Damned by Faint Praise in Literature.
- In the Boojumverse, Christian Cultists are known for being eager to speak well of everyone. Thus, when the only praise they can give Station Master Lee is to say that she doesn't actively persecute them, Izrael knows that Lee must be a very terrible Station Master indeed.
- In The Caine Mutiny, the protagonist, Willie Keith, is horrified to find that he has been rated as "Above average" (meaning generally useless, despite it actually being a 3/5 rating) on his service testimonial. Lt. Commander DeVriess adds that Keith "[...] seems to have the potential for becoming a capable officer [...]."* It doesn't take a genius to realize that he is being disparaged.
- For lack of anything better to say, Jack Ryback from Mike Nelson's Death Rat! at one point earnestly praises his literary agent as "the most well-groomed man I've ever met."
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot: After Greg's team has lost every game, Coach Patel gives them a speech that while they might not end up being professional athletes, there are other (lame) jobs they can take up in the future. Greg notes that it's not particularly encouraging. He leaves with an award that congratulates him for "attempting to learn a sport".
- Discworld:
- In Maskerade, Agnes Nitt is tired of being described as having "a wonderful personality and good hair", as if that were all there was to her.
- In Feet of Clay Captain Carrot is writing home and struggles to find something positive to say about Nobby, eventually settling for "is still Nobby, only more than he was."
- Similarly in Men at Arms, when discussing who might be promoted to captain of the guard, Carrot says he's too inexperienced, Colon absolutely doesn't want the job and Nobby... "is more suited in his current role" is the description he eventually settles on.
- In Jingo, Vetinari tells Leonard of Quirm to tell Colon and Nobby they've been selected for his top-secret mission to Klatch because of their "special qualities." While Colon thinks of it as an honor (though he's actually scared out of his mind the whole time) Nobby's the one who figures that this trope is in play. "What's so special about 'special qualities'? Limpets have special qualities."
- Used by Reacher Gilt in Going Postal, where he manages to utterly dismiss the Post Office as an irrelevence to modern communication while supposedly saying how much he admires it.Reacher Gilt loved the Post Office and blessed its little cotton socks. He was very grateful for its assistance during this difficult period and looked forward to future co-operation, although of course the Post Office, in the real modern world, would never be able to compete on anything other than a very local level. Mind you, someone has to deliver the bills, ho ho...
- Judy Moody: When Stink is sick, Judy tries to convince him to eat a prune because it's healthy for him. He is not convinced and asks her to say a nice thing about prunes. She sniffs one and says, "They don't smell like buffalo droppings."
- The Divine Comedy: Dante starts a conversation with his guide by referring to him as "My master, you who can defeat all things except for those tenacious demons who tried to block us at the entryway," reminding his master of a damning failure in a conversation that has nothing to do with that.
- The Drowned Cities: Mahlia informs soldier-boy Ocho that she saved his life because "you act almost human," in contrast to his even more sadistic comrades.
- In one Elephant & Piggie book, Piggie plays the trumpet for Gerald but the sounds she makes on it are so horrifically screechy and discordant that they can in no way be described as "music". When she asks Gerald what he thought, he tactfully says that her trumpet is loud and shiny and that she holds it very well.
- Emma: Emma really resents Mrs. Elton. Her close friends know about her opinion and they quite agree because Mrs. Elton is really obnoxious. However, Emma doesn't want other people to know about it, so she might mention that Mrs. Elton is "very pleasant and very elegantly dressed."
- Trope Namer is Epistle to Doctor Arbuthnot by Alexander Pope:Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. - The Great Brain: In Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse, Will throws an overly elaborate funeral for a dead Prospector as a lark, only to be disturbed when no one can think of a eulogy to give the dead man besides that he bathed before visiting the local brothel (unlike most prospectors).
- In The Half-Made World, the Engines of the Line clearly do not believe in unduly flattering their minions. At one point they authorize a character's Field Promotion on the grounds that he is "not significantly less adequate" than the man he's replacing.
- The tie-in book for Fist of Fun includes a spoof academic article that accuses the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful of doing this to God himself in its last lines:He gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty, who has made all things well.- "Well", it insists, is an insulting understatement, and suggests this alternative:
He gave us eyes to see them, and then he made elastic
How great is God Almighty, who has made all things fantastic. - Harry Potter:
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: After Sirius Black and Remus Lupin reveal that Ron's pet rat Scabbers is actually Peter Pettigrew, the man who betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort, Pettigrew tries to beg Ron for mercy on the grounds that "I was your rat... I was a good pet." Sirius retorts, "If you make a better rat than human, it's not much to boast about, Peter."
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: This is how Hestia Jones, the witch who helped to take the Dursleys to their safe house, reacted when Dudley told Harry that he wasn't "a waste of space." However, Harry had to tell her that this was the best thing he'd ever said to Harry and was his way of saying anything appreciative to Harry.
- Hilary Tamar: Julia describes Daphne's skill at knitting as "undoubtedly greater than mine".
- In The Iliad, and many other Greek poems, most of the characters are given "epithets", descriptors that refer to their titles, feats, or skills. For instance, Agamemnon is referred to as "brilliant Agamemnon", "wide-ruling Agamemnon", or "Agamemnon son of Atreus". In general, you can tell how important or skilled a character is supposed to be by the kind of epithets they receive — characters like Achilles or Hector get a new and impressive one pretty much every time they're mentioned, while lesser characters tend to have only a few epithets that border on Trivially Obvious. Paris, though, is probably the biggest example of this trope, as his two epithets are "son of Priam" and "godlike" (meaning he looks like a god) — even though they're compliments, they're basically saying that being Priam's son and looking pretty are the only things Paris has ever accomplished. On the other hand, many of Agamemnon's listed epithets can be just snark (especially those voiced by Achilles) because Agamemnon was often shown as speaking and/or behaving exactly the opposite of those epithets (i.e. in a mean, petty or dumb manner) either just before or shortly after being thus addressed. There can be genuine praise, conventional salutations or hidden sarcasm embedded in how those characters (and the poem reciter) may address each character.
- Played for drama with a hint of tragedy in Komarr, when Ekaterin defends her emotionally and verbally abusive husband with "He never hit me." Lampshaded when Miles, listening to this, fervently hopes that his wife will have better things to say about him.
- Reversed by Dorothy L. Sayers in Murder Must Advertise. At one point, describing one character's comments on another, our detective protagonist Lord Peter uses the phrase "...praise him with faint damns."
- Much Ado About Grubstake: Discussed but subverted with Lacey Bernaise's status as "the epitome of femininity in Grubstake." Taking in Lacey's frilly wardrobe, Arley observes this "normally wouldn't have been saying all that much, except that in Lacey's case, it was."
- The victim in the sci-fi murder mystery The Naked Sun, Dr. Rikaine Delmarre, is consistently praised by those who knew him as "a good Solarian" (Solaria being the planet on which the story is set). What the audience comes to realize is, while his devotion to civic duty was indeed above reproach, that's the only good thing anyone can think to say about him. In truth, a lot of people actively hated him.
- The Name of the Rose: During a conference when they're surrounded by monks and church dignitaries, William credits the Inquisitor Bernard Gui with the biggest decision of his (William's) life. This is a compliment to everyone but Bernard and William's student Adso, who both know William's biggest decision was leaving the Inquisition...
- In Neverwhere Door sees Richard's old girlfriend, and looking for something nice to say comes up with "She's very... clean."
- In Jane Yolen's historical novel Queen's Own Fool, when Queen Mary is about to marry Darnley, she asks her friends' opinion of him. They don't want to upset her by pointing out that Darnley is a Jerkass, so they dodge the issue by praising his other qualities.
- At the beginning of Reserved for the Cat, Ninette Dupond is chosen to fill in for the star, La Augustine (who has sprained her ankle) for a matinee production of the ballet La Sylphide. She has done a good job, but the following day, she and the other sujets (soloists) are reading the reviews and most of them are about the star's injury and her performance rated only, "Sujet Ninette Dupond was called upon to replace the etoile and managed a credible, if sometimes naïve, interpretation." One of the other sujets laughs and comments, "You are damned with faint praise, Ninette." (It's the one good review from La Figaro, the newspaper thought to be for artists and thinkers, that causes trouble for Ninette.)
- Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerillas 1939-1945 by Max Hastings contains an inversion: he is generally unimpressed by the wartime spooks but describes the British secret services as "the least ineffective in the world."
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Sansa is unable to think of any honest compliments for young king Joffrey except that he is "comely." It's pretty much the only good thing about him.
- The only honest compliment that Ned can give Robert about his reign was that he was a better king than his predecessor.
- Griff says that Ser Rolly Duckfield is a "solid" man, but disagrees with him being raised to the Kingsguard. He worries that, at this rate, the illustrious order will be filled with men "each more blindingly adequate than the last."
- In The Sibyl in Her Grave, Daphne knits Maurice a sweater as a Christmas gift. Julia, a notorious klutz, diplomatically says, "It is not for me to speak disparagingly of Daphne's skill at knitting, as it is undoubtedly greater than mine."
- The Sprightly Companion, a musical instruction book published by Henry Playford in 1695, describes the oboe as 'not much inferior to the Trumpet.'
- In Wolf Hall, after Thomas Cromwell returns from a trip he tells his wife Liz that she's sweeter to look at than Cardinal Wolsey was. She laughs and tells him "that's the smallest compliment a woman ever received", which he jokes is a shame because he was working on it the whole way home.
