On hypocrisy
There is false piety like false bravery;
Just as one often sees, when honor calls us,
That the bravest men never make the most fuss,
So, too, the good Christians, whom one should follow,
Are not those who find life so hard to swallow.
What now? Will you not make any distinction
Between hypocrisy and true devotion?
Would you wish to use the same commonplace
To describe both a mere mask and a true face?
To equate artifice with sincerity
Is to confound appearance and reality.
To admire a shadow as much as you do
Is to prefer counterfeit money to true.
The majority of men are strangely made!
And their true natures are rarely displayed.
For them the bounds of reason are too small;
In their shabby souls they love to lounge and sprawl.
And very often they spoil a noble deed
By their urge for excess and reckless speed . . .
These people who, with a shop-keeper’s soul,
Make cheap trinkets to trade on the Credo,
And hope to purchase credit and favor
Bought with sly winks and affected fervor;
These people, I say, whose uncommon hurry
On the path to Heaven leads through their treasury,
Who, writhing and praying, demand a profit each day
And call for a Retreat while pocketing their pay,
Who know how to tally their zeal with their vices,-
Faithless, vindictive, full of artifices-
To ruin someone they’ll conceal their resentment
With a capacious cloak of Godly contentment.
They are doubly dangerous in their vicious ire
Because they destroy us with what we admire,
And their piety, which gains them an accolade,
Is a tool to slay us with a sacred blade.
Molière
Just as one often sees, when honor calls us,
That the bravest men never make the most fuss,
So, too, the good Christians, whom one should follow,
Are not those who find life so hard to swallow.
What now? Will you not make any distinction
Between hypocrisy and true devotion?
Would you wish to use the same commonplