Sycophant Quotes

Someone who smiles too much with you can sometime frown too much with you at your back.

Buy a gift for a dog, and you'll be amazed at the way it will dance and swerve its tail, but if don't have anything to offer to it, it won't even recognize your arrival; such are the attributes of fake friends.

I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets.

Having a relationship with people of questionable character is like playing with a razor blade on your skin, and pretending to observe that it is harmful to your body.

When things are like hunky dory, every enemy comes in the name of friend, but when things are twisted like turmoil, every friendly enemy shows you their colour.

Everyone wanted to see [him] fall so they could devour his remains. As is usually the case, the army of sycophants had turned into a horde of hungry hyenas

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

Nothing can save you from hate, empty all your treasures and give it to people and one out of the multitudes will curse you, so live your life to please yourself and not others.

I looked at my sister, really looked at her, at this woman who couldn’t stomach the sycophants who now surrounded her, who had never spent a day in the forest but had gone into wolf territory… Who had shrouded the loss of our mother, then our downfall, in an icy rage and bitterness, because the anger had been a lifeline, the cruelty a release. But she had cared—beneath it, she had cared, and perhaps loved more fiercely than I could comprehend, more deeply and loyally.

Moreover, I have heard that those who are fond of praising men to their faces are also fond of damning them behind their backs.

The world was full of waistrels and waifs, sycophants and spies - all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect

The trouble with competitors' sycophants is they don't know where to put their tongues. Here's a suggestion: Try behind your teeth. With your mouth shut.

It's pleasant to get used to the expensive, the soft, the comfortable. Once you're addicted, it's so easy to become a sycophant, to trim the sails of your judgment in order to be kept on. The next step is to change your work to please those in power, and that is death to the sculptor.

Employees hate meetings because they reveal that self-promotion, sycophancy, dissimulation and constantly talking nonsense in a loud confident voice are more impressive than merely being good at the job - and it is depressing to lack these skills but even more depressing to discover one's self using them.

Sycophant learns from dogs.

Whenever you commend, add a compelling reason for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and the admiration of fools.

On social media it's all or nothing: lavish praise or appalled outrage; sycophants or trolls. Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.

The number of your antagonists are far more greater than that of your companions, so you have to keep a stone of awareness to mark the boundary line.

Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.

He laughed, definitely forced, and glanced around at his security team. The didn't laugh, likely because they weren't in on the joke, nor were they paid to play the role of sycophants to a psychopath.

History is replete with blunders written by sycophants.

Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in, and sometimes, like Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or Leo Tolstoy or Francois Rabelais, a very harsh critic indeed. The others are sycophants, courtiers, servitors, entertainers. Shakespeare was a sychophant; however, he was and is also a very good poet, and so we continue to read him.

When you favour a woman, she will want to return the favour in so many means, but its better to rupidiate such offerings.

No government ought to be without censors: and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth either in religion, law, or politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know, nor notice, it’s sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.

Sycophancy toward those who hold power is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist.... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience.

If more people smile when you arrive than when you leave, you're either having a good day, or surrounded by sycophants.

One honest friend is worth more than a million sycophants.

Are you a politician? I hate politicians, he said. And, in any case, there's no such thing anymore: only sycophants and dissidents.

I don't like sycophants. Unless you're a cat.

There are two types of people that surround celebrities: sycophants and spongers. There was no place for a real person around Imran.

Cress had learned,years ago,that the Word satellite came from a Latin Word meaning a companion,or a minion,or a sycophant.All three interpretations had struck her as ironic,given her solitude until she´d programmed Little Cress.

It might seem that being a genius is a golden ticket to a life of glamorous soirees with the intellectual elite, champagne flute in hand, arm candy at your side, surrounded by a throng of smiling sycophants. But you might be confusing this scene with the lifestyle of a diplomat

he was not the first general to welcome statistics he wanted to hear—but the numbers emerged from an intricate origami of war bureaucracy: South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, and American. The truth was bent at every fold for reasons that went beyond propaganda to self-interest, sycophancy, and wishful thinking.

It is the liveliest time in life, the happiest of the irresponsible times in life. Mothers echo its happiness—nothing is like a mother who has a son home from college, except another mother with a son home from college. Bloom does actually come upon these mothers; it is a visible thing; and they run like girls, walk like athletes, laugh like sycophants. Yet they give up their sons to the daughters of other mothers, and find it proud rapture enough to be allowed to sit and watch.

The trader trusts his fortune to the sea and takes his gains,      The warrior, for his deeds, is girt with gold; The wily sycophant lies drunk on purple counterpanes,      Young wives must pay debauchees or they're cold. But solitary, shivering, in tatters Genius stands      Invoking a neglected art, for succor at its hands.

Politeness must be cultivated, for the promptings of nature are eminently selfish, and courtesy and good-breeding are only attainable by effort and discipline. But even courtesy has limits where dignity should govern it, for when carried to excess, particularly in manner, it borders on sycophancy, which is almost as despicable as rudeness.

Prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the coarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.

The world was too full of wastrels and waifs, sycophants and spies—all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect.

Rudy Giuliani, William Barr, Jared Kushner, and Mike Pompeo are Trump’s new wannabe fixers, sycophants willing to distort the truth and break the law in the service of the Boss.

But war makes believers out of cynics. Sycophants desperate for salvation, everyone suddenly clinging to their soul, clutching them close like a matron with her finest pearls.

Politicians lie for a living. That is accepted the world over. sycophancy too. But why should we normalise bullshit for the sake of defending the said liar? Come on!

For every gross male harasser, there are ten female sycophants who shamelessly use their sexual attractions to get ahead.

Bullies like him were only strong while assured of victory; when faced with anyone more powerful, they turned into fawning sycophants, desperate to prove themselves.

He was new to the sycophancy and cowardice of men; their inability to think alone appalled him as much as did their need to get together and reassure themselves with windy words.

He tried to imagine what fresh reserves of sycophancy Skynner would draw on to communicate with a being even higher than the First Lord of the Admiralty, and found he couldn’t do it.

Whatever the sins, whatever the flirtations with unreality in the shape of maudlin theatrical shows or sycophancy toward the great, the spark of truth in him never entirely petered out (IV,

The lot of princes anywhere in the world is difficult and pitiable. Surrounded by hypocrites and sycophants, they are all destined to be waste-products of the process of socio-cultural evolution.

On social media it’s all or nothing: lavish praise or appalled outrage; sycophants or trolls. Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.

She said some people were horizontally oriented, while others were vertical. Horizontally oriented people were concerned exclusively with what others think, with fitting in or impressing their peers. Vertically oriented people were obsessed only with some higher “truth,” which they believed in wholeheartedly and wanted to trumpet no matter who was interested. People who are horizontally oriented are phonies and sycophants, while those who are entirely vertically oriented lack all social skill—they’re the ones on the street shouting about the apocalypse. Normal people are in the middle, but veer one way or the other.

Whole nations are transported, exterminated, their name to be forgotten, except in the annual festival of their conquerors, when sycophants call the names of the vanquished countries to the remembrance of the victors.

There is nothing I value more in subordinates than their willingness to tell me I’m wrong, to challenge me, to sharpen my decision making. Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.

Freelancing requires such strict adherence to toadyism, to sycophancy, to the grubbiest, lowliest submissions. It is an on-spec life and it is full of what can only be described as insane serendipity (or serendipitous insanity).

That’s how it always works with the sycophants. First they remain silent no matter what outrages are committed; then they make themselves complicit by not acting. Ultimately, they find they are expendable when Donald needs a scapegoat.

The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants.

Jasmine smells like human flesh. Mix it with cumin, which smells like sweat, and you have the scent of sex. If you spread it on your body, watch out, you'll have sycophants all over the place, people crawling out of the woodwork to be close to you.

