Parenting & Family Quote by Salmon P. Chase

A small social cruelty disguised as politeness: the room agrees a child is pretty, and Salmon P. Chase declines the communal lie. The line is funny because it is so bald. No softening clause, no wink of taste, no mercy for parental pride. In an era that prized manners as civic glue, Chase chooses blunt dissent over the comfort of consensus, and that choice reads like a personality profile in twelve words.

The intent is not merely to judge a child’s face; it’s to assert authority over the conversation. “Pronounced” is doing heavy lifting. It suggests a verdict delivered by a little tribunal of onlookers, as if beauty were a public policy question. Chase’s “I think” pretends modesty, but it’s a power move: he re-centers the group’s opinion on his own appraisal, replacing the collective with the individual. That is politician behavior in miniature, the habit of treating even a drawing-room compliment as something to be debated, corrected, and won.

The subtext carries a Calvinist edge: truth matters more than tact, and flattery is a kind of corruption. Coming from a 19th-century statesman who moved through abolitionist politics, cabinet rooms, and the judiciary, the remark also hints at a wider American temperament: suspicious of ornament, impatient with sentimentality, proud of plain speech. It lands today as both refreshing and slightly monstrous - the frankness of someone who can’t resist being right, even when being right is beside the point.