Praising Quotes

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due. (Sydney Smith)
To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years. View quote
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Railing and praising were his usual themes and both showed his judgment in extremes. Either over violent or over civil, so everyone to him was either god or devil. View quote
John Dryden
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The creator, if he should love his creature, would be loving only a part of himself; but the creature, praising the creator, praises an infinity beyond himself. View quote
Olaf Stapledon
I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies-for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
The general nature of the speech act fallacy can be stated as follows, using "good” as our example. Calling something good is characteristically praising or commending or recommending it, etc. But it is a fallacy to infer from this that the meaning of "good” is explained by saying it is used to perform the act of commendation. View quote
John Searle
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say. View quote
Will Durant
It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I've devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
For a lot of people, becoming an author is a change in occupation... they are coming from something that totally has nothing to do with this. If they are expecting to come into a room full of people praising them, then they are in the wrong place. View quote
Eric Jerome Dickey
Today they're praising you sky high, place you on a pedestal and tomorrow they don't want to know you. (Mark McGrath)
It's disgusting that a Broadway show can't try out anymore, that no matter where they are in the world, there is this massive dialogue going on between people damning or praising it. View quote
Victor Garber
Through the principle of associated habit, the same movements of the face and eyes are practised, and can, indeed, hardly be avoided, whenever we know or believe that others are blaming, or too strongly praising, our moral conduct. View quote
Charles Darwin
It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart. View quote
Karl Barth
Praising the Lord and passing the ammunition are mutually exclusive ideas. View quote
Phil Donahue
The violent extermination of Buddhism in India is legendary. Buddhism grew weaker as it spread wider. The spirit of compromise which breathed in the Xllth Edict of Ashoka that there should be no praising of one's sect and decrying of other sects but on the contrary a rendering of honour to other sects for whatever cause honour may be due to them was its strength and weakness. It accommodated too much. Divinities and heavens slipped into Buddhism from other creeds with the spread of the religion. View quote
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Young Ireland, the Catholic Party and its newspaper organs in Dublin are trying to do all the mischief they can. They are praising the mutineers, and calling upon the Irish to follow their example. I think it will be advisable to call out and embody five thousand more Militia, making twenty thousand in all, and it would be best to bring over to England all the Irish regiments belonging to the Catholic counties, and to send English regiments to Ireland. Some of the Northern Irish regiments would be well left in Ireland. They are chiefly Protestants, and would be delighted to put down the Croppys if they should rise. View quote
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
Saving Silverman is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation. Consider my friend James Berardinelli, the best of the Web-based critics. No doubt 10 days of oxygen deprivation at the Sundance Film Festival helped inspire his three-star review, in which he reports optimistically, "Saving Silverman" has its share of pratfalls and slapstick moments, but there's almost no flatulence." Here's a critical rule of thumb: You know you're in trouble when you're reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add "almost"... as for Neil Diamond, Saving Silverman is his first appearance in a fiction film since The Jazz Singer, and one can only marvel that he waited 20 years to appear in a second film, and found one even worse than his first one. View quote
Roger Ebert
You praise a man for having killed his enemy by means of an advantage; and by praising him for boldness you praise him for a sin against nature, because boldness leads to destruction. View quote
Cyrano de Bergerac
I saw that God rejoiceth that He is our Father, and God rejoiceth that He is our Mother, and God rejoiceth that He is our Very Spouse and our soul is His loved Wife. And Christ rejoiceth that He is our Brother, and Jesus rejoiceth that He is our Saviour. These are five high joys, as I understand, in which He willeth that we enjoy; Him praising, Him thanking, Him loving, Him endlessly blessing. View quote
Julian of Norwich
Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and temperance are. (Philippa Foot)
We are all clever enough at envying a famous man while he is yet alive, and at praising him when he is dead. View quote
Mimnermus
And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God who sits on the throne and said: "Amen! Praise Jah!” Also, a voice came from the throne and said: "Be praising our God, all you his slaves, who fear him, the small ones and the great.”. View quote
John the Evangelist
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. View quote
George Orwell
Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever. View quote
George Orwell