“The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.”

—  Edith Sitwell

The Last Years of a Rebel (1967)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed abou…" by Edith Sitwell?
Edith Sitwell photo
Edith Sitwell 50
British poet 1887–1964

Related quotes

“We mistakenly equate flattery to friendship and criticism to opposition; one should evaluate truth first and then judge, for flattery and criticism are primarily opinion.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1975

Michel Foucault photo

“We demand that sex speak the truth […] and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves wich we think we possess in our immediate consciousness.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Source: Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter 1.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
William Adams photo

“What do we know about the world unseen? What reasonings, what curiosity, what misgivings there have been concerning that impenetrable mystery! Out of this mystery and vagueness and vastness comes the human form of the Divine Redeemer. He assures us that there is an unmixed and endless life, and that all we have to do to secure it is, to trust ourselves to Him who came to declare it and to confer it.”

William Adams (1706–1789) Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 91.

“The tales we tell ourselves about ourselves makes us who we are.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Second Helpings

Thomas Aquinas photo

“We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.”

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

“It is not good for our efforts at self-realization to know the opinions other people have of us. It is difficult or perhaps impossible to be ourselves if we are known.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1951)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Ervin László photo

“As we have already glimpsed and will continue to discover, we are able to expand our awareness beyond the perceived limitations of our own person and access the dimensions of a transpersonal consciousness. As we open ourselves to the realization of the in-formed universe, this shift in our collective awareness heralds a resolution of the schisms that have divided us for so long—both among and within us”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Ervin Laszlo, Jude Currivan (2008) CosMos. p. 101.

Thomas Paine photo

“We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)
Context: We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the event of a few months.

Related topics