H. L. Mencken Quotes

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

Beware of the virtue which a man boasts is his.

Villainy wears many masks; none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.

Vice deceives us when dressed in the garb of virtue.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

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

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?

He is only honest who is not discovered.

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who will contract out the messy things in life: the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show: and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked.

Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Many men talk like philosophers and live like fools.

Those who make virtue their profession are the ruin of virtue.

Where there is hypocrisy, there is hope.

True conviction of sin--how difficult it is, when its appearances and modes of life are so fair, when it twines itself so cunningly about, or creeps so insidiously into, our amiable qualities, and sets off its internal disorders by so many outward charms and attractions.

The people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.

A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.

Many pass for saints on earth whose souls are in hell.

Not to be, but to seem, virtuous - it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery.

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