Care for yourself enough to listen carefully to what you say to yourself.

Excellent flatterers welcome attentive audiences; mighty potentates enjoy public praise. In the most pleasing situation, a flatterer would genuinely admire the flatteree, please that person, please other present company, be pleased to stagger rivals, and get something out of it: applause, promotion, a favor, reciprocal praise. Flattery is as social as a banquet.

A little flattery, like a warm bath and soft towel, will let you get along with yourself, lie down with yourself, and sleep.

Quotations cause all kinds of trouble.

[D]ifferent people have different quotational gravity.

Quotations calcify into clichés.

Misquotation is quotology’s swamp. Amateur quoters mix and mangle Shakespeare and Scripture. Professors gaffe and printers bungle. It’s a mess we must wade into.