quotations about hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is folly; for it is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man seems to appear, than to keep up the appearance of being what he is not.
LORD BURLEIGH
attributed, Day's Collacon
We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Heretics
Another little phase of everyday life that might be amusing if it were not so pathetic is the pious way some old skinflint whose specialty is foreclosing widows' mortgages can act in church.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
Hypocrisy is a spiritual pollution. In its theological consideration it implies a counterfeiting religion and virtue: an affectation of the name joined with a disaffection to the thing.
WILLIAM BATES
The Whole Works of the Rev. W. Bates
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
There never was a hypocrite so disguised, but he had yet some mark or other to be known by.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Perhaps, there is not a more effectual key to the discovery of hypocrisy than a censorious temper. The man possessed of real virtue knows the difficulty of attaining it; and is, of course, more inclined to pity others, who happen to fail in the pursuit. The hypocrite, on the other hand, having never trod the thorny path, is less induced to pity those who desert it for the flowery one. He exposes the unhappy victim without compunction, and even with a kind of triumph; not considering that vice is the proper object of compassion; or that propensity to censure is almost a worse quality than any it can expose.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
"On Hypocrisy", Essays on Men and Manners
He that puts on a religious habit abroad to gain himself a great name among men, and at the same time lives like an atheist at home, shall at the last be uncovered by God and presented before all the world for a most outrageous hypocrite.
THOMAS BROOKS
The Privie Key of Heaven
Since we are all naturally prone to hypocrisy, any empty semblance of righteousness is quite enough to satisfy us instead of righteousness itself.
JOHN CALVIN
Institutes of the Christian Religion
When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there's as much difference between what he appears, and what he is really in himself, as there is between a Vizor and a Face.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age
Hypocrisy is a proud desire to appear better than you are. Be thoroughly humbled and vile in your own eyes, and hypocrisy is done.
RICHARD BAXTER
Christian Ethics
We are all hypocrites. We cannot see ourselves or judge ourselves the way we see and judge others.
JOSé EMILIO PACHECO
Battle in the Desert & Other Stories
Away, and mock the time with fairest show;
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, May 26, 1750
For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Deathless
There is not one word of final hope for a hypocrite, in the whole history of divine revelation: But on the contrary, the severest denunciations are recorded against them.
ABLE BREWSTER
Free Man's Companion
Too oft is a smile
But the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation, or fear;
Give me the soft sigh,
Whilst the soul-telling eye
Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear.
LORD BYRON
"The Tear", Poetical Works
All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best.
O. HENRY
unfinished letter to Mr. Steger, 1909
Railing on the churches for hypocrisy is a sure case of the pot calling the kettle black. My final question to you is this: Is it better to have principles and sometimes fail to live up to them, or would it be better to go through life having no principles at all, and be one hundred percent successful at it? As for me, I'll continue to try to live by high principles, at the risk of being a hypocrite from time to time.
JON GARATE
I Hurt, Therefore I Am