Leadership Quote by Margaret Oliphant

Oliphant smuggles a social critique into what sounds like a drawing-room aside. Calling flirtation “next thing to indispensable” recasts leadership as performance: not policy, not pedigree, but the ability to generate warmth on demand. In a Victorian world where “society” is less a vague public than a network of salons, calls, dinners, and reputations, influence is manufactured through micro-encounters. The flirt is a diplomat in miniature, reading the room, flattering without committing, signaling attention while keeping power intact.

The gendered phrasing matters. Oliphant doesn’t say a person who can flirt; she says “a man,” exposing how male charm is treated as a credential rather than a liability. Women, often tasked with maintaining the very social machinery being described, rarely got to cash in the same behavior as authority. A man’s flirtation becomes a tool of cohesion: it smooths rivalries, disarms criticism, and makes hierarchy feel like choice. It’s soft power with a smile.

There’s also a quiet cynicism in “leader of society.” The phrase implies that society has leaders the way a stage has stars: selected less by merit than by the ability to keep the audience engaged. Oliphant, a novelist attuned to the economics of attention, understands that charisma is not frosting; it’s infrastructure. Flirtation isn’t romance here. It’s social lubrication, the skill of making people feel briefly singular while ensuring the system stays exactly the same.