"Flatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... flatter you, Isabel, I tell you the truth!" cried her friend. "I hope you don't mean to tell me that you didn't give Mr. Goodwood ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... 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
... 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 ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... 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
... flatter myself," he added wryly; "I can't even flatter myself that my—going is going to inconvenience Cornelia in the slightest; because I can't see that my coming has made even the remotest perceptible difference ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... 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
... flatter ourselves, madame. But Mademoiselle Angelique must not remain here much longer ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... 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
... flatter me. I have a great dislike to it. I am, I trust, satisfied in my present situation; and, were I weak enough to indulge a transient feeling of vanity, the reminiscence which would instantly intrude, that my advancement was founded on the misery of those I love better than myself, would ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... "You flatter me," I responded. "If I could produce those voices I would go on the vaudeville stage to-morrow. I give you my word I am acting in entire good faith. I am quite as eager for the truth as any of you.—But, hark! the cone is ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... 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
... "Don't flatter yourselves. I don't mean to die to please you. There is a great deal of vitality in me yet. Don't say another word. I will take nothing but cold water; ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... "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
... flatter myself, I have unravelled a considerable part of that dark period. Whether satisfactory or not, my readers must decide. Nor is it of any importance whether I have or not. The attempt was mere matter of curiosity and speculation. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... '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 |
