Wit & Attitude Quote by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Praise, Sheridan suggests, is the one luxury you should refuse on principle: if it has any truth in it, congratulating yourself is just vanity in a nicer suit. That opening gambit has the clean, weaponized logic of Restoration comedy: a moral pose delivered with enough bite to make you suspect the speaker enjoys the pose. Sheridan was a playwright fluent in the social theater of manners, and this line treats reputation the way his characters do - as a performance you can never fully control, only manage.

The subtext is less stoic than it pretends. He’s not arguing that praise is meaningless; he’s arguing that the emotional payoff is a trap. Accept it and you’ve shown you care about the crowd, which makes you easy to steer. In an era when drawing-room opinion could make or break careers and marriages, “gratified” reads like a tell at the card table. Sheridan’s wit is defensive: refuse applause before it can corrupt you, and you retain a kind of social autonomy.

Then comes the second punchline: abuse has its own distribution network. The “damned good-natured friend” is Sheridan at his most precise - the person who insists they’re doing you a favor while smuggling in cruelty, gossip, or social leverage. “Good-natured” becomes an alibi for meddling, a way to turn other people’s insults into your problem under the guise of concern. The intent isn’t self-pity; it’s exposure. Sheridan is naming how polite society weaponizes kindness, making criticism unavoidable and praise suspect, until the only sane posture is ironic detachment.