My cousin and her husband, both of whom are very dear to my heart, had a little girl who died the day after she was born (this was back in 1979). A few years ago the husband told me that if Daina had lived, he would have wanted her to be like me. It was the most beautiful compliment anyone has ever given me.
the best compliment i can remember was actually rather funny at the time…not meaning to be smug, i am excellent in giving oral sex to women(thats right). i was with this young lady that had a stong southern accent, and during the deed she decides to tell me"you shore can eat some pussy". yep. i almost cracked up. i just about decided to get up and leave. it was a nice compliment but what a way to share it eh?
and for a bad compliment, i guess it would have to be like has been mentioned, about the only thong i’m good at doesnt pay, unless i decided to become a gigalo(sp)…
I was a contractor on an IT project. At a meeting the client manager of the project was talking about getting more people and said “We need another rowrrbazzle.” Knowing that I was a standard was great.
I get a perverse satisfaction when I hear people speak about how they hate grammar Nazis and about how IQ and standardized test scores don’t matter.
My gf just related this to me: Her daughter was speaking to her and a couple other people at school and Miranda ( the daughter) was talking about something that one of us had told her. She started by saying “My Mom said…etc”. Then in response to another question regarding something I had done with them, she said " My Mike took us there".
I was very touched by that:)
I was in a high chool production of “Camalot” as a Knight. I played a few not-speaking roles including one where a bunch of Knights and I try to ambush Lancelot.
After one night’s show, an old threate veretan came up to me. We all admired him because besides his classical theatre training and experence, he had an S.A.G. card.
He told me: “You were the only one in the show who held a sword correctly.”
Aw, shucks…
I hadn’t thought of the ‘my …’ possession at all. I have three people who when speaking about me refer to me as ‘My Cat’, two of them are married and they jokingly argue over who really has the right to call me that. It is a great compliment, to me, that they call me that. I earned it in a way because they know they can depend on me for anything.
As much as I enjoy the ‘My Cat’ compliment, the best compliments are from my husband of almost 16 years…
“You are beautiful”
“You are more beautiful than when we married”
“You are my best friend”
“You have no idea what you do to me”
I’m still trying to figure out who he’s looking at when he says these things as I would never be picked for a beauty contest.
Can’t think of any back-handed compliments.
Last year my boss said to me “You know – you are the smartest person that has ever worked for me.”
I figure he must not have had very many people work for him up to this point.
“You look like you own the land you stand on.”
“You look so damn…Majestic.”
From a little girl: “When I grow up, I want to be Magic like T.”
An ex-girlfriend accused me of putting a spell on her to make her unable to resist me sexually.
Oh, I try to treasure all the compliments I get. But of course, some of them will flee my memory.
One of the earliest compliments I still treasure is from my 6th grade teacher, who assigned me a certain project because I “had the patience of Job.” I really needed that compliment (any compliment) at that time. And this woman was rather a tough cookie, so any compliment meant a lot.
I tend to remember my art-related compliments: An older artist (whose work is amazing) bought one of my painted plates and say, “It is hilarious.” I was so pleased that she understood my sense of humor!
I get a lot of wonderful emails about a rather lengthy art tutorial web site I’ve written. The emails that I treasure the most are from people who can’t afford art classes or lots of art books, or are from out-of-the-way places where art resources are scarse. “Thank you for making this tutorial for people like me”, one girl wrote to me. Oh, bless her heart. That’s why I wrote the tutorial in the first place! 
A back-handed compliment came from the parent of a client. (I work for the developmentally disabled, and this particular client’s mom was very active and “hands-on” in his life, checking up on him often, etc. etc.) I am decent at my job, but not the mom’s first choice. (I’m not very “domestic”, not a great cook of the “meat and potatoes” type, etc.) BUT, as the mom told me one day, “I’ll say this for you, I know that you are always honest with me.” (Or something to that effect.) I guess a lot of my coworkers were better cooks than me, but they weren’t as honest with her as I was, and tended to leave her in the dark. I was complimented by that, because even if I was not her first choice (or second, or third) at least she knew she could trust me.
In all seriousness, a friend asked me to impregnate her.
Hanging out with a friend of mine who I’ve sung with in various groups… he is infinitely more talented than I and knows the struggles I’ve had with my (limited) voice. A Diana Krall CD was on in the background and he halted the conversation, indicated the music, and said, “That’s what I think of when I think of your voice.” I just about started crying.
I was talking with a good friend who was working the optical engineering field at the time, about how the waveguide thingmajigs she was doing QC on worked and what was going on inside them. She was cheerfully rambling about the difference between polarized and non-polarized light and what it meant at the photon level–only at some point, she started saying “dolphins” in place of “photons,”* and derailed herself.
I helpfully launched into an opinion that, as intriguing as purported Navy experiments with mine-sniffing dolphins were, that they didn’t go nearly far enough with advanced dolphin technology, and that I was hopeful her work would lead to such things as a phased-array coherent-dolphin-beam weapon.
When she stopped laughing, she said, “That’s what I like about you, Drastic. You really think outside the box.” That was pretty touching.
[sub]*After the digression, I thought that it was actually a neat verbal typo. It made me picture dolphins in bounding leaps out of the water as they swam, which seems to me to be a beautiful way of picturing that weird particle/wave nature of light. She didn’t think my reverse-engineering of her word choice was really correct, but I still like it.[/sub]
Best compliment: At the end of my Ph. D. dissertation prospectus examination, I was asked to leave the room while the members of my committee conferred with one another. One of the members of my committe is one of the two best-respected scholars in my area of specialization in the country, and he agreed to sit on my dissertation committe despite having emeritus status. My committe chair later told me that this member of my committee called my prospectus, “Incomparably the best I have ever seen.” Hearing that took my breath away.
Best backhanded compliment: I was once giving a presentation in a graduate seminar, and I made a statement and asked the professor, “Is that correct?” His answer: “Grammatically.”
People who know me consider me something of an eccentric. (I tend to live in my own little world, and if you want to visit, okay.) One day, after I had said or done something (I don’t remember what) completely natural for me that had knocked everyone around me for a loop, a coworker said to me in complete sincerity:
“Snug, sometimes I have trouble remembering that you’re not a fictional character.”
I’m not sure that he meant it as such, but I think that’s the greatest compliment that I’ve ever received.
When my hardassed English teacher approached me near the start of the year and asked if he could make copies of an essay of mine to show other teachers. When I asked why, he told me, “Because this is the first time this topic has been done right.” I scored 100’s or 90’s on my essays for the rest of the year too, which is a compliment in itself, because the next highest mark he gave anyone in any of his grade 12 classes on any essay was 85.
Weee! A chance to gloat!
Best backhanded compliment: Recently, one of my friends was trying to stary an argument with me. One of my other friends said to him, “Stop, you’re going to make him angry.” I don’t usually get many compliments from other guys (barring professors, employers, and the like), but man, that one really brought a smile to my face.
I think the one compliment I most thoroughly enjoyed however, was one paid me by a girl who had a crush on me. She told me I’d probably barely even have to touch her to make her orgasm. It turned out she was right 
End gloat.
This gives me a good idea for a new thread.
Cool Thread. Like the stories I have read so far.
For me, besides the wonderful compliments I have received from my wife and children, which are the ones that truly matter:
I was at a friend from high school’s wedding, when another fella that I knew showed up. We saw each other and he said “at the rehearsal dinner, I would like to talk”. He was very much more of a friend of the groom - we had a barely passable relationship - so I assumed he wanted to confront me about something heavy that occurred in our teens and frankly, I was not ready for it.
I went to the dinner and grabbed a drink or three and pounded them to get ready. Sure enough, he showed up with his wife, made the social rounds, then came to me. He said "do you remember that night I had to work late (as a janitor - he was a football star and the high school had set him up with a higher than minimum wage job as a janitor that didn’t conflict with practice times and got him money) and I was trying to stay awake and so you read to me from a book? Frankly I didn’t, but it sounded like something I would do, so I said “okay, sure”. And he said “I want you to know that I had never read a book for pleasure before that, but after you read me those couple of chapters, I had to know how the book ended, so I bought it. And I have never been without a book since. Thank you for giving me the gift of reading”
I was in awe.
Worst compliment:
I was walking down the street in Amsterdam. A beautiful looking woman was walking the other way. A homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk calls out to her, “Damn, girl, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve seen all day.”
It was 9:30 in the morning.
Marcie accepted my hand in marriage. What greater compliment could anyone receive?