Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Seriously, I've just realized that almost everyone is a fraud, so I try not to feel too bad about it.

I really try, at least consciously, not to be cynical or ironic.

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.

It's very difficult to distinguish between what a person believes and what they say they believe.

Oh, I can spot a phoney a mile away.

He who believes in nobody knows that he himself is not to be trusted.

I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no sense of what I would eventually encounter in terms of people who weren't being sincere. I'm not saying that it happens always or a lot, but it happens enough that sometimes it makes me feel a little queasy.

I'm not trying to be modest of self-deprecating or in any way trying to do that.

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.

If thinking minds, questioning minds, doubting minds, are talking about faith, their whole life will become fake.

Those who make use of devotion as a means and end generally are hypocrites.

God isn't afraid of our doubts; He's way more concerned when we fake it.

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

I don't want to be pandered to, so I try not to pander.

We have a name for those who try to praise when they have no pleasure in the object. We call them hypocrites.

God knows, I'm not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen.

I try to be cynical, but it's so hard to keep up.

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

I don't like it when someone can look you in the eye and lie to you, or pretend that they're more than you.

The world is looking, not for Christians who are perfect, but for Christians who are honest and who are willing to be honest with some of our contradictions and hypocrisy.

Naturalness is the easiest thing in the world to acquire, if you will forget yourself-forget about the impression you are trying to make.

That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness.

I didn't try to be something I wasn't.

You can live opposite of what you profess, but you cannot live opposite of what you believe.