Selected praise quotes

1. Applause is a receipt, not a note of demand.

2. It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

3. Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.

4. Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.

5. My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.

6. This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.

7. I think Ms. Monroe's architecture is extremely good architecture.

8. Flowers rejoice when night is done, Lift their heads to greet the sun; Sweetest looks and odours raise, In a silent hymn of praise.

9. He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.

10. The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

11. Nobody kicks on being interrupted if it's by applause.

12. The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

13. I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

14. Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

15. A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.

16. Some asked me where the rubies grew, And nothing I did say; But with my finger pointed to The lips of Julia.

17. Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

18. The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

19. Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room; Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

20. To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

21. Philosophers are as jealous as women. Each wants a monopoly of praise.

22. He who praises everybody praises nobody.

23. The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

24. In the Army of the Shenandoah, you were the First Brigade! In the Army of the Potomac you were the First Brigade! In the Second Corps of this Army, you are the First Brigade! You are the First Brigade in the affections of your general, and I hope by your future deeds and bearing you will be handed down the posterity as the First Brigade in this our Second War of Independence. Farewell!

25. O Popular Applause! what heart of man Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?

26. 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!

27. I don't know anyone who is more admired and respected in the international community than President Karzai, for his strength, for his wisdom and for his courage to lead this country, first in defeat of the Taliban and now a democratic and unified Afghanistan. And I can tell you I am with foreign ministers and with heads of state all over the world. I sit in the councils of NATO. I sit with the EU. I sit with people all over the world and there is great admiration for your president and also for what the Afghan people are doing here.

28. The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art, Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart.

29. Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.

30. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

31. My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about the success.

32. The honour is overpaid, When he that did the act is commentator.

33. Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise, That all both judge you to relate them true, And to possess them, honour'd Margaret.

34. The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

35. She is a winsome wee thing, She is a handsome wee thing, She is a lo'esome wee thing, This sweet wee wife o' mine.

36. All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare.

37. You say, as I have often given tongue In praise of what another's said or sung, 'Twere politic to do the like by these; But was there ever a dog that praised his fleas?

38. Awake, awake, my Lyre! And tell thy silent master's humble tale In sounds that may prevail; Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire: Though so exalted she And I so lowly be Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.

39. Steadfast of thought, Well made, well wrought, Far may be sought, Ere that ye can find So courteous, so kind As merry Margaret, This midsummer flower, Gentle as falcon Or hawk of the tower.

40. Nothing is so great an instance of ill manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.

41. This one's from the Book!

42. Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.

43. Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee, With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!

44. I look upon Upton Sinclair as one of the greatest novelists in the world, the Zola of America.

45. Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.

46. O moral Gower!

47. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit. ~ Adam Smith

48. 'For He that is mighty hath done great things for me, and Holy is His Name' (Luke 1:49). Luther comments:

49. The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts. ~ Richard Wagner

50. A fucking good tune