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More "Flatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and itself the grille through which they show like beauteous wraiths or frescoes in the flat. That screen is emblematic of their real exclusion from the higher government which their social participation in parliamentary elections, and the men's habit of talking politics with them, flatter them into a delusive sense of sharing. A woman may be the queen of England, but she may not be one of its legislators. That must be because women like being queens and do not ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... I may describe her as being merely subdued, and gentle, and tender. And she is very wistful to receive gentle consideration and tenderness from me. She is, after all, the genuine woman. She wants the strength that man has to give, and I flatter myself that I am ten times a stronger man than I was when the voyage began, because I am a thousand times a more human man since I told the books to go hang and began to revel in the human maleness of the man that loves a woman and ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... and his bold emphatic speech, curbed to the task of reproducing the choice and pregnant sobriety of Attic style, is apt to eliminate everything but the sobriety. The "transcribed" Greek is often yet flatter than "literal" versions of Greek verse are wont to be, and when Browning speaks in his own person the style recovers itself with a sudden and vehement bound, like a noble wild creature abruptly released from restraint. Among the finest of these "recoveries" are the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... most certainly apply to you, and you may say when you recommend me that being well grounded in Arabic, and having some talent for languages, I might be an acquisition to a corps in one of our Eastern Colonies. I flatter myself that I could do a great deal in the East provided I could once get there, either in a civil or military capacity; there is much talk at present about translating European books into the two great languages, the Arabic and Persian; ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... stock and the stock of my friends, I shall remain a director in the railroad, and also a candidate for the position of president. I shall make a contest at the next directors' meeting, and if I fail in my purpose there, I shall carry the fight before the public. I flatter myself that my reputation will count for something in my old home; you will not be able to carry matters with quite the same high hand in Mississippi as you are accustomed to in New York. Also, I shall fight you in the ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... "Don't flatter yourself that you're my heir, sir. I'll have you know you're not, sir. No delusions. You need expect ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... remained there until the arcade was closed at night. He ran the errands, and handed Madame Raquin, who could only walk with difficulty, the small articles she required. Then he seated himself and chatted. He had acquired the gentle penetrating voice of an actor which he employed to flatter the ears and heart of the good old lady. In a friendly way, he seemed particularly anxious about the health of Therese, like a tender-hearted man who feels for the sufferings of others. On repeated ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... in examining the gullies in search of fresh water: a hole was dug in one of the most favourable spots we could find; and at the depth of three or four feet the earth gradually became so moist as to flatter us with the hope that our labours would be rewarded by success: at three feet deeper water began to ooze through; but, upon tasting it, it turned out to be quite salt. Another place higher up was tried with the same result ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... his grave for some thirty years, and certainly his lovers and admirers cannot flatter themselves that this great and steady light of glory as yet shines over him. He is not fully recognized at home; he is not recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... perceive, my old friend and, I hope, old enemy, that I present to you a whole bouquet of charms: beauty of form, the radiance of a personality, and brains with an edge to flatter or flout. Very rarely does Providence dower so many graces to one woman, but they are all in Madame Angelique. Moreover, she has the subtlest of sex strategy, for in greeting me she made a stumble with her lace petticoat so that I might catch the daintiness of her foot and ankle. She ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... phenomena. A phenomenon must follow a certain law, because we see no reason why it should deviate from that law in one way rather than in another. This is called the Principle of the Sufficient Reason;(239) and by means of it philosophers often flatter themselves that they are able to establish, without any appeal to experience, the most general truths of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... venture, and both examiners rubbed their hands and murmured, "Very good, indeed!" at which Tom's hair began to lie a little flatter, and he ceased to feel as if he were ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... almost too well known to need description, and there is little difference between the Asiatic and African animal. It may, however, be generally described as being distinguished from other Cats by its uniform tawny colour, flatter skull, which gives it a more dog-like appearance, the shaggy mane of the male, and by the tufted tail of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... did flatter myself that they would have been satisfied, as indeed they ought to have been, and that henceforth the clergy of the two denominations, the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian, while discharging their own religious duties, would cordially co-operate with those of the establishment in promoting ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... one moment, your high origin," cried poor Gregory, addressing the young captain as though he had been a colonel, "Vache Vousso Korodie," in order to flatter him. "I believe that the lady Vaninka's window is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I go on I shall begin to flatter you," said Lady Beach-Mandarin with a delicious smile. "I've begun upon Sir Isaac already. I've made him promise a hundred guineas and his name to the Shakespear Dinners Society,—nothing he didn't mention eaten (you know) and all the profits to the National ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... differ from you about the Dante, which I think should be published with the tragedy. But do as you please: you must be the best judge of your own craft. I agree with you about the title. The play may be good or bad, but I flatter myself that it is original as a picture of that kind of passion, which to my mind is so natural, that I am convinced that I should have done precisely what the Doge ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Virginia. Those who desire it, form, as yet, the minority of the whole state, but it bears a respectable proportion to the whole, in numbers and weight of character; and it is constantly recruiting by the addition of nearly the whole of the young men as fast as they come into public life. I flatter myself that it will take place there at some period of time not very distant. In Maryland and North Carolina, a very few are disposed to emancipate. In South Carolina and Georgia, not the smallest symptom of it; but, on the contrary, these two states and North ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... ages woman has been thus abased. The history of the world is all darkened by the awful shadow of woman's debasement. While man has admired and loved her, he has degraded her. Savage and civilized man are not very dissimilar in this respect. They both woo, cajole, and flatter woman to oppress and degrade her. They both load her with honeyed titles and flattering compliments, as though to sweeten with sugar-plum nonsense her bitter pressure of wrongs. It is the consent of all historians that woman has been elevated in proportion as knowledge and virtue have advanced ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... when the conversation does not turn on himself, the King directly gets tired, and is either ready to yawn or to go away.' Every great poet, when he is growing old, is a little like Louis XIV. in this respect. Madame Recamier had each day a thousand pleasant contrivances to excite and flatter him. She assembled from all quarters friends for him,—new admirers. She chained us all to the feet of her idol with links ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a dangerous person, I fear," said she; "if you can forge compliments at that rate, Zoraide will positively be afraid of you; but if you are good, I will keep your secret, and not tell her how well you can flatter. Now, listen what sort of a proposal she makes to you. She has heard that you are an excellent professor, and as she wishes to get the very beet masters for her school (car Zoraide fait tout comme une reine, c'est une ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... I obtain Now and again; Though I'm shy, it doesn't matter, I will tell you how they flatter: Every compliment I'll ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... power, To win from fate it's frown away: When Bertram came in luckless hour To sigh, to flatter, to betray! ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... the messenger was announced—and he brought the Queen's fatal letter. Oh! how difficult I found it not to call the man every sort of name! The next morning John was off, and though he flattered himself he would be able to come back to me in any case, I flatter myself no such thing. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... wiser: and the folly of this maxim of the French, appears plainly even from this, that their trained soldiers often find your raw men prove too hard for them; of which I will not say much, lest you may think I flatter the English. Every day's experience shows, that the mechanics in the towns, or the clowns in the country, are not afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen, if they are not disabled by some misfortune in their body, or dispirited ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... exertions that the daughters of Columbia are making, to manufacture our wool and flax, which are necessary for our consumption, are praise-worthy, and demand the approbation and assistance of every true patriot. We flatter ourselves with the pleasing expectation of seeing the virtuous fair clothed and ornamented in the genuine ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... indeed, impresses both of us with respect for the American skill in binding. Neither too gay to be gaudy, nor too grave, so as to affect the theological, it hits that happy medium which agrees with the tastes of most people and disgusts none. We should flatter ourselves that it is intended to represent the matter within, but that we are afraid of incurring the sin of vanity, and the indiscretion of taking appearances too much upon trust. We suspend our conjectures on this very interesting subject. The whole getting ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... success mightily; and for his sake I enjoyed it somewhat, but it was on account of his comfort only, for I could not for my life perceive in what degree the Church was better or purer than before these deeds were done. He continued to flatter me with great things, as to honours, fame and emolument; and, above all, with the blessing and protection of Him to whom my body and soul were dedicated. But, after these high promises, I got no longer peace; for ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... one of those fortunate men who can win a heart or a vote by a smile. Finally, to comply with the requisitions, he established himself for several weeks in the chief town of the department. He made his court to the wife of the prefect, sufficiently to flatter the functionary without disquieting the husband. The prefect informed the minister that the claims of the Comte de Camors were pressed upon the department by an irresistible influence; that the politics of the young Count appeared undecided and a little suspicious, but that the administration, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... lesson, 'Doubt everything and mistrust everything, even what you see.' He who will make his fortune at court, must first of all mistrust everybody, and consider everybody his enemy, whom he is to flatter, because he can do him harm, and whom he is to hug and kiss, until in some happy embrace he can either plunge a dagger into his breast wholly unobserved, or pour poison into his mouth. Trust neither men nor walls, Jane, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... filigree, and wines of the Levant, cooled in snow. The worthy Consul was smoking his chibouque, and his daughter, as she rose to greet their guest, let her guitar fall upon the turf. The original of the portrait proved that the painter had no need to flatter; and the dignified, yet cordial manner, the radiant smile, and the sweet and thrilling voice with which she welcomed her countryman would have completed the spell, had, indeed, the wanderer been one prepared, or capable of being enchanted. As it was, Mr. Ferrers, while he returned his welcome, ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... mean, I've heard it said—that when a man and a girl like you and me agree to be friends, it is just another way of beginning a flirtation. It made me very angry when I heard that; but now that I have asked you, I am quite satisfied, for it seems impossible to mix the two things together. You can't flatter a person when you have agreed to tell him his faults; you can't feign a sentiment which is real. I knew I was right, though I could not argue it out; but for the future I sha'n't mind a bit when you say nasty things to me, for I shall feel they are a proof of friendship; ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... done what he could so long as he could. It was inevitable that she must be hurt, even if he had married, not giving her what he had given this dompteuse. After all, was it so terrible? It could not affect her much in the eyes of the world. And her heart? He did not flatter himself. Yet he knew that it would be the thing—the fallen idol—that would grieve her more than thought of the man. He wished that he could have spared her in the circumstances. But it had all come too suddenly: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he said, "I wasn't born yesterday, you know. I flatter myself I'm up to most moves on the board. And you may depend upon it if she's had any designs on me—mind you, I don't say she has—but if she has, she sees now that they'll never come to anything. She's given me ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... in a sermon on Purgatory (xli, de Sanctis) reckons among slight sins, "if one desire to flatter any person of higher standing, whether of one's own ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... counsel, or of that untractable humour on which no hold is to be fastened,—it will behove you to vary your discourse according to these several dispositions: But though more circumspection is to be taken with hardened souls, and difficult of access, you are never to flatter the disease, nor say any thing to him which may weaken the virtue of the remedy, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... position as wholly reasonable, void of anxiety; she was about to marry the man she liked and respected—safest of all forms of marriage. But there came troublesome moods of misgiving. It did not flatter her self-esteem to think of herself as excluded from the number of those who are capable of love; even in Helen Borisoff's view, the elect, the fortunate. Of love, she had thought more in this last week or two than ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... I flatter myself I have musical taste, but Back and Belly Maker (piano) I consider vulgar—almost indecent, in fact. Such anatomical intimacy with the piano would destroy for me the ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... antagonists of atheism are found. If any one were to say to them "A lofty spirituality is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man"—it would make them furious, I shall take care not to say so. I would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities, that it is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the "merely moral" man, after they have been acquired singly through long training ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... were some men there who spoke so as to flatter and honour them, that not only was there no one who would dare do that, but that there was no one that ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... Because of these things is there great wrath from the LORD against these Kingdoms, and this controversie shall be continued until we really turn away from our crooked paths. Therefore as we wish that none of this Land may flatter themselves in their evil wayes, but repent and amend, so we desire our Brethren of England to consider what hath been the bitter fruits of their slow progresse in and neglect of the Work of Reformation, and of their connivance at and complying with ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... of Paris, a Pastorall" is a court drama in the style of Lilly, intended to flatter the Queen, "poor in action but all the richer in gallant phrases, provided with songs, one in Italian, and with all kinds of love scenes between shepherds and shepherdesses, nymphs and terrestrial gods"; the diction is interesting, ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... condition, much wild rye, which is not known as a cultivated plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These cereals precisely resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf, ear, size, and height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter and poorer in flour."—Reisebericht uber Hauran und ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... which blow upon my body are true counselors; they do not flatter, but represent truly to me my condition; and though they bite sharply, their tooth is nothing like so keen as that of unkindness and ingratitude. I find that howsoever men speak against adversity, yet some sweet uses are to be extracted from it; like the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... conceived a strong friendship for Paul and they exchanged gifts, and Minnestema, Bull's daughter, who was really handsome for an Indian girl, looked upon him as second only to her distinguished father in greatness. Paul thought to flatter Minnestema, and through the interpreter, told her that he had heard her praises sung far up the river, that she was the toast at every fort and that the fame of her beauty had even spread to the great cities of the whites. Her copper countenance expressed much pleasure at this; but she dispelled ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... man, having hit upon a truth, to begin to theorize upon it, and, as the phrase is, run it into the ground. Quakers would not fight, would not take an oath, would not baptize, or wear mourning, or flatter the senses with pictures and statues. A Quaker would resist evil and violence only by enlightening them. He would not be taxed for measures or objects which he did not approve. He could see but one way of reforming the world, and thought that God was equally circumscribed in ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... "Flatter not yourself with such a vain opinion," said the Palmer— "if you go to Syria, you go to eternal captivity, while your uncle returns to possession of wealth little diminished—and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the consideration of 8 pounds. But what of that? Wait till you get a patron who has poetical or historical tendencies, and spouts passages of his own works all through dinner: you must praise, you must flatter, you must devise original compliments for him,—or die in the attempt. Then there are the beaux, the Adonises and Hyacinths, as you must be careful to call them, undeterred by the eighteen inches or so of nose that some of them carry on their faces. Do your ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... faith in me as to call that a sacrifice? I did flatter myself that you believed what I told you ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... "We flatter ourselves we do look pretty fine," Burns admitted, eying his wife with satisfaction. "That gauzy gray thing Ellen has on strikes me as the bulliest yet. If I could just get her to wear a pink rose in ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... free to refuse. I know well—and I by no means count upon compelling you, my dear monsieur. I will say more, I even understand all the delicacy you feel in taking up with M. Fouquet's idea; you dread appearing to flatter the king. A noble spirit, M. Percerin, a noble spirit!" The tailor stammered. "It would indeed be a very pretty compliment to pay the young prince," continued Aramis; "but as the surintendant told me, 'If Percerin refuse, tell him that it will not ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... mine, I flatter myself. And if, in telling me that you're in robust health again, you're hinting at an intention to sneak back to blazing Paris before the middle of September, you don't know your Spartan daughter. All that's American in me rises to shout "No!" And you needn't think that your child ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... not mean to flatter. I said what I thought. She is handsome, beautiful, and so young, too. Was that a gold bracelet which flashed so on ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... his ascendency and writhing under his rebukes. It must have been galling to the great philosopher to yield the palm to lesser men; but such has ever been the destiny of genius, except in crises of public danger. Of all things that politicians hate is the domination of a man who will not stoop to flatter, who cannot be bribed, and who will be certain to expose vices and wrongs. The world will not bear rebukes. The fate of prophets is to be stoned. A stern moral greatness is repulsive to the weak and wicked. Parties reward mediocre men, whom they can use or bend; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Miss La Sarthe announced to her sister. "We must ask him to dinner the next time Mr. Miller is coming. We must show him some attention for his kindness to our great-niece; he will understand and not allow it to flatter him too much. You remember, Roberta, our Mamma always said unmarried women—of any age—cannot be too careful of les convenances, but we might ask him to dinner under ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... a saturnine laugh. "Are you trying again to excuse yourself with me?" he cried. "Do you flatter yourself that I have no idea of your doings in the family temples? When you get there, you, of course, play the grand personnage and no one has the courage to run counter to your wishes. Then you've also got the handling of money. Besides ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... might have had the widowed Sir Arnold for a husband and have been the Archbishop of Canterbury's cousin, high in favour with the winning side in the civil war and united to a man who would have known how to flatter her cold nature into a fiction of feeling, instead of wasting on her the almost exaggerated respect with which a noble passion envelops its object, but which, to most women, becomes in the ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... Rose-Pompon, affecting an air of still more decided confidence; "first of all, you must not suppose I am unhappy, or going to make a scene of jealousy, or cry like a forsaken damsel. Do not flatter yourself! Thank heaven, I have no reason to complain of Prince Charming—that is the pet name I gave him—on the contrary, he has made me very happy. If I left him, it was against his will, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... hard with doings which not will, But misery, hath wrested from me. Where 470 Easily canst thou find one miserable, And not inforced oft-times to part from truth, If it may stand him more in stead to lie, Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure? But thou art placed above me; thou art Lord; From thee I can, and must, submiss, endure Cheek or reproof, and glad to scape so quit. Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk, Smooth on the tongue discoursed, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... some antithetic, antipathic, or antipodic, point in the opposite hemisphere. This manner of conducting a treatise I find indeed extremely conducive to impartiality and largeness of view; but can conceive it to be—to the general reader—not only disappointing, (if indeed I may flatter myself that I ever interest enough to disappoint), but even liable to confirm in his mind some of the fallacious and extremely absurd insinuations of adverse critics respecting my inconsistency, vacillation, and ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... when able mediators pointed out to Bonaparte the advantage of uniting with Sieye's for the purpose of overthrowing a Constitution which he did not like. He was assured how vain it would be to think of superseding him, and that it would be better to flatter him with the hope of helping to subvert the constitution and raising up a new one. One day some one said to Bonaparte in my hearing, "Seek for support among the party who call the friends of the Republic Jacobins, and be assured that ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... once I found their manners as gentle and becoming as those of any other class. I do not mean that my friends could have sat down without embarrassment and laughable disaster at the table of a duke. That does not imply an inferiority of breeding, but a difference of usage. Thus I flatter myself that I conducted myself well among my fellow-passengers; yet my most ambitious hope is not to have avoided faults, but to have committed as few as possible. I know too well that my tact is not the same as their tact, and that my habit of a different society constituted, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disagree in mind, are for the sake of amendment, is because a spiritual man (homo) connected with a natural one by the matrimonial covenant, intends nothing else but amendment of life; which he effects by judicious and elegant conversation, and by favors which soothe and flatter the temper of the other; but in case these things prove ineffectual, he intends accommodation, for the preservation of order in domestic affairs, for mutual aid, and for the sake of the infants and children, and other ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... which make it appear that the game really pays. Foremen are only human. It is natural that they should be flattered by being made to believe that they hold the weal or woe of workmen in their hands. It is natural, also, that being open to flattery, their self-seeking subordinates should flatter them still more to obtain and profit by their favor. That is why I want as little as possible ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... sorry if I startled you. I did not flatter myself that you would be profoundly affected, in ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lust for power, insane with illusions of personal aggrandizement. You don't believe? Listen to me, then, appreciate to what demoniac lengths he was prepared to go to flatter his insane ambitions:" ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... are beyond thy power. Thou canst stupify my bodily cause of this raging agony, but thou canst not teach me to bear the score of the boy whom I have brought up—whom I loved, Dwining—for I did love him—dearly love him! The worst of my ill deeds have been to flatter his vices; and he grudged me a word of his mouth, when a word would have allayed this cumber! He smiled, too—I saw him smile—when yon paltry provost, the companion and patron of wretched burghers, defied me, whom this heartless prince knew to be unable to bear arms. Ere I forget or ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... said, "and all around us, under these pink rocks, buried like coal-mines. Where your brother is digging just now the site is rather different—it is flatter and less beautiful; it is in a small side valley. They were terribly anxious to hide themselves, poor things, to get ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Miss Effingham, after the elaborate soirees of the literary circles in Paris, you will find our reunions of the same sort, a little dull; and yet I flatter myself with having assembled most of the talents of New-York on this memorable occasion, to do honour to your friend. Are you acquainted with ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... flowers. I gathered them for you, and, in sending my bouquet, I could not resist the temptation of adding a word. 