Pope Francis Quotes

The path of precept is long, that of example short and effectual.

The virtuous will be sure to speak uprightly; but those whose speech is upright may not be virtuous.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

Look at all those American preachers who got caught with their pants down. They say one thing and they are doing another. I try to be more honest about it, both in my thinking and my behavior.

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

Temptations make one very censorious. If you are virtuous you condemn the wicked and if you are wicked, you condemn the virtuous.

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

...righteousness [is] always more believable when combined with dreariness.

Good and evil are not like the Redskins and the Cowboys.

All the devils respect virtue.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.

Honesty is nothin' compared to decency.

Even virtue is an art; and even its devotees are divided into those who practise it and those who are merely amateurs.

You can't be right by doing wrong; you can't be wrong by doing right.

All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.

Honor is the only really good disguise for an occasional act of dishonor.

You can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

The difference between God and the devil is in nothing except in unselfishness and selfishness. The devil knows as much as God, is as powerful as God; only he has no holiness that makes him a devil. Apply the same idea to the modern world: excess of knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils.