seeme to love me dearelye, For I confess, as freelye as I love, One littell sparke of thee outbuys my kyngdome; And when my kyngdomes gone pray what am I? A pore decrepyd mysserable thynge That ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... himself, the King directly gets tired, and is either ready to yawn or to go away.' Every great poet, when he is growing old, is a little like Louis XIV. in this respect. Madame Recamier had each day a thousand pleasant contrivances to excite and flatter him. She assembled from all quarters friends for him,—new admirers. She chained us all to the feet of her idol with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... judges. Even so far back as the Directory days, when Bernadotte was insulted at Vienna, he summed up the Austrian character in the following terms:—"When the Austrians think of making war, they do not insult; they cajole and flatter the enemy, so that they may have a better chance to stick a knife into him." He told the Directory they did not understand the Cabinet of Vienna; "it is the meanest and most perfidious to be found." "It will not make war with you because ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... uneasiness in respect to the course which the Roman general would pursue in the approaching battle. The measure that he had referred to was one to which the Romans were not accustomed to resort except in emergencies of the most extreme and dangerous character, and Pyrrhus ought not to flatter himself with the idea that the Romans regarded his invasion as of sufficient consequence to require them to have recourse to any unusual means of defense. They were fully convinced of their ability ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... you are the only sensible person of the whole family, the only one who is not a prodigal, and have made shift to live decently upon your own earnings, I rather think that I may be of use to you. I like you, because you browbeat me and do not flatter me, and I will tell you the truth; that bank-bill which you returned to me strongly interested me in your favour. There was a time when I was not the shrewd hard fellow that I am, but a true Dumany and ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... this book was written for French people, and is adjusted to the meridian of Paris. We must remember this always in reading it, and also remember that a Frenchman does not think English any more than he talks it. We sometimes flatter ourselves with the idea that we as a people are original in our tendency to extravagance of thought and language. It is a conceit of ours. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... prescribed measures. And because sores that are to be cut away should first be stroked with a gentle hand, I beg of thee, I beseech thee, and, as kindly as I can, I demand of thee that thy fraternity rebuke all who flatter thee and offer thee this name of error, and not consent to be called by a foolish and proud title. For truly I say it weeping, and out of deepest sorrow of heart attribute it to my sins, that this my brother, who has ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... having one sheave over the other, and the lower smaller than the upper (see LONG-TACKLES), in contradistinction to double blocks, which also have two sheaves, but one abreast of the other. They lie flatter and more snugly to the yards, and are ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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 ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... bathed. The bath filled up as lock-up drew near. With the exception of a couple of infants splashing about in the shallow end, and a stout youth who dived in from the spring-board, scrambled out, and dived in again, each time flatter than the last, they had the place ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 it would be ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... homage. In making my request to the emperor, your father, and praying him to intrust to me the happiness of your imperial highness, may I hope that you will understand the sentiments which lead me to this act? May I flatter myself that it will not be decided solely by the duty of parental obedience? However slightly the feelings of your imperial highness may incline to me, I wish to cultivate them with so great care, and to endeavor so ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... for a considerable time to come, I've made up my mind to give you a holiday. You're young, you see, an' foolish, and your mind needs improvin'. In short, you want a good deal o' the poetry knocked out o' you, for it's not like your mother's poetry by any means, so you needn't flatter yourself—not built on the same lines by a long way. Well—where ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... dinner in St. Andrew's Hall given by a Piscatorial Society of which my host is President. It was a weary sitting of five hours with innumerable speeches. Of course I had to say "a few words," and if I can get a copy of the papers I will send them to you. I flatter myself they were words of wisdom, though hardly likely to contribute to my popularity ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... up into her countenance with guileless simplicity, but earnest affection; "How could I be sorry that a ray of the sun came across the gloom of a cheerless day—that light has broken in upon darkness, though it remained so short a time? I do not flatter myself with being able to march quite so light-hearted as I once used to could, or to sleep as sound, for some time to come; but I shall always remember how near I was to being undeservedly happy, I shall. So far from blaming you, Mabel, I only blame myself for being ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... Gower's lips that haunted, that frightened ambitious men away, that sent men who knew they hadn't a ghost of a chance with her discontentedly back to the second-choice women who alone were available for them. Fortunately for Mildred, Stanley Baird, too wise to flatter a woman discriminatingly, did not tell her the secret of her fascination. If he had told her, she would no doubt have tried to train and to use it—and so would ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... as a distinct element in the modern population. In going northward, however, he soon began to find that the prevailing physiognomy was of a northern character: 'The form of the face is broader, the cheek-bones project a little, the nose is somewhat flatter, and at times turned a little upwards; the eyes and hair are of a lighter colour, and even deep-red hair is far from being uncommon. The people are not very tall in stature, but usually more compact and strongly built than their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... still lurk in a shamefaced half-consciousness in the minds of modern men. There was no need in the eighteenth century for any fine analysis to detect the naive belief that women exist only as auxiliary beings to contribute to the comfort and to flatter the self-esteem of men. The belief was avowed and accepted as the unquestioned basis of human society. Good men proclaimed it, and the cleverest women dared not ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... tears, he could always order up this reserve at the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, and whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to a shoeblack, and he would flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you whenever he saw occasion—but yet those of the army who knew him best and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all; and as he rode along the lines ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... worn out by excitement and fatigue, at four o'clock in the morning retired to his chamber for a few hours of sleep. He was so far deceived as to flatter himself that, through the measures which had been adopted, all serious trouble was at an end. He slept soundly, and did not rise until eleven o'clock, when he came down to the breakfast-room in morning-gown and slippers, and with a smiling countenance. Here appalling ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... objects where God has placed it. It is no where to be found but in the enjoyment of the religion of Christ. This will sweeten every earthly pursuit, make every burden light, afford solid enjoyment in life and divine consolation in the hour of death. Flatter not yourself that there is any happiness beneath the sun aside from this. "There is no peace saith my God to the wicked," and, he who says there is, contradicts Jehovah, and is yet "in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity." A speculative faith is of but little consequence, ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... said. "Flatter me. Make me get swelled head. Don't think of the consequences. Ladle it out. Tell me I ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... outrage of many tyrants: the rich and the powerful were more jealous of their independent, scattered, and, as it were, feudal life. But these he sought to conciliate by promises that could not but flatter that very prejudice of liberty which naturally at first induced them to oppose his designs. He pledged his faith to a constitution which should leave the power in the hands of the many. He himself, as monarch, desired only the command in war, and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most comely of the Romans) might introduce him to the favor of Sophia; and the widow of Justin was persuaded, that she should preserve her station and influence under the reign of a second and more youthful husband. But, if the ambitious candidate had been tempted to flatter and dissemble, it was no longer in his power to fulfil her expectations, or his own promise. The factions of the hippodrome demanded, with some impatience, the name of their new empress: both the people and Sophia were astonished by the proclamation ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... into the front area so that it exploded and blew away the front wall." And I outlined the history of that canine clairvoyant, Willy Woolly. "The Mordaunt Estate is sensitive about his tenants, anyway. He rents, not on profits, but on prejudice. Perhaps it would be well for you to flatter him a little; admire his style of ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... itself the grille through which they show like beauteous wraiths or frescoes in the flat. That screen is emblematic of their real exclusion from the higher government which their social participation in parliamentary elections, and the men's habit of talking politics with them, flatter them into a delusive sense of sharing. A woman may be the queen of England, but she may not be one of its legislators. That must be because women like being queens and do not ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... made by Fabre d'Eglantine. Maillan, "Memoires," 323. (Speech of Fabre d'Eglantine at the Jacobin Club in relation to the address of the commune, demanding the expulsion of the Twenty-Two.) "You have often taken the people to task; you have even sometimes tried to flatter them; but there was about this flattery that aristocratic air of coldness and dislike which could deceive nobody. Your ways of a bourgeois patrician are always perceptible in your words and acts; you never wanted to mix with the people. Here is your doctrine in few words: after the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... must have been calculated upon in the scheme of our system as a factor in their evolution. In spite of the consistent teaching of all the great religions, the mass of mankind is still utterly regardless of its responsibility on the thought-plane; if a man can flatter himself that his words and deeds have been harmless to others, he believes that he has done all that can be required of him, quite oblivious of the fact that he may for years have been exercising a narrowing and debasing ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... case with all the bodies in nature. In them the simplest movements, the most ordinary phenomena, the commonest actions, are inexplicable mysteries, whose first principles are for ever sealed to us. How shall we flatter ourselves that we know the first principle of gravity, by virtue of which a stone falls? What do we know of the mechanism that produces the attraction of some substances, and the repulsion of others? But surely the incomprehensibility ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... pays debts unless they be shrewd turns, And those he will confess that he doth owe. Last, for this brother there, the cardinal, They that do flatter him most say oracles Hang at his lips; and verily I believe them, For the devil speaks in them. But for their sister, the right noble duchess, You never fix'd your eye on three fair medals Cast in one figure, of so different temper. For her discourse, ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... the bishop. "I think she is happy in these matters. I do flatter myself that she is so. Of course, Miss Dunstable, you are accustomed to things on a ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... apes, sometimes snakes, that hissed me into madness. 'Twas like Saint Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give his favorite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... you are a prodigal, and self-willed fool. Nay, never look at me, it's I that speak, Take't as you will, I'll not flatter you. What? have you not means enow to waste That which your friends have left you, but you must Go cast away your money on a Buzzard, And know not how to keep it when you have done? Oh, it's brave, this will make you a gentleman, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... of 1914 when Edward was sixty-one and Miss Crewe was ninety-three. Edward, after paying her money to Miss Crewe, might flatter himself on the possibility of having some fifty pounds a year for himself, that is to say, if his picture sales did not decline. A single man can, however, get along, more or less, on fifty ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... old Copper Basin suddenly Rattled and tumbled from the shelf, Bumping and crying: 'I can fall by myself; Without a woman's hand To patronize and coax and flatter me, I understand The lean and poise of gravitable land.' It gave a raucous and tumultuous shout, Twisted itself convulsively about, Rested upon the floor, and, while I stare, It stares and grins ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... priesthood of authors is exaggerated and dangerous. Neither has it, you see, prevented him from writing "The Wonderful Visit." Artists should feel, and if necessary be told, that they are on their honour to do their best. That will do. If they flatter themselves that they are messengers from the Father of Light whenever they put pen to paper, they are apt to take any emotional hubble-bubble in themselves as a sign that the Spirit has been brooding upon the waters, and pour out; though a short ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... he had done for them, went out of the dungeon; but when they were come into the court, how was the prince surprised to see among the prisoners those he was in search of, and almost without hopes to find! "Princes," cried he, "is it you whom I behold? May I flatter myself that it is in my power to restore you to the sultan your father, who is inconsolable for the loss of you? Are you all here alive? Alas! the death of one of you will suffice to damp the joy I feel ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... space in the "Fields" between the jail and the Almshouse, to see me on the gallows. If such thoughts do not assail the brave—if restless nights, wakeful dawns, dull days are not their portion—I must own that all these were mine, not often, perhaps, but too frequent to flatter self-esteem. And, fight them as I might, it was useless; for such moments came without warning—often when I had been merry with friends, at times when, lulled by long-continued security, I had nigh forgotten through eventless months that there was a war and that I had become ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... married in the same year as his brother of Kent, and to him also a little daughter was born, who, had she lived, would have finally succeeded to the throne instead of Victoria. But the poor little Princess stayed but a little while to flatter or disappoint royal hopes. She looked timidly out upon life, with all its regal possibilities, and went away untempted. Still the Duchess of Clarence (afterwards Queen Adelaide) might yet be the happy mother of a Prince, or Princess Royal, and there were so many ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... answer to his overtures, Ali became a prey to terrible anxiety. As he one day opened the Koran to consult it as to his future, his divining rod stopped at verse 82, chap. xix., which says, "He doth flatter himself in vain. He shall appear before our tribunal naked and bare." Ali closed the book and spat three times into his bosom. He was yielding to the most dire presentiments, when a courier, arriving from the capital, informed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of course, curiously enough, but not as spoken. I likewise have difficulty in making out its meaning when I read it; but in other regards I flatter myself that my knowledge of the language is quite adequate. Certainly, as I have just stated, I managed to create a pleasant sensation among my French hearers when I employed it ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... "Flatter not thyself so far, ma mie," said Mary. "Were mine innocence clearer than the sun they would blacken it. All that can come of this same trial is that I may speak to posterity, if they stifle my voice ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had seen Horatia Cunningham's photograph, so that she was prepared for a girl with a homely face; but most photographs flatter, and Mrs Clay had not expected to see any one quite so ordinary in appearance, 'an' that plainly dressed,' as she confided to her husband. However, she came forward with a hearty welcome, and as soon as Horatia smiled at her she forgot the slight ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself. It is harder to remember that about the beliefs upon which we are now acting, but in respect to other peoples and other ages we flatter ourselves that it is easy to see when they were in deadly earnest about ludicrous pictures of the world. We insist, because of our superior hindsight, that the world as they needed to know it, and the world as they did know it, were often ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... nutmeg grated, a little salt, some currants, and then beat some eggs in a little sack, and some sugar, and mix all together, and knead it as stiff as for manchet, and make it up in the form and size of a turkey-egg, but a little flatter; then take a pound of butter, and put it in a dish, and set the dish over a clear fire in a chafing-dish, and rub your butter about the dish till 'tis melted; put your puddings in, and cover the dish, but often ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... smooth it over; but you can't fool me any more. But I don't want you to flatter me and lie to me the way Judge Stearns did," she added, with a sudden change of manner. "I like ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Pocket Looking-Glass, we recommend it for the instruction of every youth, whether miss or master; it is a mirror that will not flatter them, nor lead them into error; it displays the follies and improper pursuits of youthful breasts, points out the dangerous paths they sometimes tread, and clears the way to the Temple ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... must know that there is in Paris a man of the greatest merit, whose fortune is not proportionate to his talents and character. I may serve as eyes to the blind goddess, and repair in some measure the injustice, and I beg you to offer on that account. I flatter myself that he will accept this pension because of the pleasure I shall feel in obliging a man who joins beauty of character to the most sublime intellectual talents." The King here stopped, on seeing MM. d'Ayen and de Gontaut enter, and then recommenced reading the letter ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... terrible, tier after tier, gorge after gorge, one twisted range after the other, across a breathlessly immeasurable distance. The prospect was full of shadows thrown by the tumult of lava. In those shadows one imagined stranger abysses. Far down to the right a long narrow lake inaugurated a flatter, alkali-whitened country of low cliffs in long straight lines. Across the distances proper to a dozen horizons the tumbled chaos heaved and fell. The eye sought rest at the bounds usual to its accustomed ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Mr. Tarleton. Make him assistant secretary. That'll flatter him—then ask anything you like of him and he'll do it. ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... oblige me to refrain from abusing it, now that it is happily dead; but, as another proverb puts it, "The law knows no necessity," and I therefore can do as I choose. Here, then, is its corpse, exhumed as a warning to those who may be about to witness any other of Mr. PHILLIPS'S dramas. I flatter myself that the disinterested public will agree with me, that if all the Huguenots were as tedious as Mr. WATTS PHILLIPS'S private Huguenot, the massacre of St. BARTHOLOMEW was a pleasing manifestation of a very natural and commendable indignation on the part of their much-suffering fellow-citizens ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... however bitterly, from a passionate faith in art, and even—(one may say)—from an uncompromising love for his fame and intolerance of anything mediocre in his work,—and another thing, as Lucien Levy-Coeur did, only to use such criticism to flatter the baseness of the public, and to make the gallery laugh, by an exhibition of wit at the expense of a great man. Again, free though Christophe was in his judgments, there had always been a certain sort of music which he had tacitly left alone and shielded: ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... "Oh, you needn't flatter yourself," she answered Him. "There's precious little danger of my self-sacrifice or love for others. That's not going to be my attitude to life at all. You'd better not waste your ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... has a trick of cooling towards the end of a Bill. Maxwell has carried his main point, they will say; this is a question of machinery. Besides, many of those Liberals who will be with us on the main point don't love the landlords. No! don't flatter yourself that, if we lose the main engagement, there will be any Prussians to bring up. The ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and Importance; and this is plainly the Case of all Praemiums, where they are faithfully distributed. Now, all these Considerations accompany every Subscription to my enlarged Plan, and thence I was apt to flatter myself I should be successful, if I had liv'd to ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... let mee feele the force of thy lead pyle, What should I doo with love when I am old? I know not how to flatter, fawne, or smyle; Then stay thy hand, O cruell bowman, hold! For if thou strik'st me with thy dart of gold, I sweare to thee by Joves immortall curse, I have more in my hart ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... heard the young lady say; "you are too old to flatter. As for that hare-brained youth of the dust-brush, he looked as if he might have the failing of poor Pat, and not always be ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... so little faith in me as to call that a sacrifice? I did flatter myself that you believed what I ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... needs to complete it is a portrait of yourself as good as your portrait of Wilde. Oscar was not combative, though he was supercilious in his early pose. When his snobbery was not in action, he liked to make people devoted to him and to flatter them exquisitely with that end. Mrs. Calvert, whose great final period as a stage old woman began with her appearance in my Arms and the Man, told me one day, when apologizing for being, as she thought, a bad rehearser, that no author had ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... bravest and best By keeping it give of their wisdom a test. And the hotter it gets in dispute, yet the most Courageous is he who wont let it be crossed. On the whole, though 't is often a subject of strife, More people it joins than it parts in this life. My whole is a place I forbear now to flatter; It thrives upon those whose dearest and best Severely it tries, yet makes light of the matter, And thinks the more wicked their end, the ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... to flatter her with soft words, the tyrant hoped to reduce her to obedience through fear; therefore he threatened ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... wit saith that a hero is none to his valet-de-chambre, and it required less quick eyes than my lady's little page was naturally endowed with, to see that she had many qualities by no means heroic, however much Mrs. Tusher might flatter and coax her. When Father Holt was not by, who exercised an entire authority over the pair, my lord and my lady quarrelled and abused each other so as to make the servants laugh, and to frighten the little page on duty. The poor boy trembled before his mistress, who called him by a hundred ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... that I cared about the loss of the fees, badly as I needed them. It was mainly that I had allowed the summer flies who buzzed about me for the Baron's sake to flatter me into the notion that I was an artist, when I was really nobody ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Princess Hippodamia; and it is customary, on these occasions, to make the 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 thought ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... selling?" said Carew, sharply. "Don't flatter your chances so, Master Alleyn. I wouldn't sell the boy for a world full of Jem Bristows. Why, his mouth is a mint where common words are coined into gold! Sell him? I think I see myself in Bedlam for a fool! Nay, Master Alleyn, what I am coming at is this: ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... genius starving in a garret. Lais, in Paris, must first and foremost find a rich man mad enough to pay her price. She must keep up a very elegant style, for this is her shop-sign; she must be sufficiently well bred to flatter the vanity of her lovers; she must have the brilliant wit of a Sophie Arnould, which diverts the apathy of rich men; finally, she must arouse the passions of libertines by appearing to be mistress to one man only who is envied by ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... our grievances, which we have thus laid before his Majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their Chief Magistrate. Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will, therefore, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... whatever political persuasion he may be, flatter himself for a moment that such a government could ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... distresses; in our personal distresses, and our national distresses. Are we not like the children of Israel, of whom it is said, "When He slew them, then they sought Him, and they returned and inquired early after God. Nevertheless they did flatter Him with their mouth. For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they stedfast in His covenant." Are we not like little children that, while they are being whipped, will promise any thing; but, when the whipping is over, will perform nothing? Or like unto iron that is ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... is called Le Loup, about two or three pounds in weight; white, firm, and well-flavoured. Another, no-way inferior to it, is the Moustel, about the same size; of a dark-grey colour, and short, blunt snout; growing thinner and flatter from the shoulders downwards, so as to resemble a soal at the tail. This cannot be the mustela of the antients, which is supposed to be the sea lamprey. Here too are found the vyvre, or, as we call it, weaver; remarkable for its long, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... his own brutal self 'us the People.' And who are the friends of the People? Not those who would wish to elevate each of them, or at least, the child who is to take his place in the flux of life and death, into something worthy of esteem, and capable of freedom, but those who flatter and infuriate them as they do. A contradiction in the very thought. For if really they are good and wise, virtuous and well-informed, how weak must be the motives of discontent to a truly moral being!—but if the contrary, and the motives for discontent proportionally ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... intentions, while I am still more grateful than I could have been with the literal fulfilment. Delightful it is to hear from you—do always write when you can. And though this second letter speaks of your having been unwell, still I shall continue to flatter myself that upon the whole 'the better part prevails,' and that if the rains don't wash you away this winter, I may have leave to think of you as strengthening and to strengthen still. Meanwhile you certainly, as you say, have roots ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... possession of him, as it were, entirely; leaving no art unexhausted in order to flatter, to amuse, to please, and to interest him. He was made to believe that M. du Maine was utterly without ambition; like a good father of a family, solely occupied with his children, touched with the grandeur of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was, she preserved a provoking reticence, declining to enlighten me any further. "No, Frank," she said in her cheery way, "it is of no use your trying to coax me with your 'dear Miss Pimpernell,' or think to flatter me into divulging my news by false compliments paid to my shabby old bonnet! No, you shall hear it all in good time, so don't be impatient. I won't tell you another word now, my boy, there!" she added finally, trotting off on her parochial ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... told before that Mrs. Herd was so very ill. It was foolish to wonder—these people do not speak of suffering till it is late. To speak, when it means what this meant loss of wife and mother—was to flatter reality too much. To be healthy, or—die! That is their creed. To go on till they drop—then very soon pass away! What room for states between—on their poor wage, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Municipal Department of Medicine and to the City Architect. Thereafter he sat thoughtfully in his britchka—plunged in meditation on the subject of whom else it might be well to visit. However, not a single magnate had been neglected, and in conversation with his hosts he had contrived to flatter each separate one. For instance to the Governor he had hinted that a stranger, on arriving in his, the Governor's province, would conceive that he had reached Paradise, so velvety were the roads. "Governors who appoint capable subordinates," had said Chichikov, "are deserving of the most ample meed ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
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