Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

Fewer possess virtue, than those who wish us to believe that they possess it.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

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

There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.

However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

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

If you have to do with one who is unquestionably a slanderer, do not excuse him by calling him frank and free-spoken; do not call one who is notoriously vain, liberal and elegant; do not call dangerous levities mere simplicity; do not screen disobedience under the name of zeal; or arrogance, of frankness; or evil intimacy, of friendship. No, my friends, we must never, in our wish to shun slander, foster or flatter vice in others: but we must call evil evil, and sin sin, and so doing we shall serve God's glory.

A good example brings about so much good, but hypocrisy brings about so much evil.

He who possess virtue in abundance may be compared to an infant.

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness.

The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you're moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.

The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous.

I ever will profess myself the greatest friend to those whose actions best correspond with their doctrine; which, I am sorry to say, is too seldom the case amongst those nations who pretend most to civilization.

Moral character has now some influence in our elections, but not that place which it deserves. The law of public opinion excludes confirmed sots, and persons judicially convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors against the State; but it ought to render the election of all profane swearers, notorious Sabbath breakers, seducers, slanderers, prodigals and riotous persons, as well as the advocates of dueling, impracticable.

What, pray, does it profit a man to teach others, and to be prating always about virtue, in high-sounding words, if he fails to give heed to his own instructions?