False Piety Quotes

Many pass for saints on earth whose souls are in hell.

Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable.

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

Unsaintly saints are the tragedy of Christianity.

With devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself.

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions - by abandoning every value except the will to power - they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.

That very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.

Men who ape the saint and play the sinner.

The fierce words of Jesus addressed to the Pharisees of His day stretch across the bands of time. Today they are directed not only to fallen televangelists but to each of us. We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us. This is the form and shape of Christian Pharisaism in our time. Hypocrisy is not hte prerogative of people in high places. The most impoverished among us is capable of it. Hypocrisy is the natural expression of what is meanest in us all.

Those most moved to tears by every word of a preacher are generally weak and a rascal when the feelings evaporate.

Look into the world--how often do you behold a sordid wretch, whose straight heart is open to no man's affliction, taking shelterbehind an appearance of piety, and putting on the garb of religion, which none but the merciful and compassionate have a title to wear.

Better is the sinner who hath thoughts about God, than the saint who hath only the show of sanctity.

Canting hypocrisy

I can not imagine a God ... made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him 'great'.

There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God.

The English are the people of consummate cant.

The English are a nation of consummate cant.

Beware of the guy praying loudest in the amen corner.

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

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!

Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil.