Horace Bushnell Quotes

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

The better day, the worse deed.

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.

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.

This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.

Psychologically speaking, one may say that the hypocrite is too ambitious; not only does he want to appear virtuous before others, he wants to convince himself.

I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue.

Saintliness is also a temptation.

So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men.

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.

The sins of teachers are the teachers of sin.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Everybody thinks I'm very clean and sort of upright, don't they?

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

It is easy enough to be moral after a good dinner beside a snug coal fire, and with our hearts well warmed with fine old port.

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

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

Personally, I prefer the dark side.