"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. "
— Winston S. Churchill

"Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one."
— Edmund Burke

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment."
— Jane Austen

"He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.
"
— Napoleon Bonaparte

"Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"…she is admired from afar. These admirers court her in secret, in the safety of their dreams."
— Whitney Otto (How to Make an American Quilt)

"You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never
Rises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust. Urfaust, Faust I und Faust II)

"There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"(…) jest naiwnością mniemanie, jakoby zachwyt nasz wobec dzieła sztuki z nas samych pochodził: że zachwyt ten w sporej mierze nie rodzi się z ludzi, ale między ludźmi, i jest to tak jakbyśmy wzajemnie zmuszali się do zachwytu (choć nikt „osobiście” nie jest zachwycony). / It is naive to believe that the admiration for a masterpiece is spontaneous. The admiration, to a great extent, is not born within people but between people, as if we forced each other to admire (while no one is “personally” enraptured). (Dziennik, 1956, XX, Wtorek I)"
— Witold Gombrowicz (Diary: Volume One)