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I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception.

Richard Steele

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Richard Steele
Age: 57 †
Born: 1672
Born: March 12
Died: 1729
Died: September 1
Journalist
Playwright
Politician
Writer
Dublin city
Sir Richard Steele
Giving
Closing
Offensive
Exception
Manner
Speaking
Praise

More quotes by Richard Steele

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Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.
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Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take the place of pleasures, profits and all other private gratifications.
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I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me
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The survivorship of a worthy man in his son is a pleasure scarce inferior to the hopes of the continuance of his own life.
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The praise of an ignorant man is only good-will, and you should receive his kindness as he is a good neighbor in society, and not as a good judge of your actions in point of fame and reputation.
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The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.
Richard Steele
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Modesty never rages, never murmurs, never pouts when it is ill-treated, it pines, it beseeches, it languishes.
Richard Steele
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A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.
Richard Steele
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A fool is in himself the object of pity, until he is flattered.
Richard Steele
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Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour to love her was a liberal education.
Richard Steele
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There can hardly, I believe, be imagined a more desirable pleasure than that of praise unmixed with any possibility of flattery.
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The man is mechanically turned, and made for getting. . . . It was verily prettily said that we may learn the little value of fortune by the persons on whom Heaven is pleased to bestow it.
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It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.
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Many take pleasure in spreading abroad the weakness of an exalted character.
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No woman is capable of being beautiful who is not incapable of being false.
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Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.
Richard Steele
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A Woman is naturally more helpless than the other Sex and a Man of Honour and Sense should have this in his View in all Manner of Commerce with her.
Richard Steele
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He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.
Richard Steele
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Vanity makes people ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.
Richard Steele
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Conversation never sits easier upon us than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter, which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.
Richard Steele