How I love to hear the rich and titled, the magistrates and the priests, how I love to watch them preach virtue to us! It is very hard to keep oneself from stealing when one has three times more than one to live! A great strain to never think of murder when one is surrounded by sycophants and slaves for whom your will is law! Truly difficult to be temperate and sober when one is at all times surrounded by the most succulent dishes! So difficult for them to be sincere when they have no reason to lie!

It infuriates him, this killing, this death. Infuriating that this is what we’re known for now, drug cartels and slaughter. This my city of Avenida 16 Septembre, the Victoria Theater, cobblestone streets, the bullring, La Central, La Fogata, more bookstores than El Paso, the university, the ballet, garapiñados, pan dulce, the mission, the plaza, the Kentucky Bar, Fred’s—now it’s known for these idiotic thugs. And my country, Mexico—the land of writers and poets—of Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Garro, Jorge Volpi, Rosario Castellanos, Luis Urrea, Elmer Mendoza, Alfonso Reyes—the land of painters and sculptors—Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Gabriel Orozco, Pablo O’Higgins, Juan Soriano, Francisco Goitia—of dancers like Guillermina Bravo, Gloria and Nellie Campobello, Josefina Lavalle, Ana Mérida, and composers—Carlos Chávez, Silvestre Revueltas, Agustín Lara, Blas Galindo—architects—Luis Barragán, Juan O’Gorman, Tatiana Bilbao, Michel Rojkind, Pedro Vásquez—wonderful filmmakers—Fernando de Fuentes, Alejandro Iñárritu, Luis Buñuel, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro—actors like Dolores del Río, “La Doña” María Félix, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Salma Hayek—now the names are “famous” narcos—no more than sociopathic murderers whose sole contribution to the culture has been the narcocorridas sung by no-talent sycophants. Mexico, the land of pyramids and palaces, deserts and jungles, mountains and beaches, markets and gardens, boulevards and cobblestoned streets, broad plazas and hidden courtyards, is now known as a slaughter ground. And for what? So North Americans can get high.

But all this was beside the point. What scared Amy was the mere fact of what looked inescapably like recreational malevolence. The poem had been written by an adult, not some teen with an unfinished brain. Whoever wrote the line bootlicker, sycophant, toady intended damage, understood how Carla would feel, how anybody would feel, being called such names. The line was playful, offhand, the poem itself a smug, imperious cat stretch. The writer was having fun. Amy had been comfortable in the same room with someone whose idea of fun this was.

It’s just a party. You eat some food and drink a beer and pretend you don’t want to be crawdad fishing,” Angie said. “No, it’s an echo chamber of sycophants and I can’t listen to some bimbo recite her newest purchases while pretending I don’t want to throw myself from the roof.

Both archetypes were familiar in Clintonworld: the cold-eyed, self-serving strategists who build up themselves by building up one Clinton or both and the sycophants who prove their loyalty to a Clinton by devoting their entire lives to the family. Hillary wanted them to coexist. But

And Eisenstein was doing it,too!As a young boy Sasha had seen his Battleship Potemkin in the Khudoshestvennyi Theater on the Arbat Sqaure.The cashiers,ticket-takers,cloak room attendants, all were dressed in sailors' uniforms;it looked just grand,it set the mood.The world had acknowledged BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN as the best film and Eisenstein as the greatest director.Now the 'greatest' was loyally serving the tyrant and executioner.Here was an example for his argument with Gleb about genius and villainy. Gleb also read the paper and gave Sasha a meaningful glance. 'Well then one more sycophant.

With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

The heroes of humanitarian action are applauded: a good thing they're there to rescue our honour! If you denounce this shroud-waving, again there is applause: thank goodness you're there to say these things! It is often the same people who applaud. Sycophants, catechumens, proselytes, acolytes - to arms, all of you!

It is said that here we practise free discipline. That's wrong, quite wrong. It would be more correct to say that we are seeking, as best we can, to establish disciplined freedom, that state in which the child feels free to work, play and express himself without fear of those whose job it is to direct and stimulate his efforts into constructive channels. As things are we cannot expect of them high academic effort, but we can take steps to ensure that their limited abilities are exploited to the full." Here he smiled briefly, as if amused by some fleeting, private reflection. "We encourage them to speak up for themselves, no matter what the circumstances or the occasion; this may probably take the form of rudeness at first but gradually, through the influences of the various committees and the student council, we hope they will learn directness without rudeness, and humility without sycophancy. We try to show them a real relationship between themselves and their work, in preparation for the day when they leave school.

....the truth is no road to fortune, and the populace doesn’t give out ambassadorships, university chairs, or pensions.

There is so little backbone within the Republican Party that I think they should just take the next logical step and join Cirque du Soleil.

Unity is good, but conformity is not. Servitude is good, but slavery is not. Submission is good, but bondage is not. Individualism is good, but insubordination is not. Devotion is good, but radicalism is not. Loyalty is good, but sycophancy is not. Risk is good, but irresponsibility is not. Courage is good, but unruliness is not. Calm is good, but cowardice is not. Caution is good, but panic is not. Coolness is good, but apathy is not. Composure is good, but shyness is not. Excitement is good, but agitation is not. Force is good, but cruelty is not. Might is good, but bullying is not. Mercy is good, but weakness is not. Sympathy is good, but frailty is not. Order is good, but oppression is not. Power is good, but despotism is not. Serenity is good, but timidity is not. Government is good, but bureaucracy is not. Politics is good, but politicians are not. Leadership is good, but autocracy is not. Justice is good, but revenge is not. Chastisement is good, but wrath is not. Integrity is good, but self-righteousness is not. Mankind is good, but sinners are not. The world is good, but people are not.

There are two separate types of unsavory Trump appointee. Both belong to the same genus, the Apologist, defined by their shared willingness to excuse the inexcusable. But each is its own species with distinctive characteristics. The first species is the Sycophant. The second is the Silent Abettor. The intermingling motives—power, tribalism, and fear—are what keep both species nodding in agreement.

Let us have it plain: my society is comprised of metal-worshipers. They pray to metal, are owned by metal, and metal uses them; it shoots them, it stabs them. I witness its sycophants, grave zombies, moved about humorlessly as its agents. My minions are spiritually rapt as the ages climaxes in gunpowder. One notes that, upon first being handed a rifle -- by Burton or Speke? -- a chieftain blithely shot one of his own lackeys, expressing radiant joy as the man tumbled dead. Do not stop there, happy Klansman, but watch with me early in the morning as I come in from work: across the street here in the clean "burbs" your white policeman goes reverently to his car with a deer rifle coddled in his right arm like a precocious, beautiful child. This man lives with a pistol on his hip all week, but that is not enough, no, he is devout and it is the Christmas season. His own cowardice, affirmed by the use of guns, would not occur to him any more than the cowardice of God. The gun lobby, oh my peaceful friends, you may hate, but first you had better understand that it is a religion, only secondarily connected to the Bill of Rights. The thick-headed, sometimes even close to tearful, gaze you get when chatting with one of its partisans emanates from the view that they're holding a piece of God. There is no persuading them otherwise, even by a genus, because a life without guns implies the end of the known world to them. Any connection they make to our " pioneer past" is also a fraud, a wistful apology. Folks love a gun for what it can do. A murderer always thinks it was an accident, he says, as if a religious episode had passed over him.

If we do die, it will be with our weapons out, using our last breaths to spit on Godolia's name and taking as many of their pathetic sycophants down with us as we can. Our final words will be of fury and hatred and the defiance they believe to be extinct. So I ask you again, Frostbringer, would you prefer I sugarcoat it? Or would you like better to be reminded that no matter the outcome, we will not die as theirs?

