Michel de Montaigne Quotes

He that puts on a religious habit abroad to gain himself a great name among men, and at the same time lives like an atheist at home, shall at the last be uncovered by God and presented before all the world for a most outrageous hypocrite.

Out of five hundred who speak glibly of love, not one can spell the first letter of his name.

He knows much of what men paint themselves would blister in the light of what they are.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

Thus one can observe that those who proclaim piety as their goal and purpose usually turn into hypocrites.

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

Those who make use of devotion as a means and end generally are hypocrites.

The existence of hypocrites does not prove the non-existence of true believers.

Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.

Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are.

Be hypocritical, be cautious, be not what you seem but always what you see.

When he admitted this to me, I found myself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending-- as do many people I've discovered--to be what he is not. No one I've ever known is what he appears to be on the surface.

That's the illusion - the idea that you can be all right on the inside and not act it out - and it has affected us in many ways. That's a part of the idea that professing is enough.

People like beauty and purity. They pretend that's what it's all about.

Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.

Pretend to be good always and even God will be fooled.

If winter should say, 'Spring is in my heart,' who would believe winter?

What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke.

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture

This is personal, she'd said. Real. This moment was too, even if you couldn't see it at first glance. It was fake on the outside, but so true within. You only had to look, really look to tell.

If you fake the funk, your nose will grow.

Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins

The gentleman is solid mahogany; the fashionable man is only veneer.

Were I the Moor I would not be Iago. In following him I follow but myself; Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so for my peculiar end. For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at. I am not what I am