I nearly floated down the hall the first time one of my kids volunteered, “I love you”.
Offering it first as opposed to in response to me saying it.
-B
“You drenched my shirt” What could make a guy feel better?
HELL YEAH BABY!
Probably the best compliment I’ve gotten was from a former boss-he had heard a rumour I was quitting and phoned me at home to ask if it was true. When I said I wasn’t quitting, he said-“Oh thank God, working with you is the only thing that makes the place tolerable!”
The best backhanded compliment I’ve gotten is when a friend refused to play trivial pursuit with me anymore because she was convinced I was cheating and had taken the answer cards home and memorized the answers.
I nearly floated down the hall the first time one of my kids volunteered, “I love you”.
Offering it first as opposed to in response to me saying it.
-B
I’ve stared at that last sentence & that’s as good as it’s gonna get…
that the praise we treasure most comes from the unclouded hearts of children:) 
Sorry - I got a posting error the first time - didn’t mean to double post.
As far as back-handed compliments - it occurred the first time I bumped my wife’s cervix. Validation!
Best backhand, from the ‘top girl’ at my Senior school, near the end of the last term, “You are not nearly as bad as they say you are”.
Best, “You are the best Uncle in the world, Uncle Bippy”
(oh and I got a hat to prove it, if there are any other uncles who might disspute my title )
Cheers, Bippy
I was on an internship a couple years ago and dating a girl who was in the same intern program as me. We had started dating but she broke it off after a couple of weeks because she was scared we would become too attached and it would only create problems.
A week later we had seen eachother pretty frequently and any casual observer would still think we were dating. I found this odd and sent an e-mail to my best friend, but I was dumb and accidently sent it to her.
When she wrote back, she could have been mad or any number of other things. But instead she told me that she still wanted to be with me.
The one line that stuck out in that letter: “You make me feel beautiful.”
Awww. I’m gettin’ all misty just thinking about it.
The second-best compliment I’ve ever gotten also came from her: “I think I’d be lying if I didn’t say that was the best orgasm of my life.” 
I told a friend of mine from Staten Island that she resembled Gloria Steinem and Susan Sontag due to the grey streak running through her otherwise dark hair. I assumed, since she is a lawyer and a feminist, that more than one person had already told her this.
It turns out no one had ever told her. Months passed, and she brought up my comment, telling me it was like a gift that kept on giving. I took it as a great complement that something I had said could make a memorable and positive impact on someone.
When I was in the Marine Corps, my last 6 months were spent in an office where a large percentage of the people were from the infantry. I still don’t understand why they were all there, we weren’t an infantry unit. In my experience, many men in the USMC do not think that women should be in the military at all, and the men I worked with were not an exception.
I try to be very professional at work. I’m not a giggly girl, nor do I flirt with anyone at work. At the end of my contract when I was getting ready to leave, one of the infantryguys stopped me. I will remember what he told me for the rest of my life.
He had been one of those men that no matter what I did, he didn’t want to interact with me, he’d be professional, of course, but I really got the feeling that he didn’t like me, and at the time, I didn’t know why. I should mention he outranked me.
Anyways, my last week in, he stopped me and told me that in all his 20-something years in the service, he had never liked women in the USMC, and that I had changed his perception. He said he would never look at military women the same, and would give them a chance first before he judged them. It had never been my intent to impress people, I was just being myself, but it was the best compliment ever.
Best backhanded compliment (from a neighbor): “SlowMind has a Ph. D. in physics, but you wouldn’t know it.” (I think she was saying I don’t fit the no personal skills stereotype, but …")
This weekend I went to visit my best friend who is in grad school at the University of Notre Dame. On Friday, my friend and I were eating lunch when we were approached by a classmate of hers. He introduced himself to me, spoke to my friend about their classes, and told us about a trip to Medjugorje he was about to take. (He did most of the talking.) He then put his hand on my shoulder and said to me, “You are so full of light. Really, you’re luminous.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just thanked him.
Later, I thought that since I had just come from Mass before I met him, maybe he was seeing the spirit of God within me or something.
Then I thought, boy, he really knows how to hit on a Catholic girl.
I felt good all day…hell, I still feel good!
Not counting those from GonZoGal, here’s my favorite, from a friend of mine:
“Ron, you make me feel like I’ve been drinking all day.”
My favorite:
“You ruined my life.”
It was right after an hour of amazing sex, and my girlfriend said that no sex could ever compare. grin
Best backhanded:
“You smelled nice yesterday.”
From my son…“I hope that I can be as good a Dad as you are”
Wow!
After my wife died, an old acquaintace whom I’d known as a teenager came back into my life, and I fell for her in a big way. She was willing to date because she enjoyed my company, but was marriage-shy, having been divorced three times.
Finally, one day, she came to me and said she’d had a revelation: “You treat me the way Dad treats Mom,” she said. (Her parents are of the very married sort, who recently celebrated their 55th anniversary)
A year and a half later, we were married. It’s been four and a half years now, getting happier all the time. That’s one hell of a compliment.
Best comment came from the son of a stroke patient I had taken care of during one of my rotations at a hospital away from the main one for my med school. Apparently after I had finished the rotation and started back at the main hospital, the patient had been transferred to the rehab center at the main hospital and I ran into the son in the cafeteria. He gave me a big hug and thanked me for taking care of his mother and him and told me that I would be a good doctor someday.
Worst compliment was one of the comments from an evaluations from an attending “Clipper is very punctual and has a great sense of style.” Great! I can now be a show-in for a residency that has its own fashion squad.
You are one of the least benightedly unintelligent people it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid
meeting
I know it’s from HHGTTG, but someone said it to me, and I thought it should be posted here
We were working on a project and had hit a brick wall when the big chief head honcho got to hear about it and he came into the meeting room to say:
“Get curly chick in here, she’ll know what to do”
Everyone laughed and looked at me, as I went a fetching shade of vermillion. Then he spotted me and said
“Shite. We’re in BIG trouble.”
Best backhander?
I had been seeing this guy for a while and on the first night I met the mates, at the end of the evening, the best mate bestowed this upon me:
“I see he has finally cancelled his account at Bimbos R Us”
I was in the city waiting at the bus stop to go Uni a few months ago.
Then this young man in a business suit comes up to me and introduces himself and tells me that he had seen me from afar and just had to tell me how beautiful I was looking that morning.
I was very amused and a little confused. 