flatterer

Most people seem, owing to ambition, to wish to be loved rather than to love; which is why most men love flattery; for the flatterer is a friend in an inferior position, or pretends to be such and to love more than he is loved; and being loved seems to be akin to being honoured, and this is what most people aim at.

The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle 2002

Flattery and flatterers are pleasant: the flatterer is a man who, you believe, admires and likes To do the same thing often is pleasant, since, as we saw, anything habitual is pleasant.

Rhetoric Aristotle 2002

A flatterer is a dunce to him, for he can tell him nothing but what he knows before: and yet he loves him too, because he is like himself.

Microcosmography or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters John Earle

Flattery and the flatterer are pleasant; since the flatterer is a seeming admirer and a seeming friend.

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece Various 1887

A public assembly, though composed of men of the smallest possible culture, nevertheless will see clearly the difference between a mere demagogue (that is, a flatterer and untrustworthy citizen) and a man of principle, standing, and solidity.

Treatises on Friendship and Old Age Marcus Tullius Cicero 1874

Most people seem, owing to ambition, to wish to be loved rather than to love; which is why most men love flattery; for the flatterer is a friend in an inferior position, or pretends to be such and to love more than he is loved; and being loved seems to be akin to being honoured, and this is what most people aim at.

The NICOMACHEAN ETHICS Aristotle 1865

Some praises proceed merely of flattery; and if he be an ordinary flatterer, he will have certain common attributes, which may serve every man; if he be a cunning flatterer, he will follow the arch-flatterer, which is a man’s self; and wherein a man thinketh best of himself, therein the flatterer will uphold him most: but if he be an impudent flatterer, look wherein a man is conscious to himself that he is most defective, and is most out of countenance in himself, that will the flatterer entitle him to perforce, spreta conscientia [in disdain of conscience].

LIII. Of Praise 1909

What kind of flatterer then must we be on our guard against?

Plutarch's Morals 46-120? Plutarch

Miriam had grown up, had become a Christian and a happy one; and as yet no "flatterer" had beguiled her off upon the "Enchanted Ground."

Tired Church Members Anna Bartlett Warner 1869

Madame Beavor called him "flatterer," and rapped his knuckles with her fan; the latter proceeding the brave Pole did not seem to like, for he immediately buried his hands in his trousers 'pockets.

Night and Morning, Volume 3 Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838