“The refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.”
This quote has no known author and is recorded as an anonymous proverb.
About this quote
La Rochefoucauld wrote the Maxims after the collapse of his political career, and this maxim is one of the sharpest of his observations about self-regard. The joke is that the modest performance is itself a bid for attention, and a very effective one.
Source: Maxims