Michael Kinsley Quotes

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

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.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

The virtuous will be sure to speak uprightly; but those whose speech is upright may not be virtuous.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

Virtue sometimes pretends. Vice is always sincere.

Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue in the eyes of bigots.

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

It must be a good thing to be good or ivrybody wudden't be pretendin' he was.

He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.

The world is ashamed of being virtuous.

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.

The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others.

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.

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

Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

...righteousness [is] always more believable when combined with dreariness.

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

Virtue, once bragged about, once you pride yourself upon it, ceases to be such.

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself (Christian morals).

All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue.

Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.