How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how
horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant read more

How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how
horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.
- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire),

Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their
heads, were like the little images that they place read more

Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their
heads, were like the little images that they place in the very
bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up
the church, but are but puppets.

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and read more

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be
wicked and being really good all read more

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be
wicked and being really good all the time. That would be
hypocrisy.

O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

Hypocrisy is the homage which vice renders to virtue.
[Fr., L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend a read more

Hypocrisy is the homage which vice renders to virtue.
[Fr., L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend a la vertu.]

We are oft to blame in this,
'Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage
And pious read more

We are oft to blame in this,
'Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.

Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care
Is to seem everything but what they are.

Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care
Is to seem everything but what they are.

A man I knew who lived upon a smile,
And well it fed him; he look'd plump and fair,
read more

A man I knew who lived upon a smile,
And well it fed him; he look'd plump and fair,
While rankest venom foam'd through every vein.