Hermann Hesse Quotes

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

I do think sometimes people get morally superior without understanding situations.

I'm always suspicious of people who repent of other people's sins.

Self-righteousness has killed more people than smoking.

Whenever you are faced with someone who has made far more errors in judgment and far more mistakes than you, you have a tendency to get on your high horse.

The hardest people to reach with the love of God are not the bad people. They know they are bad. They have no defense. The hardest ones to win for God are the self-righteous people.

How dare you put yourself in that position where you are the moral judge?

That Newt Gingrich or any mainstream Republican has the nerve to look down from what they perceive as their moral mountaintop at anyone is laughable.

The thing I hate the most in any kind of writing is self-righteousness. Where you pretend you don't have the same kinds of flaws your subject has.

Showing your own righteousness by pointing out someone's unrighteousness, the race to the bottom, the transgressions getting smaller and smaller and smaller but still treated with the same level of intolerance and condemnation, all of that stuff, even as I say it I am talking about Twitter but I am thinking about Westboro.

People who wash much have a high mind about it, and talk down to those who wash little.

The general tendency [is] to be censorious of the vices to which one has not been tempted.

Beware of self-righteousness. The black devil of licentiousness destroys his hundreds, but the white devil of self-righteousness destroys his thousands.

Am I self-righteous? Why not? It's not like I can count on you to be righteous for me.

A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to Hell than a prostitute.

I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.

Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man: a large portion of it is rather the condition of all being-good.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offence which they have so fiercely censured.

If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. ... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?

He always had a problem with the purity of others. Never his own.

It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others.

Self-righteousness is unavoidable. You can either be a self-righteous Pharisee where you think you are better than everyone else or you can be a self-righteous pagan who thinks you are better than the Pharisee. If you are a self-righteous person, I could become very self-righteous thinking that you're self-righteous and you think you're so good but I know you're bad. I know I'm bad so that makes me better than you.