
Diary (14 July 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 223
Diary (14 July 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
“Then, all censure of a man's self is oblique praise.”
25 April 1778
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)
“Cold approbation gave the ling'ring bays,
For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.”
Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)
“All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare.”
April 25, 1778, p. 403
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
“It is awkward to listen to oneself being praised, and I was always a shy man.”
Allan and the Holy Flower (1915), CHAPTER I, BROTHER JOHN
Letter 12
Letters Written in Sweden (1796)
Context: Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.
Opium (1929)
“The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.”
Entry (1952)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Context: This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.
No. 101 (26 June 1711), this has sometimes been quoted as "It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age".
The Spectator (1711–1714)
Context: If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve. In a word, the man in a high post is never regarded with an indifferent eye, but always considered as a friend or an enemy. For this reason persons in great stations have seldom their true characters drawn till several years after their deaths. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunity of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.
It is therefore the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of illustrious persons, and to set matters right between those antagonists who by their rivalry for greatness divided a whole age into factions.