Insincerity Quotes - Page 2

• The smiles that encourage severity of judgment hide malice and insincerity.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Judgment, Malice, Severity

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Avoid that romantic trap: saying more than you feel, forcing yourself to feel more than you've said!

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Traps, Said, Feels

  Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.110, New Victoria Publishers

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• Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insincerity and mendacity.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Honesty, Libertarian, States

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• If you want the Kingdom speeded, go out and speed it yourselves. Only obedience rationalizes prayer. Only Missions can redeem your intercessions from insincerity.

  William Carey

  Prayer, Want, Kingdoms

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• I'll be there for you, as long as it works for me. I play a game, its called insincerity.

  Trent Reznor

  Games, Play, Long

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• I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.

  Osamu Dazai

  People, Deception, Example

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.37, New Directions Publishing

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• In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.

  Cesare Pavese

  Sacrifice, Men, Giving

  Cesare Pavese, Alma Elizabeth Murch (1961). “This Business of Living”, p.152, Transaction Publishers

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• We must put up with our clothes as they are - they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us - to advertise what we wear them to conceal. They are a sign; a sign of insincerity; a sign of suppressed vanity; a pretense that we desire gorgeous colors and the graces of harmony and form; and we put them on to propagate that lie and back it up.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Vanity, Color

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.17, St. Martin's Press

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• A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Latin, Real

  George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison (2001). “Orwell and politics: Animal farm in the context of essays, reviews and letters selected from the complete works of George Orwell”, Penguin Modern Classics

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• The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Law, One Day

  Thomas Carlyle (1871). “The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.218

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• The nearer emotional life approaches to hysteria, to continual outward show, the less genuine it becomes. Feeling becomes equated with vehemence of expression, so that insincerity becomes permanent.

  Anthony Daniels

  Emotional, Expression, Hysteria

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• If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like me and each other-while my character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity-then, in the long run, I cannot be successful. My duplicity will breed distrust, and everything I do-even using so-called good human relations techniques-will be perceived as manipulative.

  Stephen Covey

  Running, Character, Successful

  Stephen R. Covey (1994). “Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE Every Day”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• In England Giordano Bruno had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his persecutors - that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.

  John William Draper

  Country, Struggle, Fighting

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• I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Book, Dedication, Men

  "Dinosaur in a Haystack". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "The Razumovsky Duet" (p. 263), 1995.

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• The true artist and the sane collector never will tolerate insincerity and impudence.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Artist, Tolerate, Sane

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• The damnable thing about bad art is that the insincerity which lies at its roots is not perceived by the artist himself.

  Quentin Bell

  Art, Lying, Roots

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• There's a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators; they create distractions - like this anti-gay law you alluded to - and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people's emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.

  Wole Soyinka

  People, Trying, Action

  Source: whatsonafrica.org

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• No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its appeal. The writer who keeps his tongue in his cheek, who knows that he is writing for fools and that, therefore, he had better write like a fool, makes a respectable living out of serials and novelettes; but he will never make the vast, the blaring, half a million success. That comes of blended sincerity and vitality.

  Rebecca West

  Writing, Vitality, Fiction

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• Language rarely lies. It can reveal the insincerity of a writer's claims simply through a grating adjective or an inflated phrase. We come upon a frenzy of words and suspect it hides a paucity of feeling.

  Irving Howe

  Lying, Feelings, Adjectives

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• The absolutist lays down the law, but the relativist hears only roaring and bawling. Or, when the relativist voice, as it is heard from philosophers such as Nietzsche or James, itself starts to grate and sounds shrill, as it often does, and when the relativist then offers concessions, the absolutist hears only insincerity. The war of words can often turn into a dialogue of the deaf, and this too if part of its power to arouse outrage and fury.

  Simon Blackburn

  War, Law, Voice

  Simon Blackburn (2006). “Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed: A Guide for the Perplexed”, p.20, Penguin UK

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• Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Demand, Chess

  Vladimir Nabokov (2015). “Letters to V??ra”, p.531, Knopf

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• God requires to be represented by a fiery Church... two things are intolerable to Him-insincerity and lukewarmness.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Two, Church, Fiery

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• One element of maturity is the realization that we don't get away with anything. Any advantage gained or convenience taken, any private procrastination or insincerity, no matter how subtle or quick in passing, is paid for.

  Hugh Prather

  Taken, Procrastination, Maturity

  Hugh Prather (2001). “Love and Courage”, p.81, Conari Press

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• There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their manifest insincerity. ... It is better and more logical to accept all the polite phraseology which facilitates intercourse, and contributes to the sweetness of life. If we discarded the formal falsehoods which are the currency of conversation, we should not be one step nearer the vital things of truth.

  Agnes Repplier

  Sweetness Of Life, People, Steps

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• The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

  George Orwell

  Latin, Fall, Political Language

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.282, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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