Quotes About Praise

He writes so well he makes me feel like putting the quill back in the goose.

— Fred Allen

Well done is better than well said.

— Benjamin Franklin

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dines alone.

— John F. Kennedy

They say, “Gee, you look great.”  That means they thought you looked like hell before.

— Richard M. Nixon

The advantage of doing one’s praising for oneself is that one can lay it on thick and exactly in the right places.

— Samuel Butler

His life was gentle and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand on its feet and say to all the world — this was a man!

— William Shakespeare

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share.  My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me — and my mother would have believed it.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

We recognize that flattery is poison, but its perfume intoxicates us.

— Charles Varlet de La Grange

Baloney is the unvarnished lie laid on so thick you hate it.  Blarney is flattery laid on so thin you love it.

— Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

Flattery is all right — if you don’t inhale.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Some people pay a compliment as if they expected a receipt.

— Kin Hubbard

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

— Victor Hugo

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.

— Ecclesiasticus 44:1

I will praise any man that will praise me.

— William Shakespeare

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

— Josh Billings

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

— Mark Twain

It is more difficult to praise rightly than to blame.

— Thomas Fuller

Praise is the only gift which people are really grateful.

— Marguerite, Countess of Blessington

Whenever the occasion arose, he rose to the occasion.

— Jonathan Brown, on Diego Velazquez

A man doesn’t live by bread alone.  He needs buttering up once in a while.

— Robert H. Henry

To withhold deserved praise lest it should make its object conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly.

— George Bernard Shaw

The greatest honor that can come to man is the appreciation and high regard of his fellow man.

— H. G. Mendelson