Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Hypocrisy
And the veil
Spun from the cobweb fashion of the times,
To hide the feeling heart?
Akenside—Pleasures of Imagination. Bk. II. L. 147.
Saint abroad, and a devil at home.
Bunyan—Pilgrims Progress. Pt. I.
Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant
Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh, for a hymn
Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt,
Not practise!
Byron—Don Juan. Canto X. St. 34.
Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you seem but always what you see.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto XI. St. 86.
And prate and preach about what others prove,
As if the world and they were hand and glove.
Cowper—Table Talk. L. 173.
A hypocrite is in himself both the archer and the mark, in all actions shooting at his own praise or profit.
Fuller—The Holy and Profane States. The Hypocrite. Maxim 1. Bk. V. Ch. VIII.
Thus ’tis with all; their chief and constant care
Is to seem everything but what they are.
Goldsmith—Epilogue to The Sisters. L. 25.
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.
La Bruyère—The Characters or Manners of the Present Age. Of Men. Ch. XI.
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.
Attributed to Dr. Laud by Bacon—Apothegms. No. 273.
L’hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.
Hypocrisy is the homage which vice renders to virtue.
La Rochefoucauld—Maximes. 218.
For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through heav’n and earth.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. III. L. 682.
He was a man
Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
To serve the Devil in.
Pollok—Course of Time. Bk. VIII. L. 616.
Constant at Church and ’Change; his gains were sure;
His givings rare, save farthings to the poor.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. III. L. 347.
Thou hast prevaricated with thy friend,
By underhand contrivances undone me:
And while my open nature trusted in thee,
Thou hast slept in between me and my hopes,
And ravish’d from me all my soul held dear.
Thou hast betray’d me.
Nicholas Rowe—Lady Jane Grey. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 235.
Not he who scorns the Saviour’s yoke
Should wear his cross upon the heart.
Schiller—The Fight with the Dragon. St. 24.
’Tis too much proved—that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 47.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 414.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show;
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 7. L. 81.
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
Measure for Measure. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 285.
So smooth he daub’d his vice with show of virtue,
******
He liv’d from all attainder of suspect.
Richard III. Act III. Sc. 5. L. 29.
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?
Romeo and Juliet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 73.
How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.
Voltaire—A Philosophical Dictionary. Philosopher. Sec. I.
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.
Oscar Wilde—Importance of Being Earnest. Act II.
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.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night VIII. L. 336.