"Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people"
About this Quote
A wry observation about vanity and the economics of praise, the line exposes how easily pleasure slides into suspicion. Flattery feels marvelous when it is bespoke, crafted solely for one listener, as if it were empirical proof of one’s virtues. The moment the same mouth begins to scatter compliments elsewhere, the spell breaks. What felt like discerning appreciation now looks like indiscriminate largesse, and the flatterer’s taste appears doubtful because it seems to lack any principle of selection. Praise that is universal is by definition untrustworthy.
The conditional phrase if you have him all to yourself reveals how deeply personal vanity craves exclusivity. Admiration flatters most when it is scarce, not because scarcity makes it truer, but because it makes us feel singular. When the flatterer’s attentions are divided, our affection turns to doubt. We begin to suspect that the earlier sweet talk was less a judgment about our merits than a technique for wielding influence.
Dickens knew this social currency well. His novels teem with figures who traffic in oily compliments and moral posturing, from the unctuous Uriah Heep to the canting Mr. Pecksniff. They are delightful to those who benefit from their honeyed tongues, at least until the machinery becomes visible. The satire cuts two ways: against the flatterer’s hypocrisy and against the vanity that hungers for such treatment and mistakes it for truth.
Beneath the humor lies a hard standard. Taste implies discrimination, the capacity to say no as well as yes. A person who praises everything praises nothing, and the receiver who accepts such praise without question colludes in the fraud. The line nudges readers toward a sterner ethic of friendship and conversation, where esteem is earned by judgment and honesty, not by the quantity of compliments dispensed. It is a reminder to prize companions whose approval costs something, and whose silence, too, can be a gift.
The conditional phrase if you have him all to yourself reveals how deeply personal vanity craves exclusivity. Admiration flatters most when it is scarce, not because scarcity makes it truer, but because it makes us feel singular. When the flatterer’s attentions are divided, our affection turns to doubt. We begin to suspect that the earlier sweet talk was less a judgment about our merits than a technique for wielding influence.
Dickens knew this social currency well. His novels teem with figures who traffic in oily compliments and moral posturing, from the unctuous Uriah Heep to the canting Mr. Pecksniff. They are delightful to those who benefit from their honeyed tongues, at least until the machinery becomes visible. The satire cuts two ways: against the flatterer’s hypocrisy and against the vanity that hungers for such treatment and mistakes it for truth.
Beneath the humor lies a hard standard. Taste implies discrimination, the capacity to say no as well as yes. A person who praises everything praises nothing, and the receiver who accepts such praise without question colludes in the fraud. The line nudges readers toward a sterner ethic of friendship and conversation, where esteem is earned by judgment and honesty, not by the quantity of compliments dispensed. It is a reminder to prize companions whose approval costs something, and whose silence, too, can be a gift.
Quote Details
| Topic | Fake Friends |
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