“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 practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.”

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 15

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a r…" by W. Somerset Maugham?
W. Somerset Maugham photo
W. Somerset Maugham 158
British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965

Related quotes

William Hazlitt photo

“The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 257
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
Source: Selected Essays, 1778-1830

Honoré de Balzac photo

“Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts.”

Source: Pierrette (1840), Ch. IV: Pierrette.
Context: Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.

“The English seem to think drinking wine is like committing adultery, something you do rarely and abroad.”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: Motherland (2012 novel), p. 18

Theodor Mommsen photo

“Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, pt. 2, translated by W.P.Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“Hypocrisy is an homage that vice pays to virtue.”

L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.
Maxim 218.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Eric Gill photo

Related topics