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How to Give a Compliment Without Being Creepy

I got to BYU - a large university with a lot of beautiful people.
Hardly a day goes by when I don't tell some random girl I've never met that she's beautiful.
Almost every time, the compliment makes her day. The times when it doesn't, the worst that happens is that she says "thanks" insincerely or in a confused way.
It is entirely possible to compliment someone on their looks without being creepy or sexually harassing. Even I can do it, and let's be honest: I can be a jerk of a flirt sometimes.
If you don't know someone and your first sentence is a compliment for the purpose of flirting or otherwise getting the person to like you, then that looks like a compliment, but it's really flattery, and in Dale Carnegie's words "it ought to fail and it usually does."
On the other hand, if you sincerely compliment someone with the goal of making their day better, it's almost impossible for this to go wrong.
Since sexual harassment is such a real possibility, and since I want the person to actually feel better because of the compliment, I usually move on after complimenting them so I can go where I need to go and do what I need to do.
If I want to continue the conversation, I'll sometimes start the compliment with "not hitting on you...", because I recognize how awkward it could be if this girl has a random person she doesn't know hitting on her, and it would be so much more than awkward to feel sexually harassed. My purpose in compliments is to make the person feel better, not worse.
I don't see the point of having a compliment to give and not giving it.
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