Quotes & Sayings About Insincerity

I like the enthusiasm but not the insincerity of Los Angeles. — Brenda Blethyn

What, we may well ask, is there left to live for? Why get out of bed? For this dreary round of amusing insincerity? This filthy bourgeois society that the Aristotelians have foisted upon us? No, we may still choose to live like gods, like poets. Which brings us down to dancing. Yes," he said, turning to Malone, "that is all that's left when love has gone. — Andrew Holleran

I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though. — J.D. Salinger

What matters in Politics is what men actually do - sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically, and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results. — Bernard Crick

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

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't - whichever seems likelier to win an effect. — John Updike

It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half belief and untruth that make it. — Thomas Carlyle

They so wanted it to be simple, believers. "It is what is!" they cried, sneering at the possibility of other eyes, other truths, overlooking their own outrageous presumption. "It says what it says," spoken with a conviction that was itself insincerity. They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain. Then they dared call themselves "open. — R. Scott Bakker

Your insincerity is natural and in the order of things. If people agreed together and suddenly became sincere, — Anton Chekhov

Please do not think that I am accusing socialists of insincerity or that I wish to hold them up to scorn either as bad democrats or as unprincipled schemers and opportunists. I fully believe, in spite of the childish Machiavellism in which some of their prophets indulge, that fundamentally most of them always have been as sincere in their professions as any other men. Besides, I do not believe in insincerity in social strife, for people always come to think what they want to think and what they incessantly profess. As regards democracy, socialist parties are presumably no more opportunists than are any others; they simply espouse democracy if, as, and when it serves their ideals and interests and not otherwise. Lest readers should be shocked and think so immoral a view worthy only of the most callous of political practitioners, ... — Joseph Alois Schumpeter

That's what show business is, sincere insincerity. — Benny Hill

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend! — Edith Wharton

There are many kinds of sincerity and insincerity. When you say 'thank you' for the salt, do you mean what you say ? No. When you say 'the world is round,' do you mean what you say ? No. It is true, but you don't mean it — G.K. Chesterton

There are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity. — George Henry Lewes

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

This is the age of insincerity. The movies had the misfortune to come along in the twentieth century, and because they appeal to the masses there can be no sincerity in them. — Lionel Barrymore

The insincerity of man-all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet-his fame is eternal-needs no genius, no talent-mere honesty — Mark Twain

[T]he reason why Shakespeare and Pushkin were great writers was because from the time when they were boys they stood like policemen over their thoughts and didn't allow one small insincerity to creep in. — Michael D. O'Brien

The true artist and the sane collector never will tolerate insincerity and impudence. — Walter J. Phillips

Even his conversation was, as it were, a spoken part. — T.H. White

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

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

It's not unfortunate that people aren't genuine; what's unfortunate is that insincere people try to act sincere and in doing so, mislead and deceive the other. I would rather meet a person who is not amiable and who does not feel any burden to act amiable towards me, than to have the misfortune of knowing people who feel like they need to be gracious and compassionate so they will appear to be good people, whilst possessing none of those qualities within themselves! It's the latter that causes the pain in life. And that's another reason why I don't believe in religion; I have observed that religion tells people that it is highly prized a quality to act kind and compassionate and so on and so forth, but some people just do not have these innate qualities within them! We get deceived, and I'd rather not be deceived! I'd rather be able to see a person for who he/she is and not judge a brute for being a brute, but avoid the brute who carries the burden of acting like a wonderful one! — C. JoyBell C.

Avoid that romantic trap: saying more than you feel, forcing yourself to feel more than you've said! — Natalie Clifford Barney

It was all that vain, egotistical insincerity of self-reproach. By blaming ourselves we take away the right of others to do the same — Irvine Welsh

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

I had trouble listening to adults who didn't really mean anything that they said; it was as if their language poured into my ears only to drain right out a little spigot in the back of my head. — Reif Larsen

Elinor saw, and pitied her for, the neglect of abilities which education might have rendered so respectable; but she saw, with less tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy, of rectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions, her assiduities, her flatteries at the Park betrayed; and she could have no lasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined insincerity with ignorance; whose want of instruction prevented their meeting in conversation on terms of equality, and whose conduct toward others made every shew of attention and deference towards herself perfectly valueless. — Jane Austen

I actually shivered at the insincerity that gripped me as I spoke these words: their falseness was shameful. I was sure my coolness would return. I'd just been caught with my guard down. But at the moment I was in shambles. Walking along the deck (adopting my old casual swagger), I jollied up the troops with small talk, put on a frozen grin, and kept murmuring to myself with rhythmic fatuity: You love the marine Corps, it's a terrific war, you love the Marine Corps, it's a terrific war ... — William Styron

To hear how much of a great human being you were - even if you really weren't - open your ears at your funeral. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

