quotations about hypocrisy
Those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Maxims and Reflections
When he fasts he assumes a sorrowful air, and a disfigured face; and is grieved for sin as much as the bulrush when it hangs the head. When he is in religious company, he talks of his experience, the plagues of his heart, and complains of the great decay of religion in the day.--He is a most uncharitable censurer of others, while he practices far greater villainies himself.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"The Character of a Hypocrite", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
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
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
We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Heretics
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
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
There never was a hypocrite so disguised, but he had yet some mark or other to be known by.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Away, and mock the time with fairest show;
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
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
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
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
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
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
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, May 26, 1750
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
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
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
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