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- For neither man nor angel can discern
- Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
- Invisible, except to God alone.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, "Friendship," Essays
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter
Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.
HERBERT SPENCER, The Study of Sociology
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
We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
G.K. CHESTERTON, Heretics
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