October 2017
Beginner
240 pages
4h 19m
English
I know someone who used to do a bit of fortune telling, tarot card reading, astrology – you know the sort of thing – to earn some money on the side. He had a list of things he could say to people which made them feel he’d really got the measure of them, but in fact you could say them to absolutely anyone. One of these was, ‘Ah! I see you’re not easily won over by flattery … ’. I particularly loved the irony of this one, which apparently used to go unnoticed by everyone on the receiving end of it.
If you look up flattery in a dictionary, you’ll see that it means excessive or insincere praise. Which makes the phrase ‘empty flattery’ almost meaningless, since the whole point is that flattery is empty praise. ...
Read now
Unlock full access