David made no attempt to clothe his prayer (Psalm 51) with flowing rhetoric, for it is simply a series of brokenhearted sobs. He pleaded no extenuating circumstances and attempted no self-vindication. The magnitude of his sin is not toned down, but is freely acknowledged. Hear the broken sobs, expressed in vivid verbs: Have mercy! Cleanse! Blot out! Wash! Purge! Hide Your face from my sins! Create! Do not cast! Renew! Restore! Save! Open my lips!
Here is true confession, free from all sham and insincerity. Examine it in detail. — J. Oswald Sanders

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

The causes of his embitterment were many, remote and near. He was angry with himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish impulses, angry also with the change of fortune which was reshaping the world about him into a vision of squalor and insincerity. Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision. He chronicled with patience what he saw, detaching himself from it and tasting its mortifying flavour in secret. — James Joyce

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

A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn't know. — Criss Jami

The arguments of religious men are so often insincere, and their insincerity is proportionate to their anger. Why do we get angry about what we believe? Because we do not really believe it. Or else what we pretend to be defending as the "truth" is really our own self-esteem. A man of sincerity is less interested in defending the truth than in stating it clearly, for he thinks that if the truth be clearly seen it can very well take care of itself. — Thomas Merton

The boy will remain a son and never become a father. He will be forgotten by the crowd once his blood is rinsed clean from the ground; his sister will think of him but soon she will forget him, too. He will live on only in Han's memory, a child punished not for his own insincerity but someone else's disbelief. — Yiyun Li

Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity - the habit of saying "good morning" to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve. — Roger Scruton

In this way all violent bonds and orders are cancelled as if the freedom of the primal world had been restored with one blow. Man, too, is made open and true by this freedom. Wine, as Plutarch says so nicely, frees the soul of subservience, fear, and insincerity; it teaches men how to be truthful and candid with one another. It reveals that which was hidden. Wine and truth have long been associated in proverbs. It is a good thing, so it is said, to search for the truth in earnest conversation while one drinks wine, and agreements arrived at over a wine glass were at one time considered to be the most sacred and inviolable agreements. — Walter F. Otto

The smiles that encourage severity of judgment hide malice and insincerity. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

He was angry with himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish impulses, angry also with the change of fortune which was reshaping the world about him into a vision of squalor and insincerity. Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision. — James Joyce

Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. He does not wish that he should be told the truth, he shuns saying it to others; and all these moods, so inconsistent with justice and reason, have their roots in his heart. — Blaise Pascal

Once more, one who lives in the spirit of prayer will spend much time in retired and intimate communion with God. It is by such a deliberate engagement of prayer that the fresh springs of devotion which flow through the day are fed. For, although communion with God is the life-energy of the renewed nature, our souls "cleave to the dust" and devotion tends to grow formal- it becomes emptied of its spiritual content, and exhausts itself in outward acts. The Master reminds us of this grave peril, and informs us that the true defense against insincerity in our approach to God lies in the diligent exercise of private prayer. — David Macintyre

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith. — Alberto Moravia

Men seek a great deal, but fatally close, albeit very different, is one's pride in proving oneself right with one's zeal for finding the truth. — Criss Jami

The classical artist can be recognized by his sincerity, the romantic by his laborious insincerity. — Charles Peguy

One of my pet theories is that readers have built-in BS detectors that enable them to recognize insincerity in writers. David [Halberstam] was sincerity to the core. He believed in what he wrote, and that conviction conveyed itself to readers. — Jonathan Yardley

Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister - that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.) — Christopher Hitchens

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

BE REAL

Bring it on-
And let truth be my existence.
Value my life-
And tell me like it is.

Bark at me when I'm wrong-
And hug me when I'm right.
Praise me if I succeed-
And tell me if I fail.
Laugh at me if you think I'm funny-
And wink at me if you think I'm cute.
Yell at me if I ever hurt you-
And scold me if I'm ever bad.

Keep things real with me,
Because I want to be alive,
I want my world to be real-
And I want to see your spirit.
I want to hear you breathe-
And I want to know how you feel.

Don't waste my time with insincerities.
Keep my world real. — Giorge Leedy

When men think and believe in one set of symbols and act in ways which are contrary to their professed and conscious ideas, confusion and insincerity are bound to result. — John Dewey

The psychological impotence of our enraged generation must be traced to the overwhelming accusation of insincerity which every man and woman has to confront, in the depths of his own soul, when he seeks to love merely for his own pleasure.And yet the men of our time do not love with enough courage to risk even discomfort or inconvenience. — Thomas Merton

But in my life, in my personality, there is an essence of falseness and insincerity. A thin, fine vapor of fraud hangs always over me and dampens and injures some things in me that I value. — Mary MacLane

Inasmuch as one cannot avoid bad company, one should not be deceived. One should see the insincerity behind the mask of friendliness, the destructiveness behind the mask of eternal complaints about unhappiness. The narcissism behind the charm. One should also not act if he or she were taken in by the others deceptive appearance in order to avoid being forced into a certain dishonesty oneself. One need not speak to them about what one sees, but one should not attempt to convince them that one is blind. — Erich Fromm

The expression Gone To The Dogs needs to be changed to Gone To Humans Without a Conscience — Amit Abraham

I continue to marvel at the reluctancy of people to look into the mirror and see all the darkness that's within them: all the deceit, the dishonesty, the insincerity, the lack, the need, the want, the lies ... they would rather look upon the mural of themselves that they've painted on the wall, and stare at that inanimate portrait of beauty, all the while telling themselves that it is the mirror image of them! This is a falsity, this is unreal! It is only when you turn to the unveiled mirror and bravely face your light and your darkness at once, that you will be able to see the true image of you! How can you pull the thorns from your skin if you are too afraid to open your eyes and look at them? You must open your eyes first, look at the thorns where they are piercing your flesh, and only then can you pull them out! — C. JoyBell C.

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

Expressing one's reality in words, as truthful as they might be, goads one to insincerity. — Orhan Pamuk

There is, especially in the American media, a deep belief that insincerity is better than no sincerity at all. — Christopher Hitchens

Her life, he saw, was without meaning. To what purpose was her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour? Did they make any one better or happier? Did they even bring happiness to herself? Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches after pleasure, were after all more divine than this well-ordered, active, useless machine. — E. M. Forster

Insincerity was taxing once you'd breathed the refreshing air of artless candor. — Penny Reid

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

Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money. — William Shenstone

I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to extract a contributory emotion from me. — F Scott Fitzgerald

God requires to be represented by a fiery Church ... two things are intolerable to Him-insincerity and lukewarmness. — Edward McKendree Bounds

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

You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life
a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real. — Thomas Bernhard

In vain the young man gave him details of all his obscenities with his women, M. de Charlus was only struck by how little they amounted to. For that matter that was not only the result of insincerity, for nothing is more limited than vice. In that sense one can really use a common expression and say that one is always turning in the same vicious circle. — Marcel Proust

The basis of insincerity is the idealized image we hold of ourselves and wish to impose on others. — Anais Nin

Insincerity from the heart. It's just another component of politics as usual. — Congressman X

Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength. — George Henry Lewes

A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art. — Fernando Pessoa

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 squirting out ink. — George Orwell

There are only two kinds of faces: Sincere and insincere! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous. — James Anthony Froude

Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice. — Anthony Burgess

It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops. — Ernest Bramah

At its most intense, the admissions process didn't force kids to be Lisa Simpson; it turned them into Eddie Haskell. ("You look lovely in that new dress, Ms. Admissions Counselor.") It guaranteed that teenagers would pursue life with a single ulterior motive, while pretending they weren't. It coated their every undertaking in a thin lacquer of insincerity. Befriending people in hopes of a good rec letter; serving the community to advertise your big heart; studying hard just to puff up the GPA and climb the greasy poll of class rank - nothing was done for its own sake. Do good; do well; but make sure you can prove it on a college app. So — Andrew Ferguson

Change does not fail to occur because of insincerity. The heart patient is not insincere about his wish to keep living, even as he reaches for another cigarette. Change fails to occur because we mean both things. It fails to occur because we are a living contradiction. — Robert Kegan

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. It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. Only basic goodness gives life to technique. — Stephen R. Covey

So Englishmen saw it. Lincoln's insincerity was regarded as proven by two things: his earlier denial of any lawful right or wish to free the slaves; and, especially, his not freeing the slaves in 'loyal' Kentucky and other United States areas or even in Confederate areas occupied by United States troops, such as New Orleans. — Sheldon Vanauken

Clothes 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 repressed vanity; — Alex Myers

Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor. — Sigmund Freud

There is but one thing without honor, smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or to be,-insincerity, unbelief. — Thomas Carlyle

Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments, all that concerns him, unreal; so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity. — George Orwell

Never value the advantages derived from anything involving breach of faith, loss of self-respect, hatred, suspicion, or execration of others, insincerity, or the desire for something which has to be veiled and curtained. — Marcus Aurelius

Do not treat others as you would not like to be treated' frees one from hypocrisy. 'Treat others as you would like to be treated' enslaves one with insincerity. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere. — Jane Austen

when companies are not transparent, communities fear that such secrecy covers insincerity, dishonesty, and trickiness. Transparency — Luc Zandvliet

Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insincerity and mendacity. — Hans F. Sennholz

You can't let the truth bring out the worst and let it get the best of you. — Criss Jami

The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented ... no insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth. — John Quincy Adams

The most effective preaching comes from those who embody the things they are saying. They are their message ... Christians ... need to look like what they are talking about. It is people who communicate primarily, not words or ideas ... Authenticity ... gets across from deep down inside people ... A momentary insincerity can cast doubt on all that has made for communication up to that point ... What communicates now is basically personal authenticity.3 — John R.W. Stott

Nothing is more disgraceful than insincerity. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Smiling away your troubles requires a clear conscience that harbors no insincerity. — Paramahansa Yogananda

We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs. — Ivy Compton-Burnett

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

Today, as in Paul's day, the preaching of Christ is done both out of love for the Lord and also out of contention and insincerity. — Paul Silway