“What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.”

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. [1]

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
Context: But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born — a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun, that pour down the rain, and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 2 “Palaces” (p. 79)

5 September 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Il se flattait d'être sans préjugés, et cette prétention était à elle seule un gros préjugé.
Pt. II, ch. 4
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)

Source: Ghost Town

La vanité piquée peut mener loin un jeune homme riche et dès le berceau toujours environné de flatteurs.
Source: La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839), Ch. 13