'Before doing penance,' I said to myself, 'let me commit this one folly; it shall be the last.' We always flatter ourselves that each folly will be our last. The unfortunate note had scarcely gone, when I regretted having sent it; I would have given much to have had it back; I felt all its impropriety; I have dealt justly by it in tearing it to ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... "You surely flatter me; there is no one whom I admire more." He looked at her in something of pleased surprise. "You read Stevenson—you ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... down from Heaven!" replied Philip, with rather a sad smile. "My dear fellow, who am I that I should flatter myself so far? If she were one of those ordinary women to whom marriage is the be-all and end-all of existence, it would be different—but she is not. Her thoughts are like those of a child or a poet,—why should I trouble them by the selfishness of my passion? for all passion is selfish, even ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Colonel:—I have not picked up my pen for the express purpose of annihilating you at one fell swoop. Even were such the case, I do not flatter myself that your impending doom would cause you to miss meals or lose sleep, for you have become somewhat used to being knocked off the Christmas tree by theological disputants from the back districts. At ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... up by an adoring wife, and a large circle of wife's sisters almost as adoring, to all of whom his smallest wishes are religious obligations, and his faintest virtues godly graces, and who vie with each other which of them shall wait upon him most servilely, flatter him most outrageously, pet and coax and coddle him most entirely, and so do him the largest amount of spiritual damage, and unfit him most thoroughly for the worth and work of masculine life. A man subjected ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... neck and bely are lighter coloured than the other parts of the body. the legs are short, and it is wide across the breast and sholders in propotion to it's size, appears strongly formed in that part; the head is also bony muscular and stout, reather more blontly terminated wider and flatter than the common squirrel. the upper lip is split or divided to the nose. the ears are short and lie close to the head, having the appearance of being cut off, in this particular they resemble the guinea pig. the teeth are like those of the squrrel rat &c. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... meant nothing!" she retorted with sudden vivacity. And she made a face at him, laughing under his nose. "I do that when I mean nothing, Monsieur! Do you see? But you are Gascon, and given, I fear, to flatter yourself." ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... address the lady Most politely, most politely— Flatter and impress the lady, Most politely, most politely,— Humbly beg and humbly sue— She may deign to look on you, But your doing you must do Most politely, most ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... hospitality as he lavished would have touched a harder heart than Alexander's. The luxury and military display were barbaric on the one hand, while, on the other, Germany's greatest scholars and men of letters were summoned to flatter the Czar's intellectual pretensions. There was the same exhibition, too, of frank personal confidence and of imperial magnanimity as at Tilsit. Talleyrand and the Russian chancellor, Rumianzoff, held protracted conferences, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... my power, Madam. But I will not flatter you with false hopes. It will be little less than a ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... common politics. You have never, as yet, done full justice to the advantages of your own actual position in this respect. You have overlooked the great work immediately before you. We have no magic talisman to offer you in carrying out that work. We shall not flatter you with the promise of unlimited success; we shall not attempt to gratify any personal ambition of public honors. We have no novel theories or brilliant illusions with which ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... important nature—a few landscapes which appeared on the walls of Bond Street galleries, and were transferred in course of time to fashionable drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated thought admirable because they were so "like." Moreover, he could flatter discreetly, and he took care not to bore his sitter; two admirable qualities in a portrait-painter ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... knows not how miserable that City and Country is, when a military person happens to ly sick in this Hospital. If he be in Garison, he doth nothing but trick up himself, walk along the streets, flatter his Mistress, and vaunt of his knowledge and Warlike deeds; though he scarce understands the exercising of his Arms, I will not mention encamping in a Field, Fortification, the forming of Batalions, and a great deal more that ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... October). [Sidenote: Assur-bani-pal.] Assur-bani-pal succeeded him as king of Assyria and its empire, while his brother, Samas-sum-yukin, was made viceroy of Babylonia. The arrangement was evidently intended to flatter the Babylonians by giving them once more the semblance of independence. But it failed to work. Samas-sum-yukin became more Babylonian than his subjects; the viceroy claimed to be the successor of the monarchs whose empire had once stretched to the Mediterranean; even the Sumerian language ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... luck!" thought the jellyfish. "Now I must flatter the creature and try to entice him to come back with me to the palace, and my part ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... cause to flatter himself that during the period of his stay in Vienna he has gained some favor and approbation from the highest nobility, as well as from the public at large, his works having met with an honorable reception both in this and other countries. Nevertheless he has had difficulties of every kind to ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... He tells as that we must "learn to know every man's thumbscrew." I suppose you know that a thumbscrew was an instrument of torture used in old times to force confessions from criminals. This advice means nothing less than that we should learn how to be be able to hurt other men's feelings, or to flatter other men's weaknesses. "First guess every man's ruling passion, appeal to it by a word, set it in motion by temptation, and you will infallibly give checkmate to his freedom of will." The term "give checkmate" is taken from the ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... girl would have run after you,—you needn't flatter yourself; and besides, I think I was really trying to protect you as well as to gain protection; else why should I have cast myself on you like a catamount, or a catacomb, or whatever the ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... He never pays debts unless they be shrewd turns, And those he will confess that he doth owe. Last, for this brother there, the cardinal, They that do flatter him most say oracles Hang at his lips; and verily I believe them, For the devil speaks in them. But for their sister, the right noble duchess, You never fix'd your eye on three fair medals Cast in one ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... who flatter only the fallen," replied Diaz, "and who are not offended by the bitterness of speech which is dictated ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... shall do well: The people loue me, and the Sea is mine; My powers are Cressent, and my Auguring hope Sayes it will come to'th' full. Marke Anthony In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make No warres without doores. Caesar gets money where He looses hearts: Lepidus flatters both, Of both is flatter'd: but he neither loues, Nor either cares ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... for the last," said Felworth, "because they are the best; and I flatter myself I can show you a stud unrivalled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... could not honour in presence, because they dwelt far off, they took the counterfeit of his visage from far, and made an express image of a king whom they honoured, to the end that by this their forwardness they might flatter him that was absent, as ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... "Miss Hawking you flatter me. But seriously, you do not forget that some of the best and purest men in Congress took that stock in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... present of some far-fetched and elegant curiosity. I have been a little perplexed, I must honestly confess, where to obtain anything likely to please a princess of her exquisite taste. But this morning, I flatter myself, I have ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... tumble; But to cure the damn'd Lust of your Wife's Titilation, You may use all the Engines and Pumps in the Nation, As well you may p—— out the last Conflagration. And thus I have sent you my Thoughts of the matter; You may judge as you please; I scorn for to flatter: I could say much more, but here ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... generous spirit is ever willing to indulge in flattery; the good may feel affection for others, but will not flatter them. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... certitude and truth. The gods, men, the Pitris, the Gandharvas, the snakes, and the Rakshasas, were all under my sway in days gone by. Thou knowest this, O Vasava! Their understandings stupefied by ignorance, all creatures used to flatter me, saying, "Salutations to that point of the compass whither Virochana's son Vali may now be staying!" O lord of Sachi, I do not at all grieve when I think of that honour (which is no longer paid to me). I feel no sorrow for this fall of mine. My understanding is firm ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to flatter the artist as much his sitter, so completely did it represent that unamity of opinion which constitutes social strength. Not one the number was troubled by any personal theory of art: all they asked of a portrait was that the costume should be sufficiently ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Zoroaster calmly—well knowing what he said. He did not wish to flatter the queen; and besides he knew her too well to do so if he wished to please her. She was one of those women who are not accustomed to doubt their own superiority over the rest of ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... flatter," she said. "If you won't help me overcome my faults I shall have to find ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... will sneer at you, I am proud of you; and there is not one person present who would not honour themselves, if they could secure your friendship. I was the first to correct you, nor will I ever flatter you; but I will always protect and defend you, so long as you continue to merit the high regard I now ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... they knew and were: this is such account of his life as he himself can give at its close. His contemporaries generally saw in him an imperturbable and troublesome questioner, fatally sure to come at the secret of every man's character and credence, whom no subterfuge could elude, no compliments flatter, no menaces appall,—suspected also of some emancipation from the popular superstitions: this is the account of him which they are able to give. At twenty-three centuries' distance we see in him the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater compliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making. Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried to flatter. Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Company in giving them fresh assurances of the good success of my voyage if God did me the favour of preserving me from the dangers to which I went to expose myself; of which they appeared so well satisfied that the Chevalier Hayes dared not flatter himself of the advantage that I promissed to him, that they should get from 15 to 20,000 Beavers that I hoped to find in the hands of the French, said, in embracing me, that the company would be satisfied if I had only 5,000 ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... resented the warning. "Don't throw cold water on everything, John," she said. "I know more about Cape Codders than you do. You only meet them for a few weeks each summer. I flatter myself that I know them and that they know and trust me. Of COURSE I shall be careful. And I shall think the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... indeed as a man may well be who is also wise. Were it possible, he should become a child himself, that he may be the companion of his pupil and win his confidence by sharing his games. Childhood and age have too little in common for the formation of a really firm affection. Children sometimes flatter old ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... has taken flesh in woman, and therefore men, who are cowards, try with all their might to keep back this primeval flood With their earthen dykes. They are afraid lest, laughing and dancing as it goes, it should wash away all the hedges and props of their pumpkin field. Men, in every age, flatter themselves that they have secured this force within the bounds of their convenience, but it gathers and grows. Now it is calm and deep like a lake, but gradually its pressure will increase, the dykes will give way, and the force which has so long been dumb will rush forward ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... London, and get people around me by feeding and flattering them, and by little intrigues, —like that woman of whom you are so fond. It is money that is chiefly needed for that work, and of money I have enough now. And people would know at any rate who I am. But I could not flatter them, and I should wish the food to choke them if they did not please me. And you would not come, and if you did,—I may as well say it boldly, —others would not. An ill-natured sprite has been busy ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Lotys suddenly; "Who speaks of them—who needs them? Rich friends expect you to toady to them; to lick the ground under their feet; to fawn and flatter and lie, and be anything but honest men! The rich are the vulgar of this world;—no one who has heart, or soul, or sense, would condescend to seek friendships among those whose only claim to precedence ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... of his eternal mind, and not in those political regulations or priestly and judicial formalities which express the perverted desires and artificial devices of men. The wearing of a certain dress, the bending of the knee, the muttering of a phrase, may flatter an earthly sovereign and gain a seat at his banquets. But it is childish folly to fancy any such thing of God. It is absurd to suppose that he has two schemes of government, one for the present state, another for ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... hospitals of Scutari have proved that the fairest and choicest flowers of Christian charity and devotion may come to perfection even in what they are pleased to call the arid soil of Protestantism. But, my Lords, can we flatter ourselves with the belief that the character of our statesmen, of our public men, and of our Parliamentary institutions has risen in a like proportion? Is it not, on the contrary, notorious that doubts have been ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... well exhibited by the actors, that it was crowded for near twenty nights. I am digressing from myself to the play-house; but a barren plan must be filled with episodes. Of myself I have nothing to say, but that I have hitherto lived without the concurrence of my own judgment; yet I continue to flatter myself, that, when you return, you will find me mended. I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... makes a lot of difference. You see, it is a very long time since we met. I was but twenty when I left England, and I had not seen him for two or three years before that, for he was on the Mediterranean station at the time. Well, here are the horses again, and as the ground looks flatter ahead we shall have to push on to keep up with them." They were presently altogether beyond the forest, and a broad plateau of bare rock stretched away in front of them ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... said warmly, "though for you the promotion is perilous. To be Nero's friend is to be condemned beforehand to death, though for a time he may shower favours upon you. He is fickle and inconstant, and you have not learned to cringe and flatter, and are as likely as not to anger him by your ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... that Republic to withdraw its auxiliary troops from Rome—proclaimed me a rebel and a heretic;—thence repaired to Marino;—now in council with the Barons. Why, have my dreams belied me, then—false as the waking things that flatter and betray by day? In such peril will the people forsake me and themselves? Army of saints and martyrs, shades of heroes and patriots, have ye abandoned for ever your ancient home? No, no, I was not raised to perish thus; I will defeat them yet—and leave my name a legacy to Rome; a warning to the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and more respectable. Well, Squire, you have silver enough to tempt all the rogues in Yorkshire, and there's a lot of them. But now I've seen it, I'll go home with these bits of paper. I shall be a very important woman to-night. Them two lads won't know how to fleech and flatter me enough. I'll be waited on hand and foot. And Nicholas will get a bit of a set-down. He was bragging about Miss Ethel bringing his invitation to his hand and promising to dance with him. I wouldn't do it if I were Miss Ethel. She'll find out, if she does, what it means ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... confounding justice with your own desires and of mistaking the promptings of ambition or malice or envy for an inspiration from Heaven itself. No, I must not say all this or any of it, but, on the contrary, I must describe you to yourself and your family and the chosen intimates who flatter you beyond even my power to flatter, I must describe you, I say, as the Lord's, anointed, as the vice-gerent of God on earth, as being raised by God's favour above all human foibles, in short, as being supremely right and just whenever your faults and your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... if Lawrence, hired to grace His costly canvass with each flatter'd face, Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush, Saw cits grow centaurs underneath his brush? Or should some limner join, for show or sale, A maid of honour to a mermaid's tail? Or low Dubost (as once the world has seen) Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen? Not all ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... words: "You must know that there is in Paris a man of the greatest merit, whose fortune is not proportionate to his talents and character. I may serve as eyes to the blind goddess, and repair in some measure the injustice, and I beg you to offer on that account. I flatter myself that he will accept this pension because of the pleasure I shall feel in obliging a man who joins beauty of character to the most sublime intellectual talents." The King here stopped, on seeing MM. d'Ayen and de Gontaut enter, and then recommenced reading the letter to ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... says, "There's a lot more in Jones than you think; I shall never quite understand him," then we look modestly down our nose and tell ourselves that we are Jones, the Human Enigma. Women have learnt all about this. They realize that the best way to flatter us is to say earnestly, with a shake of the head, "Your face is such a mask; I shall never know what you're really thinking." How ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... he would play the citizen-king, would he, while we starve? [23]Would flatter us with sweet speeches, would cheat us with promises like his father, would lie to us as his ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... o'clock in the afternoon we arrive at a city that I flatter myself is Kan-tchou-foo; all attempts to question the carriers or anybody else in regard to the matter results in the hopeless bewilderment of both them and myself. The carriers are not such ignoramuses in ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... reason to be pleased with our gratitude. Do you ask that your salary shall be doubled? The thing is easy. Do you desire important posts? They shall be given you; but do not, sir, so far forget yourself as to aspire to an alliance that you cannot flatter yourself with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have kept the enemy at bay till our masters had carried off the young lady out of danger," exclaimed Dick. "But, as it is, I must fight alone. Only let them come near enough; I'll plant my fist in the faces of some of them, and make their noses flatter than they have ever ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... against him). Say, shall I give an answer? If so, I'll do 't to flatter thee. If not, 'Twill be to show thee that my happiness ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Equidoe. The fibula is distinct, but very slender, and its distal end is ankylosed with the tibia. There are three toes on the hind foot having similar proportions to those on the fore foot. The principal metacarpal and metatarsal bones are flatter than they are in any of the Equidoe; and the metacarpal bones are longer than the metatarsals, as in ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... possible you can arrange for yourselves!" She shot a bright, quizzical look from one to the other. "I know you would wish me to stay and measure out the milk and sugar, and it would flatter me to do so, but, unhappily, I have a dish of some importance upon my own fire, and it is necessary that one is domestic when one is only a woman—is it not so, Monsieur Max?" She wrinkled her pretty face into a grimace of mischief, and nodded as if some idea ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... are watered with rivulets, the inhabitants meet with every thing that can render life agreeable. In a word, the whole island, by its fertility and the abundance of its springs, furnishes the inhabitants not only with every thing that may flatter their wishes, but with what may also contribute to their health and strength of body. Hunting furnishes them with such an infinite number of animals, that in their feasts they have nothing to wish for in regard either to plenty or delicacy. ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... could flatter on the lips of an exile? But you don't answer my question—what think you of Vaudemont? Few are more admired. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of flattery. They know that the reader has forgotten every detail of it, and that nothing of the tremendous event is left in his mind but a vague and formless luminous smudge. Aside from the desire to flatter the reader, they have another reason for making the remark-two reasons, indeed. They do not remember the details themselves, and do not want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them out; also, they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... come to the third scene," he went on to say, "the time when Mme. Fauvel, having Madeleine for an adviser, judged us at our true value. Oh! you need not flatter yourself that she did not fear and despise us both. If she did not hate you, Raoul, it was because a mother's heart always forgives a sinful child. A mother can despise and worship her son at the ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... the Ingham-Bakers had left Mrs. Harrington's hospitable roof. From this shelter they had gone forth into a world which is reputed cold, and has nevertheless some shelter still for such as are prepared to cringe to the overbearing, to flatter the vain, to ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... claim my liveliest friendship rested with you, I thought you worthy of it. That is the cause of the friendly looks which you have mistaken for others of greater meaning, and it is also the cause of the tears I shed. Do not flatter yourself that you have inspired me with the passion of love. I can see too plainly that your desires are the effect of a passing presumption. Come now, you shall know my heart, and it should destroy all hope for you. It will go so ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... cheery smile, that reached nearly to the tips of his mustache and almost sufficed to give them a faint curl, spread itself over his face as he turned from Wall Street into Broadway. He caressed the check with his fingers and softly observed, "H'm, I flatter myself that was well done. I have the money, and Thwicket has an abiding confidence in my wealth,—but oh, ye gods! what would I give to be able to put my fine Italian ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... there is room for a life's reflection to flash through the mind—in the twinkling of an eye H. agonizingly felt that she was sitting on a hat, that the hat was being jammed, that it was getting flat and flatter every second, that the meek man was howling in French; and she was just thinking of her husband and children when she started to her feet, and the nightmare was over. The meek man, having howled out his French sentence, sat aghast, stroking his poor hat, while his wife opposite was in ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... done, he refused to give me one dollar for, and it was with great difficulty that I got my money back. I had to put it into another man's hands, as his property, to recover it. This man, probably, had two objects in view when he went to Waterbury to flatter me away. He did not want me to be there with my name on the movements and cases, and therefore he made me a first-rate offer. I had been broken up in all my business, and felt very anxious to be doing something again. I was a little afraid when he made the offer, but knew that he had made ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... restrain your person or mind. In your breast I will repose my cause. It shall be my study to merit a return of affection; and I doubt not but generosity and honor will influence your conduct towards me. I expect soon to settle among a generous and enlightened people, where I flatter myself I shall be exempt from those difficulties and embarrassments to which too many of my brethren are subject. The local situation is agreeable, the society refined and polished; and if, in addition, I may obtain that felicity which you are formed to bestow ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... said Mrs. Copley in a modified tone. "So that's what you've been fussing about, Dolly, these two days. Well, take Mr. St. Leger next. I want to see what you'll make of him. She won't flatter you," the lady went on; "that's one thing you may lay your account with; she won't flatter you. But if we're going away, you won't have much chance; and, seems to me, we had better settle which way we ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... the front area so that it exploded and blew away the front wall." And I outlined the history of that canine clairvoyant, Willy Woolly. "The Mordaunt Estate is sensitive about his tenants, anyway. He rents, not on profits, but on prejudice. Perhaps it would be well for you to flatter him a little; admire ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... profession, office, occupation, interest you track the corrupt heart of man, as sure as a substance casts a shadow, so sure will you find your own selfish heart hating goodness when the goodness does not serve or flatter you. ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... altogether because it pays us to publish your books, either. You drop Bayport and drop writing. Go out and pick up and go. Stay six months, stay a year, stay two years, but keep alive and meet people and give what you flatter yourself is a brain house-cleaning. Confound you, you've kept it shut like one of these best front parlors down here. Open the windows and air out. Let the outside light in. An idea may come with it; it is barely possible, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... him to you. Mr Merry," said Mr Johnson. "Take care you bring him back, for he will one day do credit to the service in his humble path, just as I flatter myself I do credit to it in mine, and I hope that you, Mr Merry, will one day in yours. You've made a very good beginning, and you may tell your friends that the boatswain of the ship says so. Let them understand that the boatswain is a very important personage, and they will be satisfied ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... added emphasis, "Mr. Brute MacNair, since you have deemed it worth your while to furnish me with evidence? You told me once, I believe, that you cared nothing for my opinion. Is it possible that you hope at this late day to flatter me ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... seeing no probability of any loss ultimately, he could see no necessity for compensation. He believed on the other hand, that the planters would be great gainers by those wholesome regulations, which they would be obliged to make, if the Slave Trade were abolished. He did not however flatter them with the idea that this gain would be immediate. Perhaps they might experience inconveniences at first, and even some loss. But what then? With their loss, their virtue would be the greater. And in this light he hoped the House would consider the matter; for, if they were called ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... how it was graded. Wherever it was possible I secured rough prices for different materials. I wanted to know where the lumber was bought and I wanted to know how the staging was built and why it was built. Understand that I did not flatter myself that I was fast becoming a mason, a carpenter, an engineer and a contractor all in one and all at once. I knew that the most of my information was vague and loose. Half the men who were doing the work didn't know why they were doing it and a lot of them ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... constable of England, and connected with the royal house of the Plantagenets. Henry, from motives of jealousy, both on account of his birth and fortune, had long singled him out as his victim. He was, also, obnoxious to Wolsey, since he would not flatter his pride, and he had, moreover, insulted him. It is very easy for a king to find a pretence for committing a crime; and Buckingham was arrested, tried, and executed, for making traitorous prophecies. His real crime was in being more powerful than ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... development of those evil propensities which we all alike inherit from our first parents; and then, too, I have had the misfortune to be thrown—against my will, I honestly assure you—into evil companionship. But, in spite of all these disadvantages, I flatter myself that I am by no means a bad sort of fellow; and if you will only take me in hand, Lucy, I feel sure you could make a reformed character of me. And then, too, consider the society into which I could introduce ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... therefore, but flatter myself, that on revising the cases of Ducamp and others, you will perceive that their losses result from the state of war, which has permitted their enemies to take their goods, though found in our vessels; and consequently, from circumstances over ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... him the most unusual Ambassador it had ever known. It never knew how to take him. He did not behave as other diplomats did. When he went to the Foreign Office it was always on business. He did not flatter and praise, bow and chat or speak to Excellencies in the third person as European representatives usually do. Gerard began at the beginning of the war a policy of keeping the United States fully informed regarding Germany. He used to report daily the political ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... Ida, I fear I cannot flatter you with any change in your designation. If your respected parent had survived he might have become the Honourable Charles, but only by special grant from Her Majesty. It was so in the case of the Honourable Frances Fordingham, when her brother ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Never—I never flatter. Now, Tom," continued Ralph to the negro," return homeward, and inform my dear old Governor that, next week, I shall return, temporarily, to make preparations for my marriage. Further, relate to him ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Marchesvan, or October. The empire was divided between his two sons. Assur-bani-pal had already been named as his successor, and now took Assyria, while Saul-sum-yukin became king of Babylonia, subject, however, to his brother at Nineveh. It was an attempt to flatter the Babylonians by giving them a king of their own, while at the same time keeping the supreme ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... of the one that I had given, called me in the record of the decision "the lord governor." One of the auditors thought that that should not be the manner of naming me in decisions; and chided the secretary before me, saying that he was doing it to flatter me, and other things of like purport. The secretary defended himself, saying that that was the style that he had always used, and to prove it showed other decisions where not only my person is named as "lord," but also those of the auditors. I ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... etc., etc., but it was wonderful how little sleep he obtained after all. He always looked wide awake and as if he did not need sleep. His eyes had gradually become black, and when, after a day of fatigue and care with him he would at last close them, and we would flatter ourselves that now we too should snatch a little rest, we would see them shining upon us in the most amusing manner with an expression of content and even merriment. About this time he was baptized. I well remember how in his father's study, and before taking ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Don couldn't flatter himself that he had played that afternoon with especial brilliancy, although he had managed to hold his end up fairly well. The fact was that he had been so intent on getting speeded into his performance that he had rather skimped the niceties of ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... pledge at least of our integrity and sincerity to the people,—that in our situation of systematic opposition to the present ministers, in which all our hope of rendering it effectual depends upon popular interest and favor, we will not flatter them by a surrender of our uninfluenced judgment and opinion; we give a security, that, if ever we should be in another situation, no flattery to any other sort of power and influence would induce us to act against the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... anybody can say. There is no real friendship in that. I want to know the true candid opinion of a man who has travelled about the world, and has been at the diamond-fields. It isn't everybody who has been at the diamond-fields," continued he, thinking that he might thereby flatter his friend. ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... a strip of leather on the floor with an angry gesture. "Yet I know who has been playing tricks here, and why I am no longer wanted. It is because I do not flatter and toady as certain people do. I am in the habit of speaking the truth in all places and to all persons," he continued proudly, "God be with these children, for my leaving them will benefit them little, whereas I—well, by God's help I may be able to ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Locke.) It was not for some time that he gained the supremacy at the theatre which he now held in the Church. That very trustworthy weathercock John Dryden, Poet Laureate, continued to flatter others for many long days to come. In this same year he composed the first of a long series of odes of welcome, congratulation or condolence for royal or great personages, and about this year ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... "May I flatter myself with the prospect of having this call returned?" she said, handing Mrs. Emerson her card as ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... the letter in her pocket, and began to crack nuts and eat them. But Dan could not keep away from the subject. "Gad!" he ejaculated, "I thought they'd get hold of you, that lot, and flatter you, and make a convenience of you—that's what they do! I know them! They think you're clever—how easy it is to be mistaken! But you'll see for yourself in time, and then you'll believe me—when ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Villiers lies—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; Or just as gay at council, in a ring Of mimic statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store! No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... do, then?" she asked, detecting the anxious glance I had shot at the object of our conversation, and impressed, I flatter myself, with the earnestness of ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... yield to a disposition to Flatter her favorites, any sooner than one to depreciate a rival. We may praise another simply to gain a return in kind. Or we may do it thoughtlessly, and by impulse. In each of these cases, we not only injure her by inflating her vanity, but wrong our own ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... you know. I am always the first up in this languid house; but I must not boast before you, who, I dare say, turn out—is not that the word?—at daybreak. But, now I think of it, no! you would have crossed my hawse before, Mr. Dodd," using naval phrases to flatter him. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... if I am not to be master in my own house! Well, well; flatter yourself with foolish fancies if you will; but know that your destiny is fixed. You shall never leave this cave, except as my wife. This is your fate, and you may as well make up your mind to it at once. I will have ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... to allude to Mr. George Lewis, one of his nephews, then staying at Mount Vernon], he fears, is not far from that place whence no traveller returns; he is but the shadow of what he was; has not been out of his room, scarcely out of his bed, for six weeks; has intervals of ease which flatter us a little, but he, the General, has little hope of his surviving the winter. It is so he writes of this nephew, adding that the subject gives him much distress. Concludes, "with sincere and affectionate regard I am ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... one century might be thrust into the middle of another; or the breaking of a wire, which would bring the course of time to a sudden period,—barring, I say, the casualties to which such a complicated piece of mechanism is liable,—I flatter myself, ladies and gentlemen,—that the performance will elicit ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Equidoe. The fibula is distinct, but very slender, and its distal end is ankylosed with the tibia. There are three toes on the hind foot having similar proportions to those on the fore foot. The principal metacarpal and metatarsal bones are flatter than they are in any of the Equidoe; and the metacarpal bones are longer than the metatarsals, as ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... smiled indulgently. Yet the stories, or rather the hints of stories, were certainly untrue. For this her wanderings had taught her—the man of many successes never talks. It seemed that there was a conspiracy to flatter the wretched youth. ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... in which there is no excuse of natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet thou still remainest voluntarily below the mark? or art thou compelled through being defectively furnished by nature to murmur, and to be stingy, and to flatter, and to find fault with thy poor body, and to try to please men, and to make great display, and to be so restless in thy mind? No, by the gods; but thou mightest have been delivered from these things ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... fire again, the passengers astride the dead tree dived into the stream. Slowly the log swung around and was sucked into the current. Here and there a feathered head bobbed up. The boy fired at them from a sense of duty, but he did not flatter himself that he ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... ugliness in any competition; he is more like a syndicate of plainness than one single exemplification of it! I must have a noble nature to think more of my audiences than of myself, but I should like to give them something to please their eyes—I flatter myself I can take ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... upshot of it was that Johnson put his trust in me; and I flatter myself that I was just the man he needed in the emergency. You 've lived in the West, and you know what the Nevada Legislature is, and always has been. There never was one that you couldn't count on to do anything under the sun that tickled its sense of ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... don't know. She tolerates me, like everything else; and I don't flatter her; and we see a good deal of one another upon those terms, and I have no complaint to make of her. She has some aversions, but no quarrels; and has a sort of laziness—mental, bodily, and moral—that is sublime, but provoking; and sometimes I admire her, and sometimes I despise her; ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... voted the boldest chap of all the bold North Bungays. And though I must confess, what was proved by subsequent circumstances, that nature has NOT endowed me with a large, or even, I may say, an average share of bravery, yet a man is very willing to flatter himself to the contrary; and, after a little time, I got to believe that my killing the dog was an action of undaunted courage, and that I was as gallant as any of the one hundred thousand heroes of our army. I always had ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... week, the market has been somewhat flatter in goods suited for the Eastern markets, in consequence of merchants being anxious to receive their advices by the Indian Mail before extending their transactions materially at present prices. In the Yorkshire woollen markets a fair trade continues to be ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... up resolutely for my sex, "a man's ideas on woman's matters may be worth some attention. I flatter myself that an intelligent, educated man doesn't think upon and observe with interest any particular subject for years of his life without gaining some ideas respecting it that are good for something; at all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... nurse her, and does not intend going home until he has escorted her back to Palermo. His zeal for the public service," she continues, "seems entirely lost in his love and vanity, and they all sit and flatter each other ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... men delight will take To spare your failings for his sake, 20 Will flatter you,—and fool and rake [3] Your steps pursue; And of your Father's name will ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... descended, and was lost. It afterwards emerged from this gulf, and passed freely to the sea. The place of eruption was called An-choa, which signifies Fontis apertura. The later Greeks expressed it Anchoe[432]. [Greek: Kaleitai d' ho topos Ankoe; esti de limen homonumos]. The etymology, I flatter myself, is plain, and authenticated by the history ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... my false French! By mine honour, in true English, I love thee, Kate: by which honour I dare not swear thou lovest me; yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor and untempting effect of my visage. But, in faith, Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear: my comfort is, that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... said, "I wasn't born yesterday, you know. I flatter myself I'm up to most moves on the board. And you may depend upon it if she's had any designs on me—mind you, I don't say she has—but if she has, she sees now that they'll never come to anything. She's given me up ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... another cigar. "I look to the matter of employment, and have nothing to do with the character of my clients, beyond ascertaining their means of liquidating my account. The committee required the assistance of a first-rate engineer, and I flatter myself they could hardly have made a more unexceptionable selection. But what's the use of looking sulky about it? You can't help yourself; and, after all, what's the amount of your loss? A parcel of pound-notes that would have lain rotting in the bank had you not put them into circulation! ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Why not come with me to Tajoorah? If you fear being in want of provisions we have plenty, and you shall share all we have!' I was much surprised at this change of conduct on the part of the Ras el Caffilah, and by way of encouraging him to continue friendly, spared not to flatter him, saying it was true I did not know him before, but now I saw he was a man of excellent disposition. At three P.M. we again moved forward. Grass became more abundant; in some places it was luxuriant and yet green. We halted at eight P.M. The night was cold with ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the arrow as it pierced the young soldier, the new angle at which the bullets bounded from the stony crest, the lower, flatter flight of the barbed missiles that struck fire from the flinty rampart, all told the same story. The Indians during the hours of darkness, even while dreading to charge, had managed to crawl, snake-like, to lower levels along the cliff and to creep closer up the stream bed, and with ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... words is my intention. The keeper of the Hareem stands before you! But that's not here nor there; so I'll not bore you With all my titles. The Princess Turandot Right thro' the heart by Cupid's dart is shot! I would not flatt'ringly your Highness flatter With mincing terms, nor will I mince the matter. My mistress is distracted to—distraction By your attractive personal—attraction. If truth I speak not, may the high Fo-hi Grind all my bones to make ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... palmy wine, Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, And thanks his gods for all the good they gave. Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, His first, best country, ever is at home. And yet, perhaps, if countries we compare, And estimate the blessings which they share, Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find An equal portion dealt to all mankind; As different good, by art or nature given, To different nations makes ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... or could I have said that we should continue to exercise sufficient control over the Government of the country to prevent their being punished for helping us, they would have served us willingly. Not that I could flatter myself they altogether liked us, but they would have felt it wise in their own interests to meet our requirements; and, besides, the great mass of the people were heartily sick and tired of a long continuance of oppression ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... hear, too,' said Kendal; 'the theatre is quite as full, but the temper of the audience a good deal flatter.' ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sheltered by a cheap roof, which gives them a snug and most comfortable appearance. The veranda may appear more ornamental than the plain character of the house requires; but any superfluous work upon it may be omitted, and the style of finish conformed to the other. The veranda roof is flatter than that of the house, but it may be made perfectly tight by closer shingling, and paint; while the deck or platform in the centre may be roofed with zinc, or tin, and a coat of sanded paint laid upon it. The front chimney ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... why little children came and crept under the ample folds of His love, that was why young men came and told Him their secrets, that was why everybody, except the bad, felt at home with Him, that was why women were at their best with Him, that was why Herod the worldly found he could not flatter Him, and Pilate the coward found Him devoid of fear; it was because right through, not only in His words and actions, but in His being He not only had, but He was, Truth in the inward parts. And it is because our Queen, with her simple and beautiful ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... eternal condescension that a woman has for the most stupendous, most shameful deceits, as long as they flatter her. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... common-sense, Doctor,—which has its time and place, just as much as theology;—and if you have the most theology, I flatter myself I have the most common-sense; a business-man must have it. Now just look at your situation,—how you stand. You've got a most important work to do. In order to do it, you must keep your pulpit, you must keep our church ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... is desirous of supposing more prevalent: but there is no instance that a concealment of this nature has ever arisen from the abstruseness and intricacy of the motive. A man that has lost a friend and patron may flatter himself that all his grief arises from generous sentiments, without any mixture of narrow or interested considerations: but a man that grieves for a valuable friend, who needed his patronage and protection; how can we suppose, that his passionate ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... are plenty of people in the same box that you are," I said. "Don't flatter yourself that you are the only one who has taken money; but perhaps they will now go through the books, and, discovering the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... has now begun a new edition of Karamsin's History of the Russian Empire. It will be completed in ten volumes; the first is already published. This is regarded as the best history of Russia extant, though it notoriously misstates many facts in order to flatter the imperial house and sustain its absolute authority. It has previously passed through five editions, and it is estimated that twenty-four thousand copies of it are in Russian public libraries and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... the sincerity of whose friendship he can confide, and to suffer no temptations of the idle and the dissolute to seduce him from the quiet scenes of his youth to the hollow and heartless society of cities; to the haunts of men who would court and flatter him while his name was new, and who, when they had contributed to distract his attention and impair his health, would cast him off unceremoniously to seek some other novelty.' These words of true advice proved almost prophetic in ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... extreme. Neither sex are remarkable for figure, weight, strength, vigour, or activity. They have a very peculiar cast of countenance, which distinguishes them from other blacks; their cheek-bones are higher and more prominent, their faces flatter, and their noses less depressed, and more peaked at the tip than those of the negroes. Their eyes are generally small, and their mouths of an immense width; but their teeth are frequently good; their hair is woolly, though not completely frizzled. They are a cheerful people, fond of dancing and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... rehearse his name With lips of falsehood and deceit; A friend or brother they defame, And soothe and flatter ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... carrying out its decisions. We boast that our civilisation is founded on justice; yet, of the two types of machinery for adjusting quarrels, we retain the one that is the least possible adapted for securing the triumph of justice and discard the one that is pre-eminently fitted to secure it. We flatter ourselves that we rise above the savage in enjoying security of life and property, and we retain this system though we know that, periodically, it will invade life and property on a scale that surpasses the experience of the savage as much as a ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... of whatever political persuasion he may be, flatter himself for a moment that such a government could be Republican in ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... Basques.