Instead, the Emperor was at pains to demonstrate his confidence, his goodwill, his particular predilection for these people by pardoning them in advance—pardoning that sharp-toothed weasel, that champion bureaucrat; that sycophant courtier, that giddy theorist of criminal investigation who had swallowed such trashy bait; and that phantom functionary, that faceless person who had sprung from nowhere and was on his way back there.

What matters is that you learn how to manage yourself and others, before your industry eats you alive. Micromanagers are egotists who can’t manage others and they quickly get overloaded. So do the charismatic visionaries who lose interest when it’s time to execute. Worse yet are those who surround themselves with yes-men or sycophants who clean up their messes and create a bubble in which they can’t even see how disconnected from reality they are.

Annwyl didn't know or care. She hated the gods, pretty much all of them. But more than gods, she hated humans who did horrible things while proclaiming themselves holy and righteous because of their gods. Yet of all the holy sycophants she'd had to deal with the last few years, Annwyl loathed most of all Priestess Abertha, the sister of Duke Salebiri and the biggest hypocrite Annwyl had ever had the displeasure of meeting ... Annwyl liked to call her, Priestess Fucking Abertha

Pardon me for budging into concoction of the aristocrats blowing their trumpets, the demagogues' doctrines, the antagonists' squeals, the hypocrites' assertions, the sycophants fawning adoration, the facebookers' slants, the youthful sneers, the pragmatic notions n of course some acquiescent aspirants....this facebook page is so bombarded by myriad posts....maddening to read n like all.....so here's wishing each one of the revered contestants all the best.....may the deserving win.....

Most marks come from the upper strata of society, which, in America, means that they have made, married, or inherited money. Because of this, they acquire status which in time they come to attribute to some inherent superiority, especially as regards matters of sound judgment in finance and investment. Friends and associates, themselves social climbers and sycophants, help to maintain this illusion of superiority. Eventually, the mark comes to regard himself as a person of vision and even of genius.

to linger in the factory after clocking-off time (though now a manager, simon had never ceased to think in the terms of his apprenticeship) would constitute a fatal admission that your home life was lacking or, worse, that you were trying to brownnose senior management

Who would have the courage to make a public protest about what was going on at Akelberg? Carla and Frieda had seen it with their own eyes, and they had Ilse König as a witness, but now they needed an advocate. There were no elected representatives anymore: all Reichstag deputies were Nazis. There were no real journalists, either, just scribbling sycophants. The judges were all Nazi appointees subservient to the government. Carla had never before realized how much she had been protected by politicians, newspapermen, and lawyers. Without them, she saw now, the government could do anything it liked, even kill people.

the thing is, if she and her father are going to have a healthy relationship into the future, it’s up to her to keep him in check because no one else is going to do it, he surrounds himself with what Mum calls his ‘court sycophants’, the people Yazz meets at his parties, mainly famous white people off the telly who see him as an honorary one of them she’s almost got there with Mum, although it was a hard slog, especially when she was fourteen or fifteen and Mum was prone to hysteria when she didn’t get her own way now she knows better than to try to control or contradict her daughter all Yazz needs to say these days is, don’t sass me, Mumsy! and she shuts up Dad’s on that learning curve too he’ll thank her in the end

Well,' said Staines, frowning slightly, 'that's very difficult to say—which to value higher. Honesty or loyalty. From a certain point of view one might say that honesty is a kind of loyalty—loyalty to the truth…though one would hardly call loyalty a kind of honesty! I suppose that when it came down to it—if I had to choose between being dishonest but loyal, or being disloyal but honest—I'd rather stand by my men, or by my country, or by my family, than by truth. So I suppose I'd say loyalty…I myself. But in others…in the case of others, I feel quite differently. I'd much prefer an honest friend to a friend who was merely loyal to me; and I'd much rather be loyal to an honest friend than to a sycophant. Let's say that my answer is conditional; in myself, I value loyalty; on others, honesty

