I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your effort to believe it.

Wilson Mizner was known in early-20th-century American theatrical and social circles for his caustic wit and aphorisms about human vanity, money, and social performance. This remark fits the milieu of drawing-room banter and backstage talk in which compliments could function as currency—often delivered hastily, strategically, or without genuine observation. The line reflects Mizner’s persona as a professional skeptic of social niceties: he targets not flattery itself, but the sloppy, overblown kind that forces the recipient into the awkward labor of pretending to accept it. The quip likely circulated as one of his standalone epigrams rather than as a line from a single dramatic work.

Mizner’s quip turns the usual complaint about flattery on its head: the problem is not merely that praise is insincere, but that it is so lazily or extravagantly delivered that the recipient must work to accept it. “Careless flattery” suggests praise offered without attention to truth, proportion, or the listener’s self-knowledge. The line also implies a social transaction—flattery asks the target to play along, to pretend belief for the flatterer’s benefit. Mizner, known for epigrams about human motives, frames bad flattery as an imposition: it drains you because it demands emotional labor and self-deception rather than offering genuine recognition.