“Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.”
Letter to Gertrude Natkin, 2 March 1906 http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/53b4cf90-7739-0132-f12c-58d385a7b928
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes
“You are better at small talk than I am. That is not always a compliment.”
Source: Lock In (2014), Chapter 22 (p. 296)
Herbert Howe, "Mary Pickford's Favorite Stars and Films". Photoplay, January 1924, p. 28-29. (Photoplay Publishing Company). https://archive.org/stream/pho26chic#page/n31/mode/2up
Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool.
Vol. 1, letter 37.
Sir Charles Grandison (1753–1754)
“I don't really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me.”
Dick Cavett interview (1969)
Context: I don't really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me. I know a whole lot of musicians, artists out there who hears the compliments and thinks "wow, I must have been really great" and so they get fat and satisfied and they get lost and forget about their actual talent and start living in another world.
My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Compliments
Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)
“I don't like compliments. No. I prefer criticisms; prefer to prove them wrong”
During an interview in the latter years of his career http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YOti0icEbw