Flattery

To see and to say sincerely complimentary things about others is a gracious custom that does much to make life livable. But, as always, along with the genuine and the good come the counterfeit and the bad, and the counterfeit of a sincere compliment is flattery. There are many degrees of flattery, and many motives that prompt it. Sometimes it is no worse (but also no better) than the numerous varieties of so-called “apple-polishingthe sort of thing that students indulge in with their teachers, in the hope of having a few smooth words accepted in place of a little earnest study. There are times and places where the atmosphere seems to be surfeited with flattery, where everyone tries to outdo everyone else in speaking extravagantly flattering things, and where not much of anything that anyone says rings true. To flatter someone in anticipation of continuing patronage, favors, or preferment may well prove to be the most arduous and unsatisfactory kind of work, difficult to continue and difficult to quitbecause those who are given to being persuaded by flattery are seldom satisfied. Indeed, flattery is much like a drug, ever-increasing doses of which produce an ever-diminishing effect, until at last the result is negative. And he who lives by flattery rather than by merit lives a precarious existence and should learn, while there is time, that the same amount of work devoted to constructive and honest purposes brings better and safer results. But flattery is most malicious when used with deliberate intent to blind the judgment, or to weaken the resolution of othersto induce them to act in a manner less worthily, less intelligently than they otherwise would, or to cause them to yield some point of principle. Of such uses, the Psalmist wrote: “With flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.” And of such flattery we may well suppose the devil himself to be a past master, as “he flattereth them, and leadeth… their souls… to catch themselves in their own snare.” Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.” Therefore, “let flattery… be kept out of friendship.” And certainly let it never be trusted where there is no friendship, for “a flattering mouth worketh ruin.”