Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

An interview will seem very sane to me, and I'll find out that the journalist was laughing out of the side of his mouth half of the time.

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.

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.

The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter.

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

What incensed him the most was the blatant jokes of the ones that passed it all off as a jest, pretending to understand everything and in reality not knowing their own minds.

How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

Perhaps,” murmured his lordship, “I yielded to a compassionate impulse.” “A what?” gasped his best friend. “Oh, did you think I never did so?” said his lordship, the satirical glint in his eyes extremely pronounced. “You wrong me! I do, sometimes—not frequently, of course, but every now and then!

It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy.

Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another.

Self is the only oil that makes the chariot-wheels of the hypocrite move in all religious concerns.

Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.

Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.

He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.

Piety is the tinfoil of pretense.

A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.

It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.

We tend to tell strangers what we think will make us sound good. I myself, to my utter amazement, informed a telephone pollster that I exercised regularly, a bare-faced lie.

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

I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.

The skilful class of flatterers praise the discourse of an ignorant friend and the face of a deformed one.

I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot.

Say it, do it, preach it, shout it, but never, absolutely never, believe your own bullshit.

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.