As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best the people honor and praise. The next the people fear, and the next the people hate. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'we did it ourselves! Lao-Tzu Leaders
We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues. Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names. Marcus Tullius Cicero Philosophy Desire Books
Nothing is more praiseworthy, nothing more suited to a great and illustrious man than placability and a merciful disposition. Marcus Tullius Cicero
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it. Socrates
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land. Herman Melville Children
Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. John Keats
If anything, if you can get somebody interested in something and get them excited, that's great. You should be praised for having opened the debate and having asked the right questions. Oliver Stone
Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard. John Steinbeck Courage
Now, God be praised, that to believing souls gives light in darkness, comfort in despair. William Shakespeare Soul
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. Carl Friedrich Gauss Meditation
O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it. Saint Teresa of Avila Soul
Neither a life of anarchy nor one beneath a despot should you praise; to all that lies in the middle a god has given excellence. Aeschylus
There are some who praise a man free from disease; to me no man who is poor seems free from disease but to be constantly sick. Sophocles
I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so. Romain Rolland War