HENRY MORGAN, the New York radio comedian, intellectual, sophisticate, “liberal” and whatnot, although being a very intelligent, clever and amusing person in himself, has more or less made his decadent views known on a variety of subjects through the medium of his radio work; and on the subject of family I gather this: A skit relates the horror of having to look through a family album of pictures, very well done, especially in delineating the horror which city men of the higher cognitive order have when they go through this routine. I have my sympathies with these high cognizers, but let us see how high it really is: I went through a family album tonight, with a magnifying glass, and heard my aunt relate histories, events, legends connected with the old forebears, and never before have I seen such glimpses into society, changing times, the law of families, lineal heritage and such; in no book have I ever seen so much, learned so much about human beings (if I may be permitted the phrase, Mr. Morgan and all ye sycophants). What does this mean, if it doesn’t mean that the so-called high consciousness, or complex understanding, or sensitive enlightenment, or whatnot of the city intellectual, is not high enough, or conscious enough, or complex enough, or understanding enough, or sensitive enough, or enlightened enough, or whatnot enough, if it is going to deny its vaunted intellectual powers a thorough and earnest study of the family album, with all the illuminative wonders and secrets therein, and all for the sake of fashionably shrinking back from the “Bourgeois horror” of such an album.

I fancy that many men would have arrived at wisdom if they had not fancied that they had already arrived, if they had not dissembled about certain traits in their character and passed by others with their eyes shut. For there is no reason for you to suppose that the adulation of other people is more ruinous to us than our own. Who dares to tell himself the truth? Who, though he is surrounded by a horde of applauding sycophants, is not for all that his own greatest flatterer? I beg you, therefore, if you have any remedy by which you could stop this fluctuation of mine, to deem me worthy of being indebted to you for tranquillity. I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness. Do you, then, take from me this trouble, whatever it be, and rush to the rescue of one who is struggling in full sight of land.

The Education Department controls the education given, and it is planned on foreign models, and its object is to serve foreign rather than native ends, to make docile Government servants rather than patriotic citizens; high spirits, courage, self-respect, are not encouraged, and docility is regarded as the most precious quality in the student; pride in country, patriotism, ambition, are looked on as dangerous, and English, instead of Indian, Ideals are exalted; the blessings of a foreign rule and the incapacity of Indians to manage their own affairs are constantly inculcated. What wonder that boys thus trained often turn out, as men, time-servers and sycophants, and, finding their legitimate ambitions frustrated, become selfish and care little for the public weal? Their own inferiority has been so driven into them during their most impressionable years, that they do not even feel what Mr. Asquith called the "intolerable degradation of a foreign yoke." India's

Consider what intemperate lovers undergo for the sake of evil desires, and how much exertion others expend for the sake of making profit, and how much suffering those who are pursuing fame endure, and bear in mind that all of these people submit to all kinds of toil and hardship voluntarily. Is it then not monstrous that they for no honorable reward endure such things, while we for the sake of the ideal good - that is not only the avoidance of evil such as wrecks our lives, but also the acquisition of virtue, which we may call the provider of all goods -- are not ready to bear every hardship? And yet would not anyone admit how much better it is, in place of exerting oneself to win someone else's wife, to exert oneself the discipline of one's desires; in place of enduring hardships for the sake of money, the train oneself to want little; instead of giving oneself trouble about getting notoriety; instead of trying to find a way to injure an envied person, to enquire how not to envy anyone; and instead of slaving, as sycophants do, to win false friends, to undergo suffering in order to possess true friends? Since toil and hardship are a necessity for all, both for those who seek better and worse, it is preposterous that those pursuing the better are not much more eager in their efforts than those for whom there is small hope of reward for all their pains. ... It remains for me to say that who is unwilling to exert himself almost always convicts himself as unworthy of good, since all good is gained by toil.

