Moral Pretense Quotes

No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.

Men who ape the saint and play the sinner.

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

Canting hypocrisy

Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh, for a hymn Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt, Not practise!

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.

However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.

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

My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.

The best of women are hypocrites.

Ye Hypocrites, are these your pranks To murder men and gie God thanks Desist for shame, proceed no further God won't accept your thanks for murder.

There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.

You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.