HYPOCRISY.
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!
Don Juan, Canto X. LORD BYRON.
For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through heaven and earth.
Paradise Lost, Bk. III. MILTON.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show;
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 7. SHAKESPEARE.
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?
Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 2. SHAKESPEARE.
Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant
Can tickle where she wounds!
Cymbeline, Act i. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
She that asks
Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all,
And hates their coming.
The Task, Bk. II. W. COWPER.
He seemed
For dignity composed and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow.
Paradise Lost, Bk. II. MILTON.
He was a man
Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
To serve the Devil in.
Course of Time, Bk. VIII R. POLLOK.
The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul, producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 3. SHAKESPEARE.
But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.
King Richard III., Act i. Sc. 3. SHAKESPEARE.
O villain, villain, smiling damnèd villain!
My tables,—meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 5. SHAKESPEARE.
That practised falsehood under saintly shew,
Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge.
Paradise Lost, Bk. IV. MILTON.
Built God a church, and laughed his word to scorn.
Retirement. W. COWPER.
And the devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.
The Devil's Thoughts. S.T. COLERIDGE.
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 2. SHAKESPEARE.
'Tis too much proved—that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
Hamlet, Act iii, Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
I waive the quantum o' the sin,
The hazard of concealing:
But, och! it hardens a' within,
And petrifies the feeling.
Epistle to a Young Friend. R. BURNS.
IDLENESS.
'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,
"You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again."
The Sluggard. DR. I. WATTS.
Sloth views the towers of fame with envious eyes,
Desirous still, still impotent to rise.
The Judgment of Hercules. W. SHENSTONE.
Their only labor was to kill the time
(And labor dire it is, and weary woe);
They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme;
Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go,
Or saunter forth, with tottering step and slow:
This soon too rude an exercise they find;
Straight on the couch their limbs again they throw,
Where hours on hours they sighing lie reclined,
And court the vapory god, soft breathing in the wind.
The Castle of Indolence, Canto I. J. THOMSON.
Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels,
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander, wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, thought.
Night Thoughts, Night II. DR. E. YOUNG.
To sigh, yet feel no pain,
To weep, yet scarce know why;
To sport an hour with Beauty's chain,
Then throw it idly by.
The Blue Stocking. T. MOORE.
The keenest pangs the wretched find
Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,
The waste of feelings unemployed.
The Giaour. LORD BYRON.
A lazy lolling sort,
Unseen at church, at senate, or at court,
Of ever-listless idlers, that attend
No cause, no trust, no duty, and no friend.
There too, my Paridell! she marked thee there,
Stretched on the rack of a too easy chair,
And heard thy everlasting yawn confess
The pains and penalties of idleness.
The Dunciad, Bk. IV. A. POPE.
An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
As useless if it goes as if it stands.
Retirement. W. COWPER.
There is no remedy for time misspent;
No healing for the waste of idleness,
Whose very languor is a punishment
Heavier than active souls can feel or guess.
Sonnet. SIR A. DE VERE.
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
Song XX. DR. I. WATTS.