Richard Neal Quotes

Honor is the only really good disguise for an occasional act of dishonor.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

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.

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.

… he must deceive, misrepresent, leave false impressions … and trust to charm, loyalty and the result to make up for it…. A great man cannot be a good man.

Living on hypocrisy is not a healthy diet for patriots.

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.

How is it possible for those who are men of honor in their persons, thus to become notorious liars in their party

A hero must be honorable, must have honor. And you can't have honor if you're a liar. There is no honor in lying.

If it be honor in your wars to seem The same you are not,--which, for your best ends, You adopt your policy--how is it less or worse, That it shall hold companionship in peace With honour, as in war: since that to both It stands in like request?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.

I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.

I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.

Honor's a thing too subtle for wisdom; if honor lie in eating, he's right honorable.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

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

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it.

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

Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.

Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity.

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor.