“Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!”

— Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2001, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)

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Christopher Hitchens 305

British American author and journalist 1949–2011

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 164)

“The wisdom of the Lord is infinite as are also His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises., sun, moon, and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him, celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exist.”

Johannes Kepler book Harmonices Mundi

Harmonices Mundi (1618)
Source: Reported in Methodist Review (1873), vol. 55, pp. 187–88.
Source: As quoted in Forty Thousand Sublime and Beautiful Thoughts (1904) ed. Charles Noel Douglas, p. 845. https://books.google.com/books?id=I0ZAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA845

“One who liberates his country by killing a tyrant is to be praised and rewarded.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Trans. J.G. Dawson (Oxford, 1959), 44, 2 in O’Donovan, pp. 329-30
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard

“What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises?”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

"Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)" preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948)
Context: What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?

“You praise a man for having killed his enemy by means of an advantage; and by praising him for boldness you praise him for a sin against nature, because boldness leads to destruction.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

“We give to necessity the praise of virtue.”
Laudem virtutis necessitati damus.

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Book I, Chapter VIII, 14
Compare: "To maken vertue of necessite", Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Knightes Tale", line 3044
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)