The earth has become one big village, with telephones laid on from one end to the other, and air transport, both speedy and safe. - Wyndham Lewis

Yet it is true that in our democratic society flattery does take the form of saying to people that they are like other people — rather than unlike or possessing something peculiarly their own. And the personal advantages that are chosen to flatter them about are those that they share with great crowds of other people.

I should invent very little if I were a flatterer. […] I should just encourage people to describe themselves, and use the description they seemed most to relish.

That is the sacrosanct period-of-periods — the Victorian death, the birth of ! Ah the pioneer naughtiness of the "Naughty Nineties", that 'Made the World Safe for Homosexuality!'