A Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Quote Topics

Base Coin Current Flattery Only Our Through Vanity Which

Quote Author

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
French - Writer
September 15, 1613 - March 17, 1680

Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Flattery, though a base coin, is the necessary pocket money at court; where, by custom and consent, it has obtained such a currency that it is no longer a fraudulent, but a legal payment.

Bill Vaughan

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Titles of honour are like the impressions on coin; — which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.

Laurence Sterne

Flattery is a counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.

Richard Whately

One may define flattery as a base companionship which is most advantageous to the flatterer.

Theophrastus

Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.

Euripides

Never permit yourself to indulge in cheap flattery, which often times means to merely satisfy the individuals vanity and sometimes to ingratiate the flatter into the good graces of the flattered.

Harold B. Lee

If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity. But I mean by vanity only that they appreciate their own worth. Without this kind of vanity they would not be great. And with vanity alone, of course, a man is nothing.

Yousuf Karsh

.. if all the information of the cosmos flows through our pores at every moment, then our current notion of our human potential is only a glimmer of what it should be.

Lynne McTaggart

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

Carl Sandburg

And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?

Charles Dickens

Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.