Henry Fielding Quotes

Affectation hath always had a greater share both in the action and discourse of men than truth and judgment have.

Affectations can be dangerous.

Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly.

Affectation discovers sooner what one is than it makes known what one would fain appear to be.

Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly; the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.

Affectation is the product of falsehood.

Affected simplicity is an elegant imposture.

There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.

Nothing is so tiresome to one's self, as well as so odious to others, as disguise and affectation.

Out of five hundred who speak glibly of love, not one can spell the first letter of his name.

Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.

I don't like affectation.

Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety.

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.

The poet is a pretender. / He pretends so completely, / that he even pretends that it is pain / the pain he really feels.

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad.

Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.

A man is ridiculous less through the characteristics he has than through those he affects to have.

It is undoubtedly true that some people mistake sycophancy for good nature, but it is equally true that many more mistake impertinence for sincerity.

You are only pretentious if you are not sincere.