“He who flatters a man is his enemy. he who tells him of his faults is his maker.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Confucius269

Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher -551–-479 BC

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“Of a rich man who was niggardly he said, "That man does not own his estate, but his estate owns him."”

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“To mark a man's faults and failings was, for Johnson, to indicate where he had diverged from his true relation to God; for Strachey it was an agreeable intellectual pastime, which flattered his sense of superiority both to his subject and to the illusion-ridden mob.”

Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) British writer

Hugh Kingsmill The Progress of a Biographer (1949) p. 7.
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“We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers' graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten.”

Chief Seattle (1786–1866) Duwamish chief

Misattributed

“An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

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“Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction. He was bothered by the people who cheered him in neighboring villages, and he imagined that they were the same cheers they gave the enemy. Everywhere he met adolescents who looked at him with his own eyes, who spoke to him with his own voice, who greeted him with the same mistrust with which he greeted them, and who said they were his sons. He felt scattered about, multiplied, and more solitary than ever. He was convinced that his own officers were lying to him. He fought with the Duke of Marlborough. "The best friend a person has," he would say at that time, "is one who has just died."”

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“To his friends he said that he thought the man who feared gibes and jeers was more of a coward than the one who ran away from the enemy.”

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Variant translation by Goodwin:
He that is afraid of scoffs and reproaches is more a coward than he that flies from the enemy.

“A man's dignity isn't measured by the people he has around him when he's at the peak of his success, but by his ability not to forget those who helped him when his need was greatest.”

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“He who conquers his enemy with meekness, wins fame.”

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“No man can know by whom he's truly loved
When high on Fortune's wheel he sits, serene.
His friends surround him, true and false, unproved,
And the same loyalty in all is seen.
When to catastrophe the wheel is moved
The crowd of flatterers passes from the scene;
But he who loves his lord with all his heart
Remains, nor after death does he depart.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Alcun non può saper da chi sia amato,
Quando felice in su la ruota siede:
Però c'ha i veri e i finti amici a lato,
Che mostran tutti una medesma fede.
Se poi si cangia in tristo il lieto stato,
Volta la turba adulatrice il piede;
E quel che di cor ama riman forte,
Ed ama il suo signor dopo la morte.
Canto XIX, stanza 1 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“He who flatters a man is his enemy. he who tells him of his faults is his maker.”

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