Quotes about hypocrisy

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

And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? [Matthew 7:3]

— Bible

Keep thy smooth words and juggling homilies for those who know thee not.

— Lord Byron

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

— Charles Dickens

There are two sorts of hypocrites; ones that are deceived with their outward morality and external religion; and the others; those that are deceived with false discoveries and elevation; which often cry down works, and men's own righteousness, and talk much of free grace; but at the same time make righteousness of their discoveries, and of their humiliation, and exalt themselves to heaven with them.

— Jonathan Edwards

At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Often a noble face hides filthy ways.

— Euripides

Clean your finger before you point at my spots.

— Benjamin Franklin

Never to talk to ones self is a form of hypocrisy.

— Fredrich

A favorite has no friend!

— Thomas Gray

The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

— William Hazlitt

A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

— William Hazlitt

Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite.

— Jean Kerr

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.

— Bernard Mandeville

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

— W. Somerset Maugham

For neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone.

— John Milton

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

— Thomas Paine

Better to be known as a sinner than a hypocrite.

— Proverb

The wicked work harder to preach hell than the righteous do to get to heaven.

— American Proverb

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

When you see a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend on it, that he keeps a very small stock of it within.

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

— Count Leo Tolstoy

All humans are hypocrites; the biggest hypocrite of all is the one who claims to detest hypocrisy.

— Peter Wastholm

The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.

— Oscar Wilde

How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

— Oscar Wilde

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, none knew so well as I: for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.

— Oscar Wilde

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!

— Tennessee Williams

A hypocrite's words are as useful as a barrel with a hole. If you don't practice what you preach, your words become empty.

— Daniella Kessler