Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy.

Most hard-boiled people are half-baked.

I completely scorn the falsifying, the sanctimonious, the cheap and the shoddy.

Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.

We are plated with piety, not alloyed with it.

There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile.

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

There are a million examples of not feeling the jazz, but using the jazz.

All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich

Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.

He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.

It is undoubtedly true that some people mistake sycophancy for good nature, but it is equally true that many more mistake impertinence for sincerity.

POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord? HAMLET: Words, words, words.

The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.

Every kind of writing is hypocritical.

An imitator is a man who succeeds in being an imitation.

Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

In Leon's account of his life, no-one was mean-spirited, no-one schemed or lied or betrayed; everyone was celebrated at least in some degree... Leon turned out to be a spineless, grinning idiot.

Hypocrites always wanna play innocent

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

We play make believe, pretend to take ourselves and each other seriously--to love each other, hate each other--but then--it isn't true. It isn't true, we don't care at all!

What incensed him the most was the blatant jokes of the ones that passed it all off as a jest, pretending to understand everything and in reality not knowing their own minds.

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

How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.