So, why not forget asking for criticism and simply compliment oneself? That's what 19th-century novelist Samuel Butler advised, saying, "The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places."

Butler's satirical comment follows in the footsteps of Shakespeare. In Julius Caesar, as the conspirators plot to kill the ruler, Decius mocks Caesar with the lines: "But when I tell him he hates flatterers, / He says he does, being then most flattered."

So far we've mentioned praise ("an expression of approval") and flattery ("insincere or excessive praise"); we'll close where we began, leaving Oscar Wilde to dish up the last word on compliments: "Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay."