"The habit of paying compliments kept a..." - Quote by Charles Dickens

“There was not one straight floor from the foundation to the roof; the ceilings were so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, that old women might have told fortunes in them better than in grouts of tea.”

“Dickens writes that an event, "began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.”

“Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.”

“They told me I was everything. 'Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.”

“He that loves to be flattered is worthy o' the flatterer.”

“Live loath'd and long,Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears,You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time fliesCap and knee slaves, vapors, and minute jacks.”

“Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.”

“Politeness and an affable address are our best introduction.”

“A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.”