quotations about hypocrisy
If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3, 1964
Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
A hypocrite is in himself both the archer and the mark, in all actions shooting at his own praise or profit.
THOMAS FULLER
The Holy State and the Profane State
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
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
Away, and mock the time with fairest show;
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
A hypocrite is like an unprincipled and designing lawyer, who professes to be the particular friend and advocate of virtue, justice, liberty, and humanity, while he exerts his skill and talents to excite and harden vice, defeat justice, and to rivet the shackles of tyranny and oppression upon his fellow men.
ABLE BREWSTER
Free Man's Companion
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
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
Those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Maxims and Reflections
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, May 26, 1750
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
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
We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Heretics
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
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
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