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About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker claims that flattery is inappropriate and unnatural when used by a true friend.
In plain terms
True friends do not flatter each other.
What can you take from it?
Friendship should be honest, not flattering.

Where it applies

  • personal relationships
  • social etiquette
  • conflict

Putting it to work

  • building trust
  • evaluating friendships

Questions to consider

  • Can friends be honest and kind?
  • Why do friends flatter?

Another view

Polite compliments can strengthen friendships.

More from John (dramatist) Ford

  1. A bachelor May thrive by observation, on a little. A single life's no burden: but to draw In yokes is chargeable, and will require A double maintenance.

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  2. Physicians are the cobblers, rather the botchers, of men's bodies; as the one patches our tattered clothes, so the other solders our diseased flesh.

    Permalink to quote #6
  3. Sister, look ye, How, by a new creation of my tailor's I've shook off old mortality.

    Permalink to quote #3

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