Quotes about Hypocrisy

God's people don't always act like God's people should.

I fear that many a man's good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

I was adept at fooling the deity. I prayed immediately after all crimes until eventually prayer and crime became indistinguishable to me.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

Why do you not practice what you preach.

A hermit said, "Do not judge an adulterer if you are chaste or you will break the law of God just as much as he does. For he who said 'Do not commit adultery' also said 'Do not judge.

There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the list of heresies and schisms.

The Good is one thing; the reward is something else. To will the Good for the sake of reward is not to will one thing but two. If a man loves a woman for the sake of her wealth, who will call him a lover? To will the Good for the sake of reward is hypocrisy — sheer duplicity!

People had not so much as the courage and honesty and truth to say to God bluntly, That I cannot agree to, they resorted to hypocrisy and thought they were perfectly secure. pp 168-6

The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

If he is not supposed to be that, then he is a hypocrite, and the higher he climbs on this path, the more dreadful a hypocrite he is.

But in Christendom we play at believing, play at being Christians; as far as possible from any breach with what we love, we remain at home, in the parlor, in the old grooves of finiteness — and then we go and twaddle with one another, or let the pastor twaddle to us, about all the promises which are found in the New Testament, that no one shall harm us, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us, against the Church, etc.