Unfortunately, we live in an era where once a person learns a bit of the Arabic language and memorizes the translation of the Qur’an, he thinks he has the right to make his own opinions regarding the Qur’an. The Blessed Prophet s said, “Whosoever explains the Qur’an from his own opinion is wrong even if he is right.” Modernists generally ignore the opinions and exegesis of the pious predecessors [al-salaf al-salihun] issuing fatwas that are based on their own whims. In our time, the modernist desires to embody all the greatest attributes in every field. If he can write simple Arabic, articulate himself in his native language, or deliver impromptu speeches, he sees himself the teacher of Junaid and Shiblõ in Taüawwuf and also a mujtahid in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). He introduces new ideas in the exegesis of the Qur’an without concern for the opinions of the pious predecessors or that his opinions contradict the aúódõth of the Blessed Prophet (PBUH).He is whimsical in matters of Dõn. He states his heart’s desire no matter how much it contradicts the Qur’an and the Sunna. Despite this, no one discredits him, protests his incompetence, or shows him his deviation. If one gathers the courage to say, “This is against the teachings of the pious predecessors,” he is immediately branded a sycophant of the pious predecessors. He is condemned as ultra-orthodox, anti-intellectual, and someone not attuned to the modern world. Conversely, if a person rejects the explanations of the pious predecessors and lays out his own views on matters of Din he is looked upon as an authority [muúaqqiq] in the Din.

The reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge. What is called 'foreknowledge' cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the enemy situation. There are five sorts of secret agents to be employed. These are native, inside, doubled, expendable, and living. When these five types of agents are all working simultaneously and none knows their method of operation they are called 'The Divine Skein' and are the treasure of a sovereign. Native agents are those of the enemy's country people whom we employ. Inside agents are enemy officials whom we employ. Among the official class there are worthy men who have been deprived of office; others who have committed errors and have been punished. There are sycophants and minions who are covetous of wealth. There are those who wrongly remain long in lowly office; those who have not obtained responsible positions, and those whose sole desire is to take advantage of times of trouble to extend the scope of their own abilities. There are those who are two-faced, changeable, and deceitful, and who are always sitting on the fence. As far as all such are concerned you can secretly inquire after their welfare, reward them liberally with gold and silk, and so tie them to you. Then you may rely on them to seek out the real facts of the situation in their country, and to ascertain its plans directed against you. They can as well create cleavages between the sovereign and his ministers so that these are not in harmonious accord. Doubled agents are enemy spies whom we employ. When the enemy sends spies to pry into my accomplishments or lack of them, I bribe them lavishly, turn them around, and make them my agents. Expendable agents are those of our own spies who are deliberately given fabricated information. We leak information which is actually false and allow our own agents to learn it. When these agents operating in enemy territory are taken by him they are certain to report this false information. The enemy will believe it and make preparations accordingly. But our actions will of course not accord with this, and the enemy will put the spies to death. Sometimes we send agents to the enemy to make a covenant of peace and then attack.

Your beast's little trick didn't work on me,' she said with quiet steel. 'Apparently, an iron will is all it takes to keep a glamour from digging in. So I had to watch as Father and Elain went from sobbing hysterics into nothing. I had to listen to them talk about how lucky it was for you to be taken to some made-up aunt's house, how some winter wind had shattered our door. And I thought I'd gone mad- but every time I did, I would look at that painted part of the table, then at the claw marks farther down, and know it wasn't in my head.' I'd never heard of a glamour not working. But Nesta's mind was so entirely her own; she had put up such strong walls- of steel and iron and ash wood- that even a High Lord's magic couldn't pierce them. 'Elain said- said you went to visit me, though. That you tried.' Nesta snorted, her face grave and full of that long-simmering anger that she could never master. 'He stole you away into the night, claiming some nonsense about the Treaty. And then everything went on as if it had never happened. It wasn't right. None of it was right.' My hands slackened at my sides. 'You went after me,' I said. 'You went after me- to Prythian.' 'I got to the wall. I couldn't find a way through.' I raised a shaking hand to my throat. 'You trekked two days there and two days back- through the winter woods?' She shrugged, looking at the sliver she'd pried from the table. 'I hired that mercenary from town to bring me a week after you were taken. With the money from your pelt. She was the only one who seemed like she would believe me.' 'You did that- for me?' Nesta's eyes- my eyes, our mother's eyes- met mine. 'It wasn't right,' she said again. Tamlin had been wrong when we'd discussed whether my father would have ever come after me- he didn't possess the courage, the anger. If anything, he would have hired someone to do it for him. But Nesta had gone with that mercenary. My hateful, cold sister had been willing to brave Prythian to rescue me. ... I looked at my sister, really looked at her, at this woman who couldn't stomach the sycophants who now surrounded her, who had never spent a day in the forest but had gone into wolf territory... Who had shrouded the loss of our mother, then our downfall, in icy rage and bitterness, because the anger had been a lifeline, the cruelty a release. But she had cared- beneath it, she had cared, and perhaps loved more fiercely that I could comprehend, more deeply and loyally.

For a time, the press lord William Randolph Hearst did everything in his vast powers to keep the film “Citizen Kane” from finding an audience. He intimidated theater owners, refused to let ads run in his newspapers, and even pressured studio sycophants to destroy the negative. At first, the titan of San Simeon had his way: the film faded from view after a splashy initial release. But over the years, “Citizen Kane” came to be recognized for the masterpiece it is, and now regularly tops lists as the greatest film ever made.

You are alive! True magic involves the reduction of properties to simplicity – making them transmutable so that they can be utilized in fresh directions, bearing fruit many times. Know deliberation, self-consciousness and concentration to be antithetical to magic, and sycophancy to be a way of making stupid.

A chef or restaurateur who listens to either is either at risk to become complacent and dependent on sycophants or depressed and trying to follow the quick changing tastes of their diners.

In the state’s way of thinking, there are only two possible archetypes of the good citizen: the serf and the sycophant. If you fall outside those two categories, you are a rebel to be watched or a traitor to be crushed.

Religion is a personal thing and every man has the right to choose his own, or practice it the way he likes. Most of the sycophants that use religion to defame the character of Buhari are not even practicing their acclaimed self righteousness. Many of them are occultists. They kill and conduct daily human sacrifices to remain in power

You can see right away,’ the old man said, ‘that he hates us but hides his hatred under a layer of sycophancy. They all hate us. How could they not? If I were them I’d hate us too. In fact, I’d hate us even without being them. Take it from me, Rachel, if you just look at us you can see that we deserve nothing but hatred and contempt. And maybe a bit of pity. But that pity cannot come from the Arabs. They themselves need all the pity in the world.

politicians are like movie stars. They surround themselves with sycophants and yes-men and people to whisper nice shit into their ears—and a lot of them start believing it, because they want to believe it.

sycophant of all. By the age of twenty-two, young Ji-hoon

sycophancy

Since a president can easily slide into a comfort zone of sycophants, it can’t hurt him to see a few demonstrators with rude T-shirts injecting a small dose of irreverence into a triumphant appearance. In the age of stage-managed events for television, however, White House aides don’t like it.

deeply the malaise of sycophancy, careerism, genuflection

It was the scientist in me, you see. It was the desire to see all the everything beyond the Golden City. To escape the sycophants, the provincial. The hunger to know. It is my greatest weapon. But the mask conceals this. And a lie meant for my people ensnares everyone. Even my enemies. They think they have me-- a king reduced to chains. But I know a secret that I cannot yet tell. First I must put villainous means to proper ends... and let them feed my hunger to know.

I saw how the Clinton Machine’s appalling leadership style endangered law enforcement officers, the military, and the American people in general. And with Hillary Clinton’s latest rise, I realize that her own leadership style—volcanic, impulsive, enabled by sycophants, and disdainful of the rules set for everyone else—hasn’t changed a bit.

In a democracy, writes Hamilton in Federalist 71, the people commonly intend the public good, but they do not “always reason right about the means of promoting it.” They sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of…sycophants… [and] the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it…. When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure. Humility