[12] Another example of similar character is afforded in Asia Minor, where the skulls of the children of long-headed Kurds are narrowed, and those of the children of broad-headed Armenians made flatter behind as a result of systematic pressure applied by using cradle boards. In this way these rival peoples accentuate their contrasting head forms, which at times may, no doubt, show a tendency towards variation as a result of the crossment of types. When it is found, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... "Who speaks of them—who needs them? Rich friends expect you to toady to them; to lick the ground under their feet; to fawn and flatter and lie, and be anything but honest men! The rich are the vulgar of this world;—no one who has heart, or soul, or sense, would condescend to seek friendships among those whose only claim to precedence is the possession of a little more ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... State, where I have something to hope from my connexions and the favor of my countrymen, and where I possess an estate, the value of which depends in a great measure upon my attention to it. Under these circumstances, I flatter myself that the committee will not think me blamable, when I assure them, that though I am willing to give my time and services to the public if they should be deemed necessary, yet I cannot in justice to myself or my family, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... in a fashion to please; she assumes the deportment, the style, the pose that may flatter her lover the most. In former times women dressed to please in general, now their entire toilette is to please men; for his sake she wears bangles, jewelry, ribbons, bracelets, rings. He is the object of it ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... and agreeable occupation, was still to continue a day-dream, interrupted only by some thoughts of an English home. "Business, public and private, consumes all my time; I must return to England for repose. With such thoughts I flatter myself, and need some kind friend to put me often in mind that old trees cannot safely be transplanted." Thus he wrote to Mary Stevenson, the young lady whom he had hoped ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... an inspiration; mine, I flatter myself. And if, in telling me that you're in robust health again, you're hinting at an intention to sneak back to blazing Paris before the middle of September, you don't know your Spartan daughter. All that's American in me rises to shout "No!" And you needn't think that your child is bored. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... in height, shape, and limb, very much resemble the Europeans, there is yet this difference, that their bodies are rather broader and flatter, and their limbs, though as long and well shaped, are seldom as thick as ours. And this I observed generally in all I saw of them during a long time among them afterwards; but their skin, for beauty and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... uninvited company I have been compelled to bear with, and suggested that, as I was on my way back to Curzon Street, he had better come in and have a drink and tell me what it was all about. I arranged that he should find Miss Hyslop here, and for a person of observation, which I flatter myself to be, it was easy to discover the interesting fact that Mr. Shopland and Miss ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of them are of high pitch, the spaces between the timbers being filled with tracery, and the beams arched, moulded and ornamented in various ways; and frequently pendants, figures of angels, and other carvings are introduced. The flatter roofs are sometimes lined with boards and divided into panels by ribs, or have the timbers open, and all enriched with mouldings and carvings, as ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... would apprise you of it. The case was this. Collins met me in Surrey, at Guildford races, when I wrote out for him my odes, and he likewise communicated some of his to me; and being both in very high spirits, we took courage, resolved to join our forces, and to publish them immediately. I flatter myself that I shall lose no honor by this publication, because I believe these odes, as they now stand, are infinitely the best things I ever wrote. You will see a very pretty one of Collins's, on the Death of Colonel ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... his horse and took the rounds to see his patients, and everywhere he was greeted with a welcome that could not but flatter him. ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... hope—that, after all, a result had perhaps been achieved, a result he himself was not properly aware of—a result of that incalculable spiritual kind that escapes the chains of definite description. For he recalled—yet mortified a little the memory should flatter—that his cousin had netted Beauty in his story, and that Mother had spoken of living with greater carelessness and peace, and that each had thanked him as ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... 'Ah, don't flatter yourself! There is a thing I have not got courage to face—without necessity, and that's Janet's triumphant pity. Mr. Dutton lives rather too near your uncle, but he is a man, and he can't be ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'You flatter me,' he said, bowing a little in his chair, spreading out his hands in a gesture of deprecation and grinning like ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... soon be better seen if not heard outside of Italy than in its native country. It was only where it could be purely conventional as well as ideal that it could achieve its greatest triumphs. It had to make a hard fight for its primacy among the amusements that flatter the pride as well as charm the sense. You remember how the correspondents of Mr. Spectator wrote to him in scorn of the affected taste of 'the town' when the town in London first began to forsake the theatre and to ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... creakin' like anything," announced Ethan; "and if you keep up that squirming business much longer, Lub, I tell you she'll come down on me. Think I'm hankering about being smashed flatter'n a pancake, do you? I don't see why you had to go and pick out one of the upper berths, just because you imagined it was a mite bigger'n any other. 'Tain't fair, I tell you. Go easy now, and quit that moving about. If you've got the itch say so, and we'll rub you down with something. ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... gifted, I think I have. I rather flatter myself I could master more than that," says Molly, significantly, giving his ear a pinch, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... I thus haste to hall and bower Among the proud and gay to shine? Or deck my hair with gem and flower To flatter other eyes than thine? Ah, no, with me love's smiles are past; Thou hadst the ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... country and in all ages woman has been thus abased. The history of the world is all darkened by the awful shadow of woman's debasement. While man has admired and loved her, he has degraded her. Savage and civilized man are not very dissimilar in this respect. They both woo, cajole, and flatter woman to oppress and degrade her. They both load her with honeyed titles and flattering compliments, as though to sweeten with sugar-plum nonsense her bitter pressure of wrongs. It is the consent ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... overcome other factors that hinder sleep. For instance, I have repeatedly received letters from strangers containing expressions of gratitude with news which under other circumstances would at least not flatter an author. They wrote to me that immediately after reading one or another essay of mine on hypnotism, they fell into deep sleep. Yet as they were always patients who had suffered from insomnia, I was pleased with this unintended effect of my ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... cannot keep to her allegiance those men, who in their hearts confess her divine right, and know the value of her laws, on whose fidelity and obedience can she depend? May such geniuses never descend to flatter vice, encourage folly, or propagate irreligion; but exert all their powers in the service of virtue, and celebrate the noble choice of those, who, like you, preferred ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... the folly of this maxim of the French, appears plainly even from this, that their trained soldiers often find your raw men prove too hard for them; of which I will not say much, lest you may think I flatter the English. Every day's experience shows, that the mechanics in the towns, or the clowns in the country, are not afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen, if they are not disabled by some misfortune in their ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... she smiled. "Exceptional certainly, but as something so different from the usual thing, when one talks of nothing but the opera, the theatres and exhibitions, as to deserve to be put down in one's diary by a mark. I won't flatter you by telling you whether a red or ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... everything down in black and white, or I should go mad! Here is my commercial library: Daybook, Ledger, Book of Districts, Book of Letters, Book of Remarks, and so on. Kindly throw your eye over any one of them. I flatter myself there is no such thing as a blot, or a careless entry in it, from the first page to the last. Look at this room—is there a chair out of place? Not if I know it! Look at me. Am I dusty? am I dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless pauper, or am I not? Mind! ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... is it a prejudice, owing to the ideal of feminine character and life, which they have been educated to admire? Men have coveted a monopoly of executive power, and held up passive obedience as the fittest type of womanliness. Women, as a general rule, partake the prejudices, and like to flatter the vanity, of the stronger sex. The question is not, What do women desire? but, What ought they to desire? What is right and best for them? The question must not be decided by any thing extrinsic or accidental, any prejudices or ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... who is pretty and has a pretty dress. That is wrong. A good hostess is equally polite to all her guests. She treats them all with consideration, and if she shows any preference it is for those who are most modest and least fortunate. One must flatter the unfortunate: it is the only flattery that is permissible. But Catherine has found this out herself. She has found the true politeness—which comes from the heart. She serves tea to her guests, and remembers every one. Indeed, she insists especially with those ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... have long since ceased to flatter myself on my strength of mind. I find it is chiefly a characteristic of ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... accordin' to Hoyle," said Hiram, flushing a little, for he sensed the satire. "We'll meet and vote the money and then we can sit back and take comfort in thinkin' that there's just the right man at the head of town affairs to economize us back onto Easy Street." He was eager to flatter. "This town understands what kind of a man it wants to keep in office. I take back all I ever ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... every whit Of land that God gives men here is their wit, If we consider fully, for our best And gravest men will with his main house-jest Scarce please you; we want subtilty to do The city tricks, lie, hate, and flatter too: Here are none that can bear a painted show, Strike when you wink, and then lament the blow; Who, like mills, set the right way for to grind, Can make their gains alike with every wind; Only some fellows with the subtlest pate, Amongst us, may perchance equivocate At selling ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the body which is composed of movable segments or "body-rings," and which is technically called the "thorax," Ordinarily, this region is strongly trilobed, and each ring consists of a central convex portion, and of two flatter side-lobes. The number of body-rings in the thorax is very variable (from two to twenty-six), but is fixed for the adult forms of each group of the Trilobites. The young forms have much fewer rings than the full-grown ones; and it is curious to find ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... "'I did not flatter myself that any one could know of them except my family, and my fellow scout and General Washington,' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... sighed Maikar, drawing a long breath, and raising himself on one elbow, with a slightly dazed look, "but I never was so nearly burst in all my life. If an ox had fallen on me he could not have squeezed me flatter. Do, two of you, squeeze me the other way, to open me out a little; there's no room in me left to breathe—scarcely ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... squeeze; and he returned to his place with a swelling heart, ready for Nick Grylls and any like him. But he would not allow himself to depart from the course he had laid out. In the past he had been compelled to conciliate, to flatter, to mould such men as Grylls for the advantage of the Leader; and he could certainly do it once more for the sake of Natalie. Nick faced him with a venomous eye, but was unable to make ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the assistance of his sentiments and hypocrisy he has brought Sir Peter entirely in his interests with respect to Maria and is now I believe attempting to flatter Lady Teazle into the same good opinion towards him—while poor Charles has no Friend in the House—though I fear he has a powerful one in Maria's Heart, against whom we must ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... pleased, to soar into that empyrean of security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter gowns than Judy Trenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would be free forever from the shifts, the expedients, the humiliations of the relatively poor. Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of being grateful, she would receive thanks. There were old scores she could pay off as well as old benefits she could return. And she had no doubts as to the extent of her power. She knew that Mr. Gryce was of the small chary type most inaccessible ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in the dinner itself, no magnificence in the ladies' dresses, for at this time simplicity was the fashion—yet everything pleased him, because of the perfections of his hostess. Madame de Sainfoy laid herself out to flatter him, to put him in a good humour with himself. Rather to the disgust of various old neighbours who had not dined at Lancilly for more than twenty years, she placed the Prefect and the General on her right and left at dinner, and while ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Her first book, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, does not compare for a moment with Sword Blades and Poppy Seed. It seems a harsh judgment, but I find under the dome hardly one poem of unusual merit, and some of them are positively bad. Could anything be flatter the first line of ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... pondered the lengthy chain of circumstance—Polly's share in it, John's, his own, even the part played by incorporeal things—he brought up short against the word "decision". He might flatter himself by imagining he had been free to decide; in reality nothing was further from the truth. He had been subtly and slily guided to his goal—led blindfold along a road that not of his choosing. Everything and every one had combined to ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... mentioned by Vitruvius, and it is probable that some of the larger ones at any rate were partly open to the sky. But how the openings were arranged is almost entirely a matter of conjecture. The roof used was of a very flat pitch, one of height to four of base, later it was even flatter, and this dictated the slope of the pediments. This roof covered the whole of the building, that is, both the cella and the colonnades on either side of it, and as the Greeks were ignorant of the principle of the triangulated truss built up of beams ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... stripling of Eton is not, at eighteen, well initiated into all the mysteries of life, excepting only the, to him, mysterious volumes of the classics. To do justice to all was not within the limits of my work; I have therefore selected from among you the most distinguished names, and I flatter myself, in so doing, I have omitted very few of any note; if, however, any efficient member of your brotherhood should have been unintentionally passed by, he has only to forward an authenticated copy of his biography and peculiar merits to the publisher, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... should be too happy or vain; and when he informs him of the good opinions of others, with a mock-modesty he interrupts himself in the relation, saying he must not say any more lest he be considered to flatter, making his concealment more insinuating than his speech. He approaches with fictitious humility to the creature of his praise, and hangs with rivetted attention upon his lips, as though he spake with the voice of an oracle. He repeats what phrase or sentence may particularly ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... all the poetic things you say in your sermons! For I am a sharp listener, and none the less such that you do not see me. I have a loophole for seeing you. And I flatter myself, therefore, I am the only person in the congregation on a level with you in respect of balancing advantages. I cannot contradict you, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... happens that if any have some interest in being loved by us, they are averse to render us a service which they know to be disagreeable. They treat us as we wish to be treated. We hate the truth, and they hide it from us. We desire flattery, and they flatter us. We like to be ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... gracious, yes! They can flatter themselves this moment that they all inspire me with a ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... accomplish by the path of common politics. You have never, as yet, done full justice to the advantages of your own actual position in this respect. You have overlooked the great work immediately before you. We have no magic talisman to offer you in carrying out that work. We shall not flatter you with the promise of unlimited success; we shall not attempt to gratify any personal ambition of public honors. We have no novel theories or brilliant illusions with which to dazzle ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Petrograd! I could see them from all the quarters of the town, converging upon the Marsovoie Pole, stubborn, silent, wraiths of earlier civilisation, omens of later dominations. I thought of Boris Grogoff. What did he, with all his vehemence and conceit, intend to do with these? First he would flatter them—I saw that clearly enough. But then when his flatteries failed, what then? Could he control them? Would they obey him? Would they obey anybody until education had shown them the necessities for co-ordination and self-discipline? The river at last ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... part which will make you smile. Would you believe it, my friend, that I have visited as many as fifteen sick people in a day, and what will surprise you still more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink a little. I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single person, but you will think with me that in my quality of Philadelphia physician I have been very moderate, and that not one of my confreres have killed fewer ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... irreverence; but I do believe that (with one or two exceptions I have in my mind) the system they have introduced among us is the Greatest Humbug in the universe. In the meantime poor Paterfamilias (who is the last man, they flatter themselves, to find this out) stands with his hands (and very little else) in his pockets, regarding his clever offspring, and wondering what he shall do with him. He remembers to have read about a man on his deathbed, who calls his children about him and thanks God, though he has left them nothing ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... just managed to live on the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of Atropos were not more fatal to human life than the long scissors which cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts took the poetical form, in the contemplation of these changes and their melancholy consequences? If the entire poem, of several hundred lines, was "declined with thanks" by an unfeeling editor, that is no reason why you ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... least she thought so. She was disappointed, she said, in the man, and she did not mean to forgive him. Besides, in a yacht, with a party of six people, where there was absolutely no escape possible, it was unpardonable. He really ought not to have done it. Did he think—did he flatter himself—that if she had expected he was going to act just like all the rest of them she would have treated him as she had? Did he fancy his well-planned declaration would flatter her? Could he not see that she wanted to consider him always as a friend, that she thought she had found ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... look like a blue monk, you needn't flatter yourself, for there are none. You look like— What ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... for adulation, must have outlived all that is best and strongest in human nature. He comes upon the stage as a wreck. His vanity has eaten up his sagacity, so that she, Goneril or Regan, who can flatter most, can lie most, and can play the devil best, shall fare most lavishly at his hands. Is it not well partly to excuse these excesses of self-valuation by such mitigations as can be found in the infirmity of old age? Even in an elderly man they would have been treated with contempt; ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... with their faces thitherward. Now the devil has lost a sinner; there is a captive has broke prison, and one run away from his master. Now hell seems to be awakened from sleep, the devils are come out. They roar, and roaring they seek to recover their runaway. Now tempt him, threaten him, flatter him, stigmatize him, throw dust into his eyes, poison him with error, spoil him while he is upon the potter's wheel, anything to keep him from coming to Christ.'[83] 'What, my true servant,' quoth he, 'my old servant, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in need of his assistance, I tried to flatter his tastes, and he was so pleased with me that he immediately wished to show me how his trained boxers fought, and he led the way into a kind of arena situated ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of regretting that He lived of old. Take the least man, observe his head and heart, find how he differs from every other man; see how Nature by degrees grows around him, to nourish, infold, and set him off, to enrich him with opportunities, as if he were her only foster-child, and to flatter thus every other man in turn, making him her darling as though in expectation of finding no other, till, having extorted all his worth and beauty, and cherished him to the utmost of his possible life, she rolls away elsewhere, continually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... De Pretis impatiently; "what good will you do by speaking to her? Are you Dante, or Petrarca, or a preacher—what are you? Do you think you can have a great lady's hand for the asking? Do you flatter yourself that you are so eloquent that nobody can ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... get along so well. He was a man of harsh manner, who did not have the patience or the inclination to flatter with fine promises. Lovelace wanted everyone to understand that he was master. Very soon, when the people said they thought they should have the right to control their own affairs, the Governor told them that he did not think it was best for them ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... murderer, Bob a very considerable one," continued the judge; "but I tell you to your face, and not to flatter you, there is more good in your little finger than in Johnny's whole hide. And I'm sorry for you, because, at the bottom, you are not a bad man, though you've been led away by bad company and example. I calculate you might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the very first time she came she unloosed the sluices of the store-cupboard, and now, owing to the necessity of getting her aid in stopping that mischievous rumour, which she herself had been so careful to set on foot, regarding the cause of the duel, Miss Mapp had been positively obliged to flatter and to "Susan" her. And if Diva's awful surmise proved to be well-founded, Susan would be in a position to patronize them all, and talk about counts and countesses with the same air of unconcern as Mr. Wyse. She would be bidden to the Villa Faraglione, she would ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Maurice became able to wind him round his finger; and the hint of a reproof from him served to throw Krafft into a state of nervous depression. Without difficulty, Maurice found himself to rights in his role of mentor, and began to flatter himself that he would ultimately make of Krafft a decent member of society. As it was, he soon induced his friend to study in a more methodical way; they practised for the same number of hours in the forenoon, and met in the afternoon; and Krafft only ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... or omission of the preposition is inelegant, except where long and general use has sanctioned it, and made the relation sufficiently intelligible. In the following sentence, of is needed: "I will not flatter you, that all I see in you is worthy love."— Shakspeare. The following requires from: "Ridicule is banished France, and is losing ground in England."—Kames, El. of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been requested by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and revised edition of my poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added much to the interest of the work beyond the correction of my own errors and those of the press, with the addition of a few heretofore unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which seemed necessary. I have made ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you," I answered wearily, "that I lost my way. And, however much it may flatter me to have your Excellency evincing such an interest in my concerns, I am at a loss to find a reason ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... "I flatter myself that I possess the understanding of horses," he replied. "I've never had a disagreement with Harry, though I've driven him every day ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... that the horses were once more trotting. The wind was colder, the night darker, the foot-hills flatter. And the sky was now a wonderful deep velvet-blue blazing with millions of stars. Some of them were magnificent. How strangely white and alive! Again Madeline felt the insistence of familiar yet baffling associations. These white stars called ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Dr. Johnson never took the trouble to study a question which interested nations. He would not even read a pamphlet which I wrote upon it, entitled The Essence of the Douglas Cause; which, I have reason to flatter myself, had considerable effect in favour of Mr. Douglas; of whose legitimate filiation I was then, and am still, firmly convinced. Let me add, that no fact can be more respectably ascertained than by the judgement of the most august tribunal in the world; a judgement, in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... discovering his error, he'd wag his tail and go back to his den—all this being evidently done to show that he was as vigilant as ever—a sort of protest, that said, "Don't believe one word about my being blind and toothless, still less flatter yourself that the place is secure. It requires all my activity and watchfulness to protect; but go back in peace, I'm ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... out, almost with eagerness, feeling Mr. Copperhead to be less offensive out of doors than within four walls. Was this the sort of man to be appealed to for help as he had thought? Probably his very arrogance would make him more disposed towards liberality. Probably it would flatter his sense of consequence, to have such a request made to him. Mr. May was very much at sea, letting I dare not wait upon I would; afraid to speak lest he should shut this door of help by so doing, and afraid ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... of favours shown, Where your service is applied: But my pleasures are mine own, And to no man's humour tied. You oft flatter, sooth, and feign; I such baseness do disdain; And to none be slave I would, Though my fetters might ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... than a reminiscence from former times. Most of the figures bear an evident stamp of the present dress and mode of life of the people. It appears to me to be remarkable, that in all the bone or wood carvings I have met with, the face has been cut flatter than it is in reality in this race of men. Some of the carvings appear to remind me of an ancient ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... when to raise the wind some lawyer tries, Mysterious skins of parchment meet our eyes; On speeds the smiling suit—"Pleas of our Lord The King" shine sable on the wide record; Nods the prunella'd bar, attorneys smile, And syren jurors flatter to beguile; Till stript—nonsuited—he is doom'd to toss In legal shipwreck and redeemless loss! Lucky if, like Ulysses, he can keep His head above ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... We flatter ourselves that here you will find a people not unworthy of the great races from which it has sprung, and that on your return to the mother land, you will be able to speak with satisfaction, from your own experience, of our federal system, our resources, our agriculture our manufactures, our commerce, ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... began noticing changes in our surroundings that indicated we were drawing nearer to our goal, namely, the trees lessening in proportions, the terrain becoming flatter, and the air growing moister and more vibrant. Still, the trees continued to spring up from the ground like great earthen tentacles, for while their size diminished, it was not by enough to change their demeanor, the trees anywhere on Daem ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... is, that observing every day more and more the designe I have to instruct my self, retarded by reason of an infinite number of experiments which are needful to me, and which its impossible for me to make without the help of others; although I do not so much flatter my self, as to hope that the Publick, shares much in my concernments; yet will I not also be so much wanting to my self, as to give any cause to those who shall survive me, to reproach this, one day to me, That I could have left them divers things far beyond what I have done, had I not too ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... she reminded him lightly. "I have a genius for minute and trivial things. The others flatter you by burning incense to your music—and I remember that you take two lumps of sugar in your coffee and one slice of lemon in your tea and that you must have your ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... stand more'n one horn a day: another'd lay me out flatter'n a stewpan. But ter business. How much fur thet gal—cash down? ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... object are no more than seeming, are still but the same stealthy creeping up under cover of frequent compliances with the breeze that happens to thwart me, towards the one eternal pole of my own self-interest; that is the pole-star which only never sets, and I flatter myself that amidst vast apparent wanderings or multiplied divergences there will be detected by the eye of the philosopher a consistency in family objects which is absolute, a divine unity ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... sensible," he said, for he enjoyed the reputation of a shrewd conciliatory man of the world as well as of a pillar of orthodoxy. "The great people will come to us, but not if we abuse them. We must flatter them up and tell them they are the descendants of the Maccabees. There is much political kudos to be got out of leading such a movement—this, too, they will see. Rome was not built in a day, and the Temple will not be rebuilt in a year. Besides, we are not soldiers now. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is simple enough. He reigned through corruption that he had himself been instrumental in creating; through militarism and an abominable Chauvinism—this last as effective an instrument as the oppressor can wield. Divide et impera is a maxim of despotic state-craft, old as despotism itself; "flatter and rule" is a method equally sure, and such Santa Anna practised to its full. He let pass no opportunity of flattering the national vanity, which brought the Mexican nation to shame, with much humiliation—as the French at a later period, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... tell her anything at all of his misery. He felt that it would not be "square" to worry Marion, who was doing so much for him and doing it with such whole-souled gladness, to serve a fellow being in distress. Jack did not flatter himself that she would not have done exactly as much for any other likable fellow. It was an adventure that helped to fill her empty days. He understood that perfectly, and as far as was humanly possible he let her think the adventure a pleasant one for him. He could not always ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... were not his. It was requisite, therefore, to serve in the army which he commanded; hence the anxiety of young and old to fill its ranks. What chief had ever before so many means of power? There was no hope which he could not flatter, excite, or satiate. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... many degrees of life—certainly he was still ambitious—certainly he could not now have returned contentedly to the humble occupation he had left; and woe to the young man who does not hear with a quickened pulse, and brightening eye, words that promise independence, and flatter with the hope of distinction. Still, it was with all the reaction of chill and mournful disappointment that Leonard, a few hours after this dialogue with his uncle, found himself alone in the fields, and pondering ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... when and where he had painted them. In the first days of his love, he felt that he must paint her, with an irresistible impulse to transfer to the canvas everything he delighted to see, everything he loved. Afterwards, it had been a desire to flatter her, to coax her with a false show of affection, to convince her that she was the only object of his artistic worship, copying her in a vague likeness, giving to her features, marred by illness, a soft veil of idealism. He could not live without working and, like ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "Not flatter vice. We curse vice only behind its back, and that's like making a long nose at it round a corner. I am a zoologist or a sociologist, which is the same thing; you are a doctor; society believes in us; we ought to point out the terrible harm which threatens it and the next generation ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the Minister of the Interior to a client of mine: a promise I shall be the next prefect; and the present prefect—I am happy to say—is on his death-bed. Thus, madame, your humble servant in a few short months will be notary no longer, but prefect; I shall then sell my office of notary: and I flatter myself when I am a prefect you will not ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... So—I'll be chased out of my cave—that's certain. I believe they have a suspicion of where I am already. Well, I must try to find another resting-place. 'Tis well I have got the wind of these rascals—they'll not catch me asleep, which no doubt they flatter themselves they're going ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... are brown with sea weed. The long cylindrical lines of Chorda filum, many feet in length, lie aslant in the tideway; long shaggy bunches of Fucus serratus and Fucus nodosus droop heavily from the rock sides; while the flatter ledges, that form the uneven floor upon which we tread, bristle thick with the stiff, cartilaginous, many-cleft fronds of at least two species of chondrus,—the common carrageen, and the smaller species, C. Norvegicus. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... "You flatter me, Signor Marchese," replied Casanova. "I have not yet abandoned the hope of winning such a name, but I am still far from having done so. It may be that a work on which I am now engaged will bring ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... forte?" "Why, sir, (replied the youth in a modest tone) I rather think that I excel in your line." "My line! (exclaimed the manager with peculiar complacency) what is that? What do you mean?" "To confess the truth, (rejoined the tyro) I flatter myself that I am most at ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... senseless laugh, as such things usually do, and then followed my turn. Mr. Van Brunt very formally called on me for a lady. After pausing a moment I said, as I flatter myself, with spirit—"Gentlemen, I will give you another ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... entirely from the effects of his imprisonment. But he is still full of hope, to which, though not written at the time of his incarceration, his own words to one of his family thus bear witness: "I flatter myself I shall still see a day, a prosperous day, when we shall all be assembled in some agreeable spot in the neighborhood of Hagerstown, where we shall mutually embrace each other, with joy and tenderness, and cheerfully recount the tedious hours which the distresses of our country ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... expecting a little humility of him. It even seemed to Winterbourne at times that Giovanelli would find a certain mental relief in being able to have a private understanding with him—to say to him, as an intelligent man, that, bless you, HE knew how extraordinary was this young lady, and didn't flatter himself with delusive—or at least TOO delusive—hopes of matrimony and dollars. On this occasion he strolled away from his companion to pluck a sprig of almond blossom, which he ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... Isidore, during this time, the least part of our Chaplain's trial. Mr. Julius might flatter, proclaiming him a born organiser: but this was small consolation when Mr. Isidore (an artist by temperament) stamped and ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... voice]. So we'll flatter them up, and we'll cocker them up, Till we turn young brains; And pamper the brach till we make her a wolf, And get bit by ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... to hang you, or throw you overboard," he went on, turning to Francis. "Do not flatter yourself that your death will be so easy a one—you shall suffer a thousand torments before ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... to pay you any attentions," insinuated Ralston. "I know the ropes pretty well, and I flatter myself I can show you the town as well ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... Mary was probably the one most immediately gratified by the circumstance. It was creditable to have a sister married, and she might flatter herself with having been greatly instrumental to the connexion, by keeping Anne with her in the autumn; and as her own sister must be better than her husband's sisters, it was very agreeable that Captain Wentworth should be a richer man than either Captain Benwick or Charles Hayter. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... you flatter yourself. You have lied over the reason. Pip, remember that I know you as you don't know yourself. You have been everything to me, though you are—(Fan-guard.) Oh, what a contemptible Thing it is! And so you ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... terms will say even to a total stranger, 'I and all that I have are yours,' and they are more idle chatterers than the jays. So I do not know what to think, for it might well turn out that he said it just to flatter me. Yet I saw his colour change, and I saw him weeping piteously. In my judgment, the tears and his face confused and pale were not produced by treachery, nor were they the fruits of trickery. Those eyes from which I saw tears roll down were not guilty of falsehood. ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... think that they understand men, but they flatter themselves. Men do not always understand themselves, and often do things because they have been led to "the ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... 1/4 of a Mile from the breakers; but it was too Narrow for us to keep in long. However, what with the help of this Ebb, and our Boats, we by Noon had got an Offing of 1 1/2 or 2 Miles, yet we could hardly flatter ourselves with hopes of getting Clear, even if a breeze should Spring up, as we were by this time embay'd by the Reef, and the Ship, in Spite of our Endeavours, driving before the Sea into the bight. The Ebb had been in our favour, and we had reason to Suppose the flood ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... works of genius, and another to have it trampoosing over your house. Your acquaintances are, I dare say, well enough as poets and philosophers, but I don't see what that has to do with you. You are neither a poet nor a philosopher, and you will flatter them much more by buying their books than by asking them to five o'clock tea. I must say that, philosopher or no philosopher, the young man who was talking with me has very strange ideas. Just think of his advocating co-operative house-keeping, and marriages ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... neat thing, I flatter myself," said Uncle Mac, in high glee at the success of his illumination. "Now, shall I leave you on the Island or take you home again, my good little girl?" he added, lifting her up with such a tone of approbation in his voice that Rose kissed him ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... Only in far-fetched metaphors appear; Here naught but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter, And naught but echo flatter. The gods, when they descended, hither From heaven did always choose their way; And therefore we may boldly say That 'tis the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... died in much assurance, and with a joy which none of his persecutors could intermeddle with. It was affirmed by some, who were present at his execution, that the scaffold or gibbet gave way and came down, which made some present flatter themselves, that by some laws in being, he had won his life (as they used to say in such cases). But behold a disappointment here, for he behoved not to escape so (for to this end he was born). Immediately all was reared up, and ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... child been ever delighted with this exercise, had studied and practis'd all Thevenot's motions and positions, added some of my own, aiming at the graceful and easy as well as the useful. All these I took this occasion of exhibiting to the company, and was much flatter'd by their admiration; and Wygate, who was desirous of becoming a master, grew more and more attach'd to me on that account, as well as from the similarity of our studies. He at length proposed to ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... who will know me now. When I was rich enough at home they were glad to come and flatter me, but now they all run from me. They take no more heed of me than if ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... lesson, Prout. They need a sharp lesson, if only to bring down their over-weening self-conceit. Were I you, I should devote myself for a week to their little performances. Boys of that order—and I may flatter myself, but I think I know boys—don't join the Bug-hunters for love. Tell the Sergeant to keep his eye open; and, of course, in my peregrinations I may casually keep mine ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... scene, this modern drama itself, will be comprehended by only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the tale to a public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who can flatter himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown—'tis the saying of women ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... in that respect, I think we can challenge comparison with any industry in the state; but I am the first to admit that there may be another side, a side that it takes a woman—a mother—to see. For instance," he threw in jocosely, "I flatter myself that I know how to order a good dinner; but I always leave the flowers to my wife. And if you'll permit me to say so," he went on, encouraged by the felicity of his image, "I believe it will produce a most pleasing effect—not only on the operatives themselves, but on the whole of Hanaford—on ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... in His word decisive evidence that He will punish the transgressors of His law. Those who flatter themselves that He is too merciful to execute justice upon the sinner, have only to look to the cross of Calvary. The death of the spotless Son of God testifies that "the wages of sin is death," that every violation of God's law must ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... color. He was a man of considerable shrewdness, but of a small mind, and of unbounded conceit. His Scotch tutor had crammed him with much ill-digested learning, so that he gave the impression of a man educated beyond his intellect. His favorites used to flatter him by telling him that he was the "British Solomon"; but the French ambassador came nearer to the mark when he called him "the wisest fool ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... alternatives for trust are either to hold aloof in despair awaiting the debacle, to resist to the bitter end with a result like that which Stephenson said would occur if a cow attempted to stop his locomotive, or to try humbug and flattery. You do not flatter those you trust. We are not speaking of that delightful flattery practised by Irishmen out of exuberant spirits or to create a genial atmosphere, but which is so easily succeeded by equally picturesque and imaginative denunciation. To resent is as foolish as to believe either, though ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... Craig I fancy I had something to do myself. The call came from a young congregation in an eastern city, and was based partly upon his college record and more upon the advice of those among the authorities who knew his work in the mountains. But I flatter myself that my letters to friends who were of importance in that congregation were not without influence, for I was of the mind that the man who could handle Black Rock miners as he could was ready for something larger than ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... said the victim, who felt his courage wonderfully supported, "that thou knewest I should never be a pin the richer or better for thy gifts; and thine aim was but to flatter and to cheat. It is not in thy power, I do verily believe, to grant me riches or any great thing that I might wish; so thou didst prompt, and, in a manner, force me to those vain wishes, unthinkingly, by ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... this to be a far more dignified way of making my exit than meeting face to face the whole of the court and its practitioners and officers, and leaving it to the eloquent and friendly speech of the Attorney-General to flatter me far beyond my deserts in the customary farewell address which he would have offered to me. I thought it better to rely upon the expressions and conduct of those who knew me well, and to feel that they appreciated the discharge of the many arduous duties ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... gentleman's mode of complimenting her; but for this, perhaps, his speeches were more effective than others more delicate would have been; and though she said to each, "Oh, now, my Lord," and "La, Captain, how can you flatter one so?" and "Your honour's laughing at me," and made such polite speeches as are used on these occasions, it was manifest from the flutter and blush, and the grin of satisfaction which lighted up the buxom features of the little country beauty, that ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... effectual day-light to a whole magazine of observation, fancy, desire, stored up from the first impressions of childhood. To bring Apollo with his lyre to Germany! It was precisely that he, Carl, desired to do—was, as he might flatter ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... so absurd to me. Money for writing verses! One dollar would be as ridiculous as a thousand. I should as soon have thought of being paid for thinking! My mother, fortunately, was sensible enough never to flatter me or let me be flattered about my scribbling. It never was allowed to hinder any work I had to do. I crept away into a corner to write what came into my head, just as I ran away to play; and I looked ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... it my particular care," adds he, "to receive Mr. Washington with, a distinction suitable to your dignity, as well as his own quality and great merit. I flatter myself that he will do me this justice before you, sir, and that he will signify to you, in the manner I do myself, the profound respect with which I am, sir," &c. [Footnote: ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... spoke there sounded once more the ripping crack of a rifle, the singing of a bullet past them, and with it the flatter, louder noise of the shot-gun was repeated. Her eye in the act of turning to her task, caught the silhouette of old Gideon Himes's uncouth figure relieved against the noonday sky, as he sprang high, both arms flung up, the hands empty and clutching, and pitched headlong to his ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... boldness of her character; and, to do her justice, it was not by the ordinary arts of courtiers that she established and long maintained her despotic empire over the feeblest of minds, She had little of that tact which is the characteristic talent of her sex; she was far too violent to flatter or to dissemble: but, by a rare chance, she had fallen in with a nature on which dictation and contradiction acted as philtres. In this grotesque friendship all the loyalty, the patience, the selfdevotion, was on the side of the mistress. The whims, the haughty airs, the fits of ill temper, were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... increase of temperature with an initial temperature of zero is about 650 degrees; with 60 degrees initial temperature it is 800 degrees, and with 100 degrees initial it is 900 degrees. It will be observed that the zero heat curve is flatter than the others, indicating that when free air is admitted to a compressor cold, the relative increase of temperature is less than when the air is hot. This points to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX. Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed no more on "Human Life." Now I am well again.—But, as I said, as I could not hurt myself, it was foolish to flatter myself that I could mix your cause with mine and hurt you. Nothing is more certain than that you shall have all our ears, whenever you wish for them, and free from that partial position which I deprecated. Yet ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... said, nodding confidently at him. 'You must not flatter yourself, because Mr. Wentworth told me everything about it, that you wouldn't have done just the same, if I had had to find it out from you. All men are pretty much alike ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... to be calm. "In a way, I don't care for Bob; that is, I'm glad I didn't marry him. But I don't see why I should stop him coming here when Sadie wants to bring him. She's my friend, and she knows it does Bob good. I'm too angry to flatter you, Stephen, but ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... were so immediately susceptible to the idea of a World Revolution. Victory hath its charms and does not predispose a people to complain; so where the Masses (invested with a capital "M" to flatter their vanity and secure their goodwill) were victorious and content they were to be made to believe by advertisement that with a little trouble they could become even more victorious and more content. The KAISER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... L.1,500, L.200, to refund to you, in case you now oblige me with an advance, and L.400, to protect my securities for the rules); and if this cannot be completed with the Colonel time enough, and for which reason I flatter myself that you will assist me with your friendly interference, I see but one mode, that of going abroad the moment I find my creditors hostile; for although I may find L.350 to L.400, to pay the rules, I cannot ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... you can me; keep no secrets from them; that will flatter them.—Go to your work, my little Asie," he added to the cook.—"And you, my girl, lay another place," he said to Europe; "the children cannot do less than ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the American race. It is no doubt from following this standard of beauty that even the Aztec people, who never disfigured the heads of their children, have represented their heroes and principal divinities with heads much flatter than any of the Caribs I saw on the Lower Orinoco."—Humboldt's Researches on the Ancient ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... possible to create a Chamber in which Europeans and Egyptians will sit side by side will depend very largely on the conduct of the Egyptians themselves. If they follow the advice of those who do not flatter them, but who, however little they may recognise the fact, are in reality their best friends—if, in a word, they act in such a manner as to inspire the European residents of Egypt with confidence in their judgment and absence of class ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... and few of the men surpassed five feet four, five, or six inches. The complexion of the young women was very clear, and by no means dark; their eyes were bright and piercing, and their teeth of pearly whiteness, though their lips were thicker and their noses flatter than people in England consider requisite ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... commencement, and lasts whilst there is anything to support it; but as a mixture of novelty and vanity is the usual prop, no wonder if it fall with the slender stay. The fop in the play paid a greater compliment than he was aware of when he said to a person, whom he meant to flatter, "I like you almost as well as a new acquaintance." Why am I talking of friendship, after which I have had such a wild-goose chase. I thought only of telling you that the crows, as well as wild-geese, are ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... "Yes; I flatter myself I did manage it pretty well," said Gorby, lighting his pipe. "I had no idea that it would be so simple—though, mind you, it required a lot of thought before I got ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... despot, both politically and socially. Everything had to be done to please him, to amuse him, to conciliate him. The women around the Court were always vying with each other to see who should most successfully flatter the King, or, in the King's absence, the Royal Prince. It was intellectually a very stupid Court. Its pleasures were vulgar, its revels coarse, its whole atmosphere heavy and sensuous. Frederick was said, however, to have given some ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... be rendered, 'Are you going to remain?' Could I have replied in the affirmative, or could I have said that we should continue to exercise sufficient control over the Government of the country to prevent their being punished for helping us, they would have served us willingly. Not that I could flatter myself they altogether liked us, but they would have felt it wise in their own interests to meet our requirements; and, besides, the great mass of the people were heartily sick and tired of a long continuance of oppression and misrule, and were ready to submit (for ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... High Street at four o'clock on a May afternoon; tormented Claude by fruitless attempts to get from him an introduction, which he had neither the right nor the mind to give; and at last (so Bowie told Claude one night, and Claude told the whole party next morning) tried to bribe and flatter Valencia's maid into giving them a bit of ribbon, or a cast-off glove, which had belonged to the idol. Whereon that maiden, in virtuous indignation, told Mr. Bowie, and complained moreover (as maids are bound to do to valets for whom they have a penchant), of their ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... wanted to watch the people coming and going—it is a habit of mine; nothing gives me greater pleasure. It has made me an expert in judging human nature. I flatter myself that I can tell the moment I set my eyes on a man just what manner of life he leads, what language he speaks, whether he be rich or poor, educated or ignorant. I can do all this before he opens his mouth. I have never been proud of this faculty. I have regarded ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... displayed that disinterestedness in his dealings which entitled him to the highest consideration. The Duke of Orleans, whose aristocratic tastes always inclined him to favor distinction of birth, treated the Count de Cambis with especial preference; and on his side the count was careful to flatter the instincts of His Royal Highness by assuming the manners and gait of the ancient raffines of the Garde Royale. One of the duke's chief delights consisted in fashioning his household regulations after the model ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... solitary among all the voyagers on the barque, these two days passed swiftly and agreeably away. The flatter the land grew, the broader did the lordly river become. The villages increased in size; and the huts, mostly resembling a sugar-loaf, with a number of doves roosting on its apex, wore an appearance ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... dropped in at the Rialto this evening and she asked me what was the worst Pierce could expect. I made it strong, purposely, and I thought she'd faint. No, it's a nasty affair, all through. And, by Jove! to cap the climax, you and Josephine take part in it! I flatter myself that I'm democratic, but—have him here to dine! Gad! That's playing democracy ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... him, to goad him, to flirt with him. He should be hers honorably and openly, without devices, without intrigue. Stirred to the deeps of her being by wifehood and motherhood, by her passionate love for her husband and children, it was a humiliating thought that she must coquette with and flatter other men. As a matter of fact, she found it difficult to talk with any interest of anything except Warren, his work and his plans, of Jimmy and Derry, and perhaps of Home Dunes. If it were a matter ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... out, there had come the Temple of Jimjambo, where the "Old Man" had been Tushbar Akrogas, the major-domo—terrible when he was thwarted, but a generous dispenser of favors when once you had learned to flatter him, to play upon his weaknesses, to smooth the path of his pleasures. All these years Peter had been forced to "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee"; it had become an instinct with him—an instinct that went back far behind the twenty years ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... all. One of the suite overheard, and I got round him. There was much more, which I did not learn. But they are going to soothe and flatter the unfortunate King and Queen by asking them to ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... in this. It has all been done before. But tell me, what is new? Does the aspiring and perspiring summer vaudeville artist flatter himself that his stuff is going big? Then does the stout man with the oyster-colored eyelids in the first row, left, turn his bullet head on his fat-creased neck to remark ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... quick, call your uncle, bring him here; I must have a chance.' He made a violent but fruitless effort to rise, and after a slight pause continued, with deep and urgent solemnity: 'Doctor, how long shall I live? Don't flatter me. Compliments at a death-bed are out of place; doctor, for God's sake, as you would not have my soul perish with my body, do not mock a dying man; have I an hour ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... morning, the vultures were all ready for him. I took them to his cabin myself. There was no fuss at all. He saw it was all up, and gave in without a murmur. They were only just in time, though. In another thirty seconds, he would have been off. It was a clever piece of work, I flatter myself, to net ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... call me early, mother.' I will be there in good time. Miss Falconer does me the great honour of permitting me to flatter myself that I am sometimes of some slight service to her. I imagine it is something about the cotillon, concerning which I am absolutely ignorant, and am therefore capable of offering any amount of advice. I am a whale at giving advice, and my only consolation is that no one is ever foolish ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... my dears, that my old great aunt has left me a house and some money; but you must not flatter yourselves that it is a ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... so I have—that Jenkins girl—the daughter of poor Tom Jenkins, who died in the autumn; but, bless you, she's no good; she don't even know the meaning of drawing on a customer! You see, Miss Reed, I don't mean to flatter you, but you have got the tact, and just when the sales are beginning you will be invaluable. I can offer you a percentage on all the remnants you dispose of. Come, now, that's a bargain; you'll be right welcome back. You have got tact, and if I may ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... cunning had influenced him to repel, with an assumption of ignorance, Luna's broad hints of guilty complicity; but his sagacity failed utterly to comprehend Pierre's more cunning silence. Pierre was actively acquainted with Morrison's weak points, and while he ceased not to flatter them he never neglected to gather rewards for his labour. If the fabled crow had had the wit to swallow his cheese before he began to sing he would at least have had a full stomach to console himself for being duped. This is somewhat prognostical; but even so, it is not safe ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... me," she replied; "if you love me as you say, never flatter me while you live; I will always speak what I feel, and I hope ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... been working on the car that morning. She had watched him work, rather enjoying his energy. A healthy young animal as unsophisticated as a kitten, and really innately kind and innocent of intent to flatter. He was not at all like the bright young savage who had roped and almost choked to death that ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... shows you how Miss Alcott looks,—only you must recollect that it does not flatter her; and if you should see her, you would like her face much better than the picture of it. She has large, dark-blue eyes, brown clustering hair, a firm but smiling mouth, a noble head, and a tall and stately presence, as becomes one who is descended from the Mays, Quincys and Sewalls, of ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... Lavendar, dropping into a chair in the parlor; "but don't flatter yourself, Martha, that you'll ever be as young as I am!" ("He is failing," Mrs. King told her husband afterwards. "He gets his words all mixed up. He says 'young' when he means 'old.' Isn't that ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... practical jokes," he said, "and this I suppose is my last grand practical joke. But I want you to understand that the joke is really practical. I flatter myself it will be of very practical use to the cause of progress and common sense, and the killing of such superstitions everywhere. The best part of it, I admit, was the doctor's idea and not mine. All I meant to do was to pass a night ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... to Valladolid;" whereupon Rodaja replied, "Your worship will excuse me to that nobleman, and say that I am not fit to dwell at Court, nor in the Palace, because I have some sense of shame left, and do not know how to flatter." He was nevertheless persuaded to go, and the mode in which he travelled was as follows: a large pannier of that kind in which glass is transported was prepared, and in this Rodaja was placed, well defended ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... with much interest the poems of Merlin. The enclosed is longer than either of those, and certainly not so good: yet as I flatter myself that it has a smack of Merlin's style in it, and as I feel that it expresses forcibly enough some of the feelings of our time, perhaps you may ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and finds out knowledge of witty inventions; that the wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way; that wisdom and understanding keep one from the strange woman and the stranger which flattereth with her words. Now, I have not been saved from the strange young woman who has begun to flatter with her words; I don't in the least understand my way, since I have no notion what I shall do with her; and in taking her in and letting her loll upon my sofa of evenings, so as to show off her red slippers to my guests, I have thrown prudence to the winds; and my only witty invention was the idea ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... kobu 'to flatter.' An abbreviation of kobita kotoba, and used to indicate refined speech; i.e., that speech containing Chinese borrowings. See Doi Tadao, Kirishitan gogaku no kenky[u] (Tokyo, 1942, pp. 67-70). The term is also found in the introduction to the Vocabulario in the expression ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... his resolve; and, to give Mr. Slope his due, he had both courage and spirit to bear him out in his resolution. He knew that he should have a hard battle to fight, for Mr. Proudie would also choose to be bishop of Barchester. At first, doubtless, he must flatter and cajole, and perhaps yield in some things; but he did not doubt of ultimate triumph. If all other means failed, he could join the bishop against his wife, inspire courage into the unhappy man, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... from every stadtholder; not merely a description of the present posture of affairs, or conjectures as to what might take place were events suffered to hold on their course without interruption. To contemplate a mighty evil, to flatter oneself with hope, to trust to time, to strike a blow, like the clown in a play, so as to make a noise and appear to do something, when in fact one would fain do nothing; is not such conduct calculated ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... country such as we have described Greece, and we flatter ourselves our description will bear examination on the part of travellers and diplomatic gentlemen, we ask if there can be any doubt of the ultimate success of popular institutions? For our own part, we feel persuaded that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... the apartments, as well as an abundant expenditure of tact and diplomacy on our part, saved us from other applicants, and we were beginning to flatter ourselves that we should escape this much-dreaded imposition when, late in the afternoon, two young naval officers called, accompanied by orderlies and pack-mules. They presented billets de logement, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... began to rise. "Oh, I wasn't so terribly disappointed. You needn't flatter yourself. I simply don't like ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... consider their work perfect. Such poets seldom attempt long poems; if they should imprudently do so, we find but little sequence, and nothing of that clear order, of that marvellous unity, which mark the works of the masters. Everything is sought to flatter that pretentious vanity of the limited understanding which piques itself on its stereotyped knowledge, always striving to usurp the higher empire of the divining soul. Such writing certainly requires ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... love, that was why young men came and told Him their secrets, that was why everybody, except the bad, felt at home with Him, that was why women were at their best with Him, that was why Herod the worldly found he could not flatter Him, and Pilate the coward found Him devoid of fear; it was because right through, not only in His words and actions, but in His being He not only had, but He was, Truth in the inward parts. And it is because our ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... "My good girl! Don't flatter yourself that either 'Lady Veronica' or 'Lady Marjorie' is a member of the aristocracy," chuckled Bessie Kirk. "They're probably most plebeian and dowdy-looking individuals living in Bloomsbury boarding-houses, with pasty complexions and freckled ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... bachelors here they'd see their sweethearts carry the roof into next parish on their backs, like a snail, and never put out a hand; 't is not the custom hereaway. But, as I was saying, Paul and our Mercy kept company, after a manner: he never had the wit to flatter her as should he, nor the stomach to bid her name the day and he'd buy the ring; but he talked to her about his sick beasts more than he did to any other girl in the parish, and she'd have ended by going ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... not tell you." While a sentence in another letter (dated 1849) throws a sidelight on all this preparatory work: "In your letter you wonder what 'ornamental poultry' has to do with barnacles; but do not flatter yourself that I shall not yet live to finish the barnacles, and then make a fool of myself on the subject of species, under which head ornamental poultry ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... suddenly Rattled and tumbled from the shelf, Bumping and crying: 'I can fall by myself; Without a woman's hand To patronize and coax and flatter me, I understand The lean and poise of gravitable land.' It gave a raucous and tumultuous shout, Twisted itself convulsively about, Rested upon the floor, and, while I stare, It stares and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... our Minds, and gain a true Knowledge of our selves, and consequently to recover our Souls out of the Vice, Ignorance, and Prejudice, which naturally cleave to them. I have all along profest myself in this Paper a Promoter of these great Ends; and I flatter my self that I do from Day to Day contribute something to the polishing of Mens Minds: at least my Design is laudable, whatever the Execution may be. I must confess I am not a little encouraged in it by many ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... said I, with an answering smile, "Jane will start you churning. It's an easy job. You just turn a handle till the butter comes. Do not flatter yourself that you'll get any butter, but I'll forgive you that. And, having learned from Jane how to pretend to do it, you need not churn in earnest till the dragoons ride into the yard. Listen to Jane, and you, Jane, for the next ten minutes, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... ingenious mind discovered to while away my time with was a fiddle (an elderly one), which I routed out of a lumber closet, and from which, after due invocations to St. Cecilia, I drew such diabolical sounds as I flatter myself were never excelled by Tartini or his master, the devil himself. I must now close this, for ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... gladly do so; if it can turn its back upon you and ignore you, its back, and nothing else, you will surely see. And this on account of your merits. You really have thoughts. You make combinations of your own. You have freighted your words out of your own mental experience. You do not flatter any of the sects by using their cant. Now, then, be sure that you have got to do finished work, finished in every minutest particular, for years, before your ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... least. Nothing of that kind could anger him. If your father were to cringe or to flatter him then ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... her friends, Crossjay. I flatter myself I'm a Toledo when I'm wanted. How long had you been in the house last night before you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and London contain all the famous men of France and England, and anybody who jokes about them is sure of having the whole public for an audience; while the best New York joke falls flat in Boston or Philadelphia, and flatter still in Cincinnati or Chicago, owing to want of acquaintance with the materials of which ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably—SHOULD do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... But when he came across a man of position his instinct immediately told him that this man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince Vasili took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become intimate with him, and finally make ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and great men have thought otherwise," said Varney; "and, not to flatter your lordship, my own opinion leans ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... comrades reproached him with working it out only with her, as if she were the whole affair; to which he replied that they could afford to be neglected, they were all so tremendously good. She was the only person concerned whom he didn't flatter. ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... public opinion, politics, etc., he must be a gallant as well as a good man, who has ventured in that place and at this time to write such an article even anonymously. Such things, however, are their own reward; and I even flatter myself that the writer, whoever he may be (and I have no guess), will not regret that the perusal of this has given me as much gratification as any composition of that nature could give, and more than any other has ever given,—and I have had a good many in my time of one kind ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... he, "yes, that would flatter me very much; but I should not have time enough to enjoy the distinction. During our expedition to Bethune the husband of my duchess died; so, my dear, the coffer of the defunct holding out its arms to me, I shall marry the widow. Look here! I was trying ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of visions, allegories, symbolic actions, and direct addresses, a series of vivid descriptions of the sins of Jerusalem and the judgments of heaven that are about to fall upon her. With these are interspersed denunciations of the false prophets that flatter the people in their sins, and fervent addresses to his fellow-captives remarkable for their plainness and evangelical spirit. The second part opens with a series of prophecies against seven foreign nations, in which the order of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... previous afternoon, the good lady advising them first to soak the specimens in a bowl of fresh-water, so as to get rid of the salt and sand and other impurities, besides enabling the specimens to be laid flatter in the book ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... so; but I do not flatter myself that it is so with me; and I do not think that it would be so with any man over you. Perhaps I may assure you that, as far as I know myself at present, all my future happiness must depend on your answer. It will not kill me—to be refused; at ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... from my daughter. She sent it to me; she is always making me gifts; she is one who remembers her old mother! Figure to yourselves that last year, in midwinter, she sent me no less than three gowns, all wool! What can I do with them? C'est pour me flatter, c'est sa maniere de me dire qu'il faut vivre pour longtemps! Ah, la chere folle! But she spoils ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... boy, Reherrey, detached himself from the others and came out to stand by her and flatter her. He had wound the black stuff that he had bought three days before so cleverly round his slim body that he seemed no fatter than a lacquered hairpin. The cynical flattery of this nineteen-year-old Jew, the plunging admiration which Duval breathed at her side, the attentive look ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... quantity of beef-suet finely shred, and a nutmeg grated, a little salt, some currants, and then beat some eggs in a little sack, and some sugar, and mix all together, and knead it as stiff as for manchet, and make it up in the form and size of a turkey-egg, but a little flatter; then take a pound of butter, and put it in a dish, and set the dish over a clear fire in a chafing-dish, and rub your butter about the dish till 'tis melted; put your puddings in, and cover the dish, but often turn your puddings, until they are all brown alike, and when they are enough, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... to look at the table. One is not always looking. The other has that astonishment. Something has changed. That is what would be the defence if any one saw that she was flatter. She had the smile and it was not lightening all her evenings. They were not always too hot. They closed ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... my theory is that he's got all the money he took with him except his living expenses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am not going to come home without trying hard. I am going to have a detective's legal outfit, and I flatter myself I can get Northwick over the frontier somehow, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends of the Ponkwasset Company. I don't know yet just how I shall do it, but I guess I shall do it. I shall have Mrs. Pinney's advice and counsel, and she's a team; but I ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... sensed the satire. "We'll meet and vote the money and then we can sit back and take comfort in thinkin' that there's just the right man at the head of town affairs to economize us back onto Easy Street." He was eager to flatter. "This town understands what kind of a man it wants to keep in office. I take back all I ever said ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... restraint and unprosperously. "If I am once set free," he says, "it is all prosperity; I care for no one; I can speak to all as being their equal and on a level with them. I go where I will, I come when and how I will." He is at last made free, and presently having nowhere to eat he seeks whom he may flatter, with whom he may sup. He then either submits to the basest and most infamous degradation, and if he can obtain admission to some great man's table, falls into a slavery much worse than the former; or perhaps, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... will do you good, and learn you a lesson. What, Georgy! you expected a wild, shy young girl to show you her heart without asking? you expected a spoiled, flattered child, whom you have done the most to spoil and flatter, not to tease and torment you when she had it in her power, and could you not bear it better from your little wayward favorite, who, you know, was always true-hearted after all? Pshaw, my dear boy, I needn't ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... - Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... was all over, and Theodora's pulses were calmer as she lay alone on her pillow, she had a sudden thrill of fear. But she put it aside—it was not her nature to think herself the object of passions. "I would be a very silly woman to flatter myself so," she said to herself, and then she ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... pilgrimages to sanctuaries, privation from theatres, balls, and parties, and other penalties of a similar nature, which form the criminal code of the confessional tribunal; and here it is easy to imagine what a latitude this faculty offers to gratify hatred, show revenge, flatter the powerful, and make things pleasant to those who have the power of conferring favours. The act concludes with the words of absolution, which is a formula consisting ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... "Listen! Don't flatter yourself any longer. Your cause is hopeless, as hopeless as the cause for which the stupid colonists are contending. You are now free to put an end to this strife. Go over to the enemy and persuade Washington and the leaders of the revolt ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... was received from aloft that all was clear ahead, and the explorers began to flatter themselves that they had fairly entered the polar sea. Several headlands were passed, and wide openings to the north and south. With a strong breeze from the eastward, running on until midnight, ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... remain a director in the railroad, and also a candidate for the position of president. I shall make a contest at the next directors' meeting, and if I fail in my purpose there, I shall carry the fight before the public. I flatter myself that my reputation will count for something