quotations about hypocrisy
Society mediates between the extremes of, on the one hand, intolerably strict morality and, on the other, dangerously anarchic permissiveness through an unspoken agreement whereby we are given leave to bend the rules of the strictest morality, provided we do so quietly and discreetly. Hypocrisy is the grease that keeps society functioning in an agreeable way, by allowing for human fallibility and reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable human needs for order and pleasure.
JANET MALCOLM
The Journalist and the Murderer
Hypocrites do the devil's drudgery in Christ's livery.
MATTHEW HENRY
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
How do men feel whose whole lives (and many men's lives are) are lies, schemes, and subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone? Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every wink is an hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow where a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience?
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
Were hypocrites to pretend to no uncommon sanctity, their want of merit would be less discoverable. But pretensions of this nature bring their characters upon the carpet. Those who endeavour to pass for the lights of the world must expect to attract the eyes of it. A small blemish is more easily discoverable in them, and more justly ridiculous, than a much greater in their neighbours. A small blemish also presents a clue, which very often conducts us through the most intricate mazes and dark recesses of their character.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
"On Hypocrisy", Essays on Men and Manners
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Those are greatly mistaken who think that they can obtain permanent glory by hypocrisy, vain pretense, and disguised words and looks. True glory strikes its roots deep, and spreads them on all sides; everything false disappears quickly, like spring flowers, nor can anything, that is untrue, be of long duration.
CICERO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant
Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh, for a hymn
Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt,
Not practise!
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
SCOTT MEYER
Help Is on the Way
Hypocrites act by virtue.... They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce so seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Pretension usurps the highest seats, puts on the robe of sanctity and utters aloud, to be heard of men, the prayers that the true heart breathes in silent confidence into the ear of a loving Father. Nowhere is the hypocrite a greater usurper than in the realm of religion.
HENRY F. KLETZING & ELMER L. KLETZING
"Hypocrisy", Traits of Character Illustrated in Bible Light
It does not follow that a man is a hypocrite because his actions give the lie to his words. If he at one time seems a saint, and at other times a sinner, he possibly is both in reality, as well as in appearance. A person may be fond of vice and of virtue too; and practice one or the other, according to the temptation of the moment.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.
GEORGE ORWELL
Inside the Whale and Other Essays
The core problem of hypocrisy is that it precludes the accurate appraisal of moral worth, privileging appearance over reality.
RONALD C. NASO
Hypocrisy Unmasked
Life is a passion for masks. The Kiss of Judas on the forehead of the Lord came out of the heart of man. Each of us desires to seem the thing he is not. It is a life-instinct. Hypocrisy, whether conceived as Maya, the god of illusion, whose work goes on forever and whose lies are sublime and transfiguring, or whether conceived as Pecksniff, who covered his feelers and snatchers with the parson's white gloves, is the one unpunishable sin. Hypocrisy spells success. Whether sublime or mean, it is the primal element in the will-to-live. Therefore I praise hypocrisy and glorify the hypocrite.
BENJAMIN DE CASSERES
"The Philosophy of Hypocrisy", The International, Volumes 8-11
Hypocrisy is the outward acknowledgment of inward shame.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word--these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they’re the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
There is a principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations.
DAVID HUME
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Man must needs watch himself from morning until night, from the 1st of January until the 31st of December, to be entirely free from the taint of this fearful mental degradation. Of all the loathsome things that crowd about on earth, the confirmed hypocrite stands at the head of the list; he is worse than the drunkard, worse than the theif; and is essentially the lowest thing in creation. He is a disgrace to the mother who gave him birth; a walking insult to his sex; a sneaking cur, and goes through the world unloving and unloved. There is nothing more sure to produce, in time, in the frail mind of man, hypocrisy, than the use of intoxicating drinks; for if a man who drinks goes deeply into the study of theology, becomes a preacher, quotes scripture, or "goes in for," as the world calls it, religion, he is sure to become a hypocrite; drink and religion will not pull in the same boat--one is sure to put the other overboard. If a man becomes thoroughly converted, the first thing he would do, is to give up using "drink," if he were in the habit of so doing. Guard, then, against hypocrisy. Whatever you be, be a true man who, in his business transactions with you, quotes Scripture. Pray to God to guard you against hypocrisy and the hypocrite.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Hypocrisy", Short Essays
I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.
MILAN KUNDERA
The Joke
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
HANNAH ARENDT
On Revolution