in my old home; you will not be able to carry matters with quite the same high hand in Mississippi as you are accustomed to in New York. Also, I ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... friend," he began, "I rather expected you, for I flatter myself that I understand enough of human nature to know that there are very few who will pass by an opportunity of learning something for the advancement of their own interests or the betterment of ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... impossible to make any impression on that meat with aught less forcible than an axe. Thus, with reluctance, his portion, albeit paid for in advance, was relinquished, to be again paid for probably and again to flatter and deceive some other passing and hungry stranger. The remainder of the journey proved agreeable, thanks to the companionship of a young officer who, invalided home from the Lomboh war, was en route to Buitenzorg, where ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; Or just as gay at council, in a ring Of mimic statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store! No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... to me for examinations, come prepared to know the truth. I am not here to flatter you, nor am I here to ridicule or abuse your weaknesses. I have for many years enjoyed a magnificent practice, gained by strict candor and honesty with my patrons, who have long since learned that I spare no pains to know the facts, and knowing them I fear no consequences in relating ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... had named I called on her, wearing my great coat, and with a sword for my only weapon. I found Nina with her sister, a woman of thirty-six or thereabouts, who was married to an Italian dancer, nicknamed Schizza, because he had a flatter nose ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... larger ones at any rate were partly open to the sky. But how the openings were arranged is almost entirely a matter of conjecture. The roof used was of a very flat pitch, one of height to four of base, later it was even flatter, and this dictated the slope of the pediments. This roof covered the whole of the building, that is, both the cella and the colonnades on either side of it, and as the Greeks were ignorant of the principle of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... said that these things are in the past and the situation has now greatly changed. For the benefit of those who thus flatter themselves we introduce one more quotation. It is from "The Law of Psychic Phenomena," by T. J. Hudson (A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1894). The language is candid and conciliatory, and the author cannot be accused of any undue prejudice on the question of which ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... own danger, as well as to evince the injustice of the proceedings of the house of Austria:—Considering the critical situation which Europe has been in during the course of this year, in consequence of measures concerted to embroil all Europe, the king of Great Britain was willing to flatter himself that the courts of Vienna and Versailles, out of regard to the circumspect conduct observed by your high mightinesses, would have at least informed you of the changes they have thought proper to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... answer was, with affecting simplicity, 'Oh, I have not read it. Papa says there's nothing so bad for young girls as reading bad poetry.' Yet he could not be said to be hostile to compliments in the abstract—nothing was so easy as to flatter him about a farm or a field, and his manner on such an occasion plainly showed that he was really open to such a compliment, and liked it. In fact, I can recall only one instance in which he was fairly cheated into pleasure by a tribute paid to his literary merit, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... "You are pleased to flatter," said Fairfeather; "but my husband has a brother there, and we left our moorland village to try our fortune also. An old woman enticed us with fair words and strong drink at the entrance of this forest, where we fell asleep ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... confusion of affairs, the perplexity that existed in the consciences of men was very noticeable: for some, endeavoring to flatter those who were in power, gave their approval to all that these had done, saying that they had not incurred any censure, and that the jurisdiction of the cabildo was valid; but others, with more pious judgment, regarded ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... entrance shall be ministered unto you into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And John says, speaking of the Christian's hope, "Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure;" then the impure may flatter themselves, and presume upon the favor of God without "purifying their souls in obeying the truth," but they are without hope in the world. And again he says, "Little children let no man deceive you, he that doth righteousness is righteous, even as ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... highness of women does not flatter the ladies. He recommended us never to listen to the advice of our wives; if we did, we should be lost. The women were very well to fetch water, pound ghaseb, and cook the supper, but for nothing else. He never, himself, paid any attention to what they said; ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... unusual sight in a free state having raised a murmur among the people, the soldier, disconcerted at the liberties which the citizens took, thus addressed them: "Having left you when nine years old, I have returned after a lapse of thirty-six years. I flatter myself I am well acquainted with the qualifications of a soldier, having been instructed in them from my childhood, sometimes by my own situation, and sometimes by that of my country. The privileges, the laws, and customs of the city and the forum you ought to teach me." Having thus ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... am gradually losing that instinctive horror and repulsion which were given me by nature, or instilled into me by the precepts and example of my aunt. Perhaps then I was too severe in my judgments, for I abhorred the sinner as well as the sin; now I flatter myself I am more charitable and considerate; but am I not becoming more indifferent and insensate too? Fool that I was, to dream that I had strength and purity enough to save myself and him! Such vain presumption ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... which will occupy me several years, and which yields me much satisfaction. 'Tis a History of Britain from the Union of the Crowns to the present time. I have already finished the reign of King James. My friends flatter me (by this I mean that they don't flatter me) that ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... a queer accent of politeness in the voice of the speaker. He did not seem to have uttered these words in order to flatter his listener, but to express his real sentiment. ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... enthusiastically. "I'll sit for you as a study in Disappointment, Flat-busted, or Return from the Races. The title doesn't matter, because I'll be such an excellent study for any sort of man whose hopes have all been knocked flatter than ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... flattery; he had been sickened with it, especially by the women of his congregation; he thought there was nothing of this nature against which he was not proof; yet he resented Esther Dudley's neglect to flatter him by coming to his sermon. Her absence was a hint that at least one of his congregation did not care to hear ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... reflections, to say something on the historical part. I shall therefore, Sir, open myself fully on that important and delicate subject: not for the sake of telling you a long story, (which, I know, Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond of,) but for the sake of the weighty instruction that, I flatter myself, will necessarily result from it. It shall not be longer, if I can help it, than so serious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with scorn; "pah! There may have been a short space of time during which the fellow's long hair and windy rhetoric impressed her. But I flatter myself I've put my spoke in Mr. Jocelyn's wheel. Why, damme, sir, she's consented to stand for Grand Dame of the Bermondsey Branch of the Primrose League next year. What's Jocelyn to say to that, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... chivalry. I've heard That voice cry death to courtiers. 'Tis God's voice. Take you the word of one who has occupied His business in great waters. There's no room, Meaning, or reason, office, or place, or name For courtiers on the sea. Does the sea flatter? You cannot bribe it, torture it, or tame it! Its laws are those of the Juggernaut universe, Remorseless—listen to that!"—a mighty wave Broke thundering down the coast; "your hands are white, Your rapier jewelled, can you grapple that? What part have ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... autumnal flowers—the groundsel, at least—did not sometimes persist in blossoming far into the winter! A day or two after this, I saw a mullein stalk still presenting arms, as it were (the mullein, always looks the soldier to me), with one bright flower. If I had found that in St. Augustine, I flatter myself I should have ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... tongue— a fellow whom I consider beneath all men of the very lowest grade: for when you can bring yourself to flatter that fellow (pointing at THRASO), I do believe you could pick your victuals out of ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... and independence—and the toughness (be it said) of the clam, to delicate morsels, so crowded and cemented in communities together, that they form bridges between severed rocks and shelves and cornices broad and massive; oysters flatter than plates, oysters tubular as service gas-pipes; the gold-lipped mother of pearl, the black-lipped mother of pearl, the cockscomb, the coral rock oyster, the small but sweet rock oyster, two varieties of the common rock oyster, besides the trap-door, the hammer, and another ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... in them which we kiss, embrace, cherish, nay enemies succor, but this witchcraft of folly, which wise Nature did of purpose give them into the world with them that they might the more pleasantly pass over the toil of education, and as it were flatter the care and diligence of their nurses? And then for youth, which is in such reputation everywhere, how do all men favor it, study to advance it, and lend it their helping hand? And whence, I pray, all this grace? Whence but ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... with the worst, the most sudden, the most painful, the most mortal, and the most irremediable of all diseases; I have already had the trial of five or six very long and very painful fits; and yet I either flatter myself, or there is even in this state what is very well to be endured by a man who has his soul free from the fear of death, and of the menaces, conclusions, and consequences which physic is ever thundering in our ears; but the effect even of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... had the whole army to pick from, we couldn't've got in with a better lot of boys and officers. Every one of them's true blue, and a MAN all the way through. It's the best regiment in the army, and our company's the best company in the regiment, and I flatter myself the company hasn't got two other as good men as ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... time we'll probably cruise and camp together, and then we all can enjoy some of his wonderful cooking," Nick hastened to add, feeling that it might pay to flatter his old enemy a little, if he expected to profit by it ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... Prussia] arrived at St. Petersburg, December 9, 1770; and it seems now to be certain that the first open proposal of a dismemberment of Poland arose in his conversations with the Empress.... Catherine said to the Prince, 'I will frighten Turkey and flatter England. It is your business to gain Austria, that she may lull France to sleep;' and she became at length so eager, that ... she dipt her finger into ink, and drew with it the lines of partition on a map of Poland which lay before them."—Edinburgh Review, November, 1822 (art. x. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... because he is conscious they are really true; he will seldom trouble himself to inquire into the veracity of the tale bearer, lest he should be reduced to the necessity of defending himself on his weakest side. For a similar reason, when Miss Abigail had a mind to flatter any person (which she frequently would, to answer the purposes of her malice) she always commended him for those particular good qualities, or accomplishments which she knew he most valued himself for, or chiefly ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... listen! Another time you shall hear more.— Yes, I tell you, as good as banished these eleven months. But the old man already begins to lament the hasty step, which, however, I flatter myself (with a smile) is not entirely his own. Amelia, too, is incessantly pursuing him with her tears and reproaches. Presently he will be having him searched for in every quarter of the world; and if he finds him—then it's all over with you, Hermann. You may ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... greeted Flipper, that can easily be accounted for. Nothing is more likely than that at West Point there should have been gathered together a lot of old-time South-haters, who were ready to applaud, not so much to flatter Flipper as to show that they were happy over what they felt to be a still further humiliation of the South. That is all there is ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... There is no real friendship in that. I want to know the true candid opinion of a man who has travelled about the world, and has been at the diamond-fields. It isn't everybody who has been at the diamond-fields," continued he, thinking that he might thereby flatter his friend. ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... it, then," said Mrs. MacDonald in an iron voice. "The time had to come some day. Let it be to-day, though for your father's sake I would have spared you the knowledge until you reached your twenty-first year. Do not flatter yourself that your threat 'not to move' has the smallest effect on me. It has none. If I chose, I could force you to obey me this instant, and put those reminders of sin out of my sight. But if you have any sense of shame in you, any affection for your father's memory, it will be the severest ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hands to torture me, The one by toil, the other to complain How far I toil, still farther off from thee. I tell the day, to please him thou art bright, And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven: So flatter I the swart-complexion'd night, When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even. But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, And night doth nightly make ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... little rough, and that the members were a little ashamed of it; for when Mark Lemon introduced there Mr. Catling, the editor of "Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper," he picturesquely warned his guest to be prepared for "an awful set of blackguards." On the night in question, however, the fun was flatter, and Kenny Meadows, the Father of the Feast, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... to think we need not be young to prefer to hear the praise of others rather than our own. It is not embarrassing in the first place, as all praise of ourselves must be. I doubt if any man or woman can flatter so discreetly as not to make us uncomfortable. Besides, if our own performances be lauded, we are uneasy as to whether the honour is deserved. An artist has usually his own doubts about his own doings, or rather he has his own certainties. About our friends' work we need have ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... characters so widely different that "they never agreed on any one thing." They were sir Philip Modelove, an old beau; Mr. Periwinkle, a silly virtuoso; Mr. Tradelove, a broker on 'Change; and Mr. Obadiah Prim, a hypocritical quaker. Colonel Feignwell contrived to flatter all the guardians to the top of their bent, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... offices, and at the same time escape many of the worst penalties which would naturally follow from our neglect. For others, more generous and noble than we, will step in and take upon themselves our share of the public burdens in addition to their own. We may flatter ourselves that we have done a very shrewd thing in contriving to reap the benefits without bearing the burdens of society. There is, as we shall see, a penalty for negligence of social duty, and that too most sure and ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... indignant rejoinder. "Did I not perceive you loitering more than once to-night,—though each time I drew near, hopeful of a word of greeting, it was to behold you disappear as if by magic? Do I flatter you by thus showing my interest? Yet 't was only that I might have explanation, that I sought you thus. Come, confess that you feared my just resentment for going forth on so perilous a trip without ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... Gate and ask her to go with us down to London. And Clyde, have my barge at the Bowling Green stairs at one o'clock so that we may take our leisure going down the river and still reach the law courts on time. Our punctuality will flatter the city folk." ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... is used for nice. For instance: at a rustic dance in that state a Kentuckian said to an acquaintance of mine, in reply to his asking the name of a very fine girl, "That's my sister, stranger; and I flatter myself that she shows the nastiest ankle in all Kentuck"—Unde derivatur, from the constant rifle-practice in that state, a good shot or a pretty shot is termed also a nasty shot, because it would make a nasty wound: ergo, a nice or pretty ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... never look upon a missal or upon a bit of antique illumination that I do not invest that object with a certain poetic romance, and I picture to myself long lines of monkish men bending over their tasks, and applying themselves with pious enthusiasm thereto. We should not flatter ourselves that the enjoyment of the delights of bibliomania was reserved to one time and generation; a greater than any of us lived many centuries ago, and went his bibliomaniacal way, gathering together treasures from every quarter, and diffusing every where a veneration and love ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... comes to serious business. Mr. Berrington, all I have just told you is absolute truth. I have found it all out within the last eleven hours. More than that, I am myself now one of the gang, and if I 'turn traitor' I shall be done to death by them just as certainly as I am sitting here. I flatter myself that I have arranged it all rather cleverly—I have succeeded in placing in confinement that man who shadowed you last night, without any member of the gang's knowing anything about his arrest or in the least suspecting it, and I have literally stepped into his shoes, for these clothes ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... favour. His indignation, however, was very keen when he was created only a Viscount. He wrote to Strafford at Utrecht, that his promotion had been a mortification to him. "In the House of Commons," he said, "I may say that I was at the head of business. ... There was, therefore, nothing to flatter my ambition in removing me from thence, but giving me the title which had been many years in my family, and which reverted to the Crown about a year ago, by the death of the last of the elder house. ... I own to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... to congratulate Your Honour on your appointment by His Majesty to the chief command of this Province and in your safe arrival therein. Although remote from the Capital, and perhaps last in our addresses, yet we flatter ourselves not the least sincere in assuring Your Honour of the happiness we feel in finding ourselves under ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... ordered it, that a state of rest and inaction, however it may flatter our indolence, should be productive of many inconveniences; that it should generate such disorders, as may force us to have recourse to some labor, as a thing absolutely requisite to make us pass our lives with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that a lady might be saved from the disgrace of such a vile performance." This, however, was no very mischievous or very unusual deviation from truth: had his hypocrisy been confined to such transactions, he might have been forgiven, though not praised; for who forbears to flatter an author or ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... you know yet,' he went on after a slight pause, 'what it is to love anybody very dearly. I remember you told Gyda one day that you had never loved any one so since your mother. Certainly I have never had a right to flatter myself that I had been able to teach you what it means. If I ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... enough to forget this; ready enough to think only of God's goodness, and never of His severity. Ready enough to talk of Christ as gentle and suffering; because we flatter ourselves that if He is gentle, He may be also indulgent; if He be suffering, He may be also weak. We like to forget that He is, and was, and ever will be—Lord of heaven and earth; and to think of Him only in His humiliation in Judaea 1800 years ago, forgetting that during that very humiliation, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... the unruly impulses of the multitude. His manner was tranquil, with hardly any change of feature; his garments were undisturbed by any oratorical gesticulations, and his voice was equable and sustained. He never condescended to flatter the people, and his dignity never stooped to merriment. Although there was more of reasoning than imagination in his speeches, he gave a vivid and impressive coloring to his language by the use of striking metaphors and comparisons, as ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... yet though wiser, mightier, than myself, You shall not find in her a listener So still, so answerable to your mood. And, I will say it, you'll not find in her One who has dived so deep into your soul, Who sees—I cannot flatter—sees that greatness Which she too long keeps under: were I you I would be Caesar, spite of twenty mothers, And seem the mighty poet that I am. ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... "I told you I would bring him to his senses. You saw how soon he caved in. It is not a question of my health at all; you may bet your bottom dollar I have an enemy, but I flatter ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... a Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, who bore him illegitimate children—didn't she? Well, such a magistrate is no saint; he is a man like any other; he can be won over; he must give a hold somewhere; you must discover the weak spot and flatter him; ask his advice, point out the dangers of attending the case; in short, try to get him into the same boat, and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Sparrow," cried she. "I have been looking forward with much pleasure to seeing you." And then she tried to flatter it with soft, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... 'an uncouth bully who bellowed like a mad bull.' In this respect it is my impression that the ex-Empress indorses his state of mind. What he likes she will place in the superlative; what he merely hates, she elevates to positive abhorrence. In this way she seems to flatter his decisions, which makes him smile quite indulgently at her, and hold her ascendency over his apparently veering mind. I can notice this in so many little things: She oozes delicate flattery and he likes it; she plays ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... disappear never are anywhere. But I do flatter myself that if he had held his ground and kept his property the result ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... families, living in deserts, with no other occupation than the mere animal search for food, may still be seen in that ancient quarter of the globe; but in America such things are new and strange, unknown and unsuspected, and discredited when related. But I flatter myself that what is discovered, though not enough to satisfy curiosity, is sufficient to excite it, and that subsequent explorations will complete what ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... others wiser; and the folly of this maxim of the French appears plainly even from this, that their trained soldiers often find your raw men prove too hard for them, of which I will not say much, lest you may think I flatter the English. Every day's experience shows that the mechanics in the towns or the clowns in the country are not afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen, if they are not disabled by some misfortune in their body or dispirited by extreme want; so that you need not fear that those well- ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... fraternal kiss." "Good friend," the cock replied, "upon my word, A better thing I never heard; And doubly I rejoice To hear it from your voice; And, really there must be something in it, For yonder come two greyhounds, which I flatter Myself are couriers on this very matter. They come so fast, they'll be here in a minute. I'll down, and all of us will seal the blessing With general kissing and caressing." "Adieu," said fox; "my errand's pressing; I'll hurry ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... "It is, I flatter myself. I've long had the idea, but I should never have worked it out and found the value of it but for Grey. I invented it to coach him in his history. You see we are in the Grecian corner. Over there is the Roman. You'll find Livy and Tacitus worked out there, just as Herodotus and Thucydides ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... would stay where you are, keep house along with me, and let me make you immortal, no matter how anxious you may be to see this wife of yours, of whom you are thinking all the time day after day; yet I flatter myself that I am no whit less tall or well-looking than she is, for it is not to be expected that a mortal woman should compare in ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... respect, I think we can challenge comparison with any industry in the state; but I am the first to admit that there may be another side, a side that it takes a woman—a mother—to see. For instance," he threw in jocosely, "I flatter myself that I know how to order a good dinner; but I always leave the flowers to my wife. And if you'll permit me to say so," he went on, encouraged by the felicity of his image, "I believe it will produce a most pleasing effect—not only on the operatives themselves, but on the whole of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... impossible for any one to flatter himself that the facts of his life were hidden. This was strangely true. No one ever looked at anybody in the streets: the doors and shutters of the houses were closed. But there were mirrors fastened in the ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... of the opponents, too, is colder and flatter than it has ever been; rumours—I know not how true—of the Duke of Rutland hesitating on the question, and daily talk of other unexpected votes. Perhaps these rumours are exaggerated; but still they add to the general tide ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... all a joodge of pheesogs, and a flatter meself a am," said a raw-boned Scotch Captain of Grenadiers, measuring six feet two in his stockings, "yon geerl has a bit of the deevil in her ee, therefor, me lads, tak heed that nane o' ye lose yer ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... slaves carried away after the close of the war has been sitting, with doubtful prospects of success. Propositions of compromise have, however, passed between the two Governments, the result of which we flatter ourselves may yet prove unsatisfactory. Our own dispositions and purposes toward Great Britain are all friendly and conciliatory; nor can we abandon but with strong reluctance the belief that they will ultimately meet a return, not of favors, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Brentwood's about three o'clock in the afternoon. I flatter myself that I made a very successful approach, and created rather a sensation among the fourteen or fifteen people who were sitting in the verandah. They took me for a distinguished stranger. But when they saw who it was they all began ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... I recollect is that the lady, according to his account, was certainly a little touched; for she used to accept all the music that he copied for her harp, and all the patterns that he drew for her dresses; and he began to flatter himself, after a long course of delicate attentions, that he was gradually fanning up a gentle flame in her heart, when she suddenly accepted the hand of a rich, boisterous, fox-hunting baronet, without either music or sentiment, who carried her by ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... own height increased my notion of things near at hand became equally expanded. But the hills, mark you, were out of my reach: I could not apply myself to them: I had an actual, instead of a proportional eidolon of their magnitude; so that, of course (my eye being larger and flatter nowadays, and so the image presented to me then being in sober earnest smaller than the image presented to me now), I found the hills nearly as much too great as I had found the other ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this subject, and it was not till some time afterwards that the conversation was renewed, when D'Elsac said, "Then I must take Lisette, I suppose, with me to Grenoble, for when you flatter her she is good tempered, and I own I am afraid ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... danced about and threw himself into the wildest contortions, as was his manner when excessively pleased. He wrote shortly afterwards to Darwin as follows:—"I could think of nothing for days after your lesson on coral-reefs, but of the tops of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter yourself that you will be believed till you are growing bald like me, with hard work and vexation at the incredulity of the world." On May 24th, 1837, Lyell wrote to Sir John Herschel as follows:—"I am very full of Darwin's new theory of coral-islands, and have urged ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... rotten constitution?" Mr. Price responded. "Will it prevent a drunkard's children from being weakly vicious? or the daughters of a licentious man from being foredoomed to destruction by an inherited appetite for the vices which you seem to flatter yourself end in effect when they are repented of? You do not take into consideration the fact that the once vicious man becomes the father of vicious children and the grandfather of criminals. You persuade women to marry these men. The arrangement is perfect. Man's safety, and man's pleasure; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... say that he met me in a very hostile spirit. I was at great pains to be affable, to treat him with all the courtly consideration I have at command, and I flatter myself that in the matter of tact and good-breeding I do not yield to princes of the blood royal. But my civility was quite thrown away. The man was an absolute brute, abrupt, overbearing, rude. Nothing would conciliate him. I offered him a cigar (a Borneo of the best brand, at ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... hung the brass keys, and opened the door a-crack. He saw the hide of the crocodile leaning against it, and the overturned cups. "Just as that boy Hubert packed them," he thought to himself in satisfaction; "no one has been prying here. I flatter myself upon a skilful morning's work. I have knocked the legend out of the Baron's head. He'll see to it the girl keeps away. And as for yon impudent witling in the cage, we shall transport him beyond the seas, if convenient; if not, a knife in his gullet will make him forget the Dragon of ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... but he had fallen to hauling the sheet aft and making the sail stand flatter, and did not answer her. Indeed, he seemed much more taken up with Jack than with her, and, above all, entirely absorbed in the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... me in on my way to school, to warm my hands, when they did not need it, and inquire after the health of my mother and grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles, and admire my clothes, and wish her little Jane was old enough to run to school with me, and flatter me on the beauty of my hair and eyes and complexion, in such a way that very few children would have been so stupid as not to have seen through it. Could you not have said something to discourage the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... rue the day I fancied first the womenkind; For aye sinsyne I ne'er can hae Ae quiet thought or peace o' mind! They hae plagued my heart, an' pleased my e'e, An' teased an' flatter'd me at will, But aye, for a' their witchery, The pawky things I lo'e them still. O, the women folk! O, the women folk! But they hae been the wreck o' me; O, weary fa' the women folk, For they winna ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... befits the monumental style. Look grave as we will, there is something ludicrous in Counsellor Keane's pig being the pivot of a revolution. We are of yesterday, and it is to no purpose that our political augurs divine from the flight of our eagles that to-morrow shall be ours, and flatter us with an all-hail hereafter. Things do really gain in greatness by being acted on a great and cosmopolitan stage, because there is inspiration in the thronged audience, and the nearer match that puts men on their mettle. Webster was more largely endowed by nature than Fox, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Paul and supposed him to be very clever, but they had never taken him seriously. "Now, at last," they said, "he has done something like other people. He is coming out." Experienced matrons were pleased to flatter him on his choice of a bride. The daughters studied Moya, and decided that she was "different," but "all right." She had a careless distinction of her own. Some of her "things" were surprisingly lovely—probably heirlooms; and army women are so ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... "Yes, now! I flatter myself I did fairly well with it. Did you see—well, look at that!" He held up the weapon in question, still tightly clutched, and joined in the laugh ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... received from Scipio various honourable distinctions; and on one occasion, after supper, when the conversation was about generals, and one of the company, either because he really felt a difficulty or merely wished to flatter Scipio, asked him where the Roman people would find such another leader and protector when he was gone, Scipio with his hand gently touched the shoulder of Marius, who was reclining next to him, and said, "Perhaps here." So full of promise was the youth of Marius, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... and even of wisdom; ideas ripen by the mere conjunction of forces and the course of the seasons. And yet has routine altogether ceased? Is prejudice, that monster with a thousand forms which has the quality of never recognizing its own visage, as far removed as we flatter ourselves? Is progress, true progress, as entirely the order of the day as it is believed to be? How many steps are there still to take,—steps which I am persuaded never will be taken save by the impulsion and at the signal of a firm and vigorous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... stranger than in my proper person; for in the latter case, I deemed it probable that your delicacy and kindness might tempt you to conceal whatever was calculated to wound my feelings, and to exaggerate anything that might tend to flatter or to soothe them. Thank Heaven, I now learn that I have a right to the name my boyhood bore, and that my birth is not branded with the foulest of private crimes, and that in death my father's heart yearned ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... done or decided on the first day, October 11, 1468. On the second a council was held which sat late into the night. A minority of the council, the enemies of Louis, or those who were only anxious to flatter the passions of their master, advised him to use to the full the opportunity which chance and the foolhardiness and duplicity of his adversary had placed in his hands. They urged him to keep the King in secure confinement after providing for the virtual partition of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... favours I had bestowed upon you. In my just indignation I loaded him with the most bitter insults, I called him a cowardly spy and slanderer, for he could not have seen anything but childish playfulness, and I declared to him that he need not flatter himself that any threat would compel me to give the slightest compliance to his wishes. He then begged and begged my pardon a thousand times, and went on assuring me that I must lay to my rigour the odium of the step he had taken, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... you through the Forum—you with your drawn sword, and him escaping up the stairs of the bookseller's shop?[206] * * * It was by my advice that Caesar was killed! I fear, O conscript fathers, lest I should seem to have employed some false witness to flatter me with praises which do not belong to me. Who has ever heard me mentioned as having been conversant with that glorious affair? Among those who did do the deed, whose name has been hidden—or, indeed, is not most widely known? Some had been inclined to boast that they ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... is taught to any by that yearly show of what we flatter ourselves by calling Art? Eight hundred and fifteen new paintings this year, shown by no less than two hundred and eighty-one painters. When you have gone patiently through and looked at every picture, see if you don't wish the critics had eyes, and a little common ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... thought cool language by persons who entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an idolatrous devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. I felt a conscientious solicitude for Adele's welfare and progress, and a quiet liking for her little self: just as I cherished towards Mrs. Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness, and a pleasure in her society ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... subsisted between us in early life, and you malignantly date its "dissolution" at the time of my sudden accession of fortune as owing thereto. If I were to admit, that you could properly date this breach from the moment you mention, I flatter myself, you would find it very difficult to persuade those who know me, to believe that to be the true cause. But this was really not the fact. The unworthy measures you took to evade the payment, (till compelled by a judgment of the court,) of Mr. Porter's order on you in favor of my brother and ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... perhaps rather unenterprising children, looking on as a detached outsider, seeing nothing of the teeming activities of the quick, restless little brain, and the persistent, though faulty reasoning—it is natural for her to blame another's work, and to flatter herself that her own routine would have avoided all these troublesome complications. The mother of the nervous child may often rightly take comfort in the thought that her child is worth the extra trouble ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... me hard with doings which not will, But misery, hath wrested from me. Where 470 Easily canst thou find one miserable, And not inforced oft-times to part from truth, If it may stand him more in stead to lie, Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure? But thou art placed above me; thou art Lord; From thee I can, and must, submiss, endure Cheek or reproof, and glad to scape so quit. Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk, Smooth on ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... have engaged in vast designs could ever promise themselves repose, William, after so many victories, and so many political regulations to secure the fruit of them, might now flatter himself with some hope of quiet. But disturbances were preparing for his old age from a new quarter, from whence they were less expected and less tolerable,—from the Normans, his companions in victory, and from his family, which he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is, peepin' off th' side, An' aw see 'at shoo's all on a grin; To chait her aw've monny a time tried, But I think it's nah time to give in, A chap may be deep as a well, But a woman's his maister when done; He may chuckle and flatter hissel, But he'll wakken to find at shoo's won. It's a rayther unpleasant affair, Yet it's better it's happened noa daat; Aw'st be fain to come in for a share O' that paand at th' wife ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... I'll stand on my own bottom. And what's more, Peter, I tell you once for all"—his voice was low and menacing—"if you try any anonymous deus ex machina tricks on me in some sly, roundabout fashion, don't you flatter yourself I shan't recognise your hand. I shall, and, by God, it shall never grasp ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... aspiration, the worse tragedy of his dumb questioning? Granting the existence of God, a house dedicated to Him naturally follows. He is all-important; it is fit that man should take some notice of Him. But why praise and flatter Him for His unspeakable cruelties? Why forget so supinely His failures to remedy the easily remediable? Why, indeed, devote the churches exclusively to worship? Why not give them over, now and then, to justifiable ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... they will be in the long run under assemblies that are bound by the necessity of feeding one part of the community at the grievous charge of other parts, as necessitous as those who are so fed; that are obliged to flatter those who have their lives at their disposal by tolerating acts of doubtful influence on commerce and agriculture, and for the sake of precarious relief to sow the seeds of lasting want; that will be driven to be the instruments of the violence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... more money? Well, it's not to be despised, but I've met men who didn't attach too much importance to it. They had the sense to see there were other things of greater value, and while I don't often flatter people, you're not poor in this respect. But if you liked a man who was far from rich, ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... beauties for you?" inquired Ben, gathering up the moist leaves, and laying them over the trout again, with pleasant alacrity; "the new cook mayn't know how to manage 'em; I don't want to flatter that ere conceited feller—but Ben Benson does know how to cook a trout arter ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... the centre of a sphere which we allow to expand uniformly on all sides. Whilst the inner wall of this sphere withdraws from us into ever greater distances, it grows flatter and flatter until, on reaching infinite distance, it turns into a plane. We thus find ourselves surrounded everywhere by a surface which, in the strict mathematical sense, is a plane, and is yet one and the same surface on all sides. This leads us to the conception of the plane ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... that his Majesty, according to his royal wisdom and clemency towards the condition of this country, would listen only to My Lords the States or their ministers, and not to his own or other passionate persons who, through misunderstanding or malice, furnish him with information and so frequently flatter him. I have tried these twenty years to deserve his Majesty's confidence, and have many letters from him reaching through twelve or fifteen years, in which he does me honour and promises his royal favour. I am the more chagrined that through false ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... still on the latch of the door; to open it, to dart inside, and to shoot the bolt were the work of a second. Trembling he heard Mr. Dunborough come up and slash the door with his whip, and then, contented with this demonstration, pass on, after shouting through the panels that the tutor need not flatter himself—he ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... have thus laid before his Majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their Chief Magistrate. Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will, therefore, say, that Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... "Flattery! what truth could flatter on the lips of an exile? But you don't answer my question—what think you of Vaudemont? Few are more ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accident that Defoe drifted into this equivocal position. His first writings under the new reign were in staunch consistency with what he had written before. He did not try to flatter the Queen as many others did by slighting her predecessors; on the contrary, he wrote a poem called The Mock Mourners, in which he extolled "the glorious memory"—a phrase which he did much to bring into use—and charged those who spoke ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... 'Twas not altogether a breakdown, I hope? You must allow for some nervousness—did you detect it? No? Well, I don't mind owning to you I was nervous as a cat: but there, if you didn't detect it I shall flatter myself I did passably." He laughed, evidently on the best terms with himself. His breath smelt of beer. "The Rector is with ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... anti-social maxims put forth by daring writers; why, then, this disapproval which, in France, attaches to all social truths when boldly proclaimed? This question will explain, in itself alone, historical errors. Apply the answer to the destructive doctrines which flatter popular passions, and to the conservative doctrines which repress the mad efforts of the people, and you will find the reason of the unpopularity and also the popularity of certain personages. Laubardemont and Laffemas were, like some men of to-day, devoted to the defence ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... not flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame; she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make"; and, with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... certain. At moments she fancied so; she saw her position as wholly reasonable, void of anxiety; she was about to marry the man she liked and respected—safest of all forms of marriage. But there came troublesome moods of misgiving. It did not flatter her self-esteem to think of herself as excluded from the number of those who are capable of love; even in Helen Borisoff's view, the elect, the fortunate. Of love, she had thought more in this last week or two than ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... ideals with a tenderness so delicately considerate. Most men hasten to witness their present altitude by kicking away the old ladders on the first opportunity; like vulgar lovers, they seek to flatter to-day at the expense of yesterday. But Narcissus was of another fibre; he could as soon have insulted the memory of ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... herself with him in a book! The likeness of the hero to Percy Dacier once established became striking to glaringness—a proof of her ability, and more of her audacity; still more of her intention to flatter him up to his perdition. By the things written of him, one would imagine the conversations going on behind the scenes. She had the wiles of a Cleopatra, not without some of the Nilene's experiences. A youthful Antony Dacier would be little likely to escape her toils. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... type seldom do—but does own a limousine and consequently employs a chauffeur. To meet and make this chauffeur mine took me just two days. I don't know how I did it. I never know how I do it," he added with a sheepish smile as Mr. Gryce gave utterance to his old-fashioned "Umph!" "I don't flatter and I don't bring out my pocketbook or offer drinks or even cigars, but I get 'em, as you know, and get 'em strong, perhaps because I don't ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... the hotel where I boarded. Neither of them could read very easily, on account of having what I used to call "slivers in their eyes," caused by excessive drinking. They enjoyed politics, however, and used to ask me to read aloud to them. In order to flatter me and keep me interested in the reading, every time I would finish an article the old lawyer would jump up and down in his ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... the exact order of events. It threw a scare into the girls to-night that they couldn't fly so well. But in an hour's time, they'll be sore because they didn't put up a good exhibition. Now, if I know anything at all about women—and maybe I flatter myself, but I think I know a lot—they'll be back the first thing to-morrow to prove to us that their bad flying was not our effect on them but ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... court has no final jurisdiction. I call all present to witness this. If my warning is neglected here, it will be felt in a higher quarter. Recollect, monsieur, that I shall soon be able to report to his majesty himself. I flatter myself that my influence at court just now is not inferior to that of the Count ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... Scouts will find that weather-signs among the high mountains are very different from those of the low or the flatter country. The easiest sign of storm is the night-caps. For when in the morning the mountains still have their night-caps on, and the clouds rest like shattered fog in the draws and hollows, the day will surely have rain, by noon. But ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... Heartily did I applaud the language of M. de Soubise: I did not suspect that the dear prince had another motive behind. At the end of the interview he said, "Madame, you would not have been as you now are had you been more conciliatory towards me. I know the king, and know how to manage him. I flatter myself that you would have been now presented had you deigned to hear my advice." "Did I reject it? Was I wrong in declining to have mademoiselle Guimard as ambassadress? Were you assured of her silence? Might she not have compromised ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... am fool enough to flatter myself with any false hopes. No: it was humanity; it was too deep a sense of a slight benefit received; it was totally distinct from love.—Oh no! Love, added to such strong, such acute sensations, surely, Oliver, it would ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... she could not deceive him, even though those beautiful eyes were fixed upon her in earnest expectation. As we have said, she was very truthful, so answered, "I cannot flatter you so much, Everard; it afforded me no comfort whatever. Indeed I never thought of it, except when some kind attention on your part reminded me of the fact, and then the ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... him steeped in Byronic gloom. He even wanted at first to keep entirely on the Bayswater side of the Park, though I succeeded in arguing him out of such weakness. 'Be a horse!' I said. 'Show her you don't care. You only flatter her by betraying ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... should give way to philosophy, and we began to calculate the probability of the period when this should be, and which of the present company should live to see it. The oldest complained that they could hardly flatter themselves with the hope; the younger rejoiced that they might entertain this very probable expectation; and they congratulated the Academy especially for having prepared this great work, and for having been the ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... to Sir James Stewart Denham, which would vacate his lieutenant-colonelcy for Nugent. A third was also mentioned by the King, namely, the inducing Taylor, by the offer of the Lieutenant-Governorship of Cowes, to exchange with Nugent. Any one of these would, I flatter myself, answer your purpose; because they would show the King's disposition to attend to your recommendation, and that having been hampered by an actual engagement to Taylor, he is now ready to accommodate his own patronage in such a way as may, at the same ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... they are not embodied I will most certainly apply to you, and you may say when you recommend me that, being well grounded in Arabic, and having some talent for languages, I might be an acquisition to a corps in one of our Eastern colonies. I flatter myself that I could do a great deal in the East provided I could once get there, either in a civil or military capacity. There is much talk at present about translating European books into the two great languages, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... and it is not clear to me that he was really the highest seasoner.' Ib. p. 54. From the Mores we know nothing of his reproof. He had himself said of 'a literary lady'—no doubt Hannah More—'I was obliged to speak to Miss Reynolds to let her know that I desired she would not flatter me so much.' Ante, iii.293. Miss Burney records a story she had from Mrs. Thrale, 'which,' she continues, 'exceeds, I think, in its severity all the severe things I have yet heard of Dr. Johnson's saying. When Miss More ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... said impatiently, "though you will never look pretty nor lady-like in anything. So don't flatter yourself, nor aspire to imitate others who can. I suppose now, Miss Graystone," turning to Clemence, "you think I don't want my wife to dress as well as others on account of the expense; but, although I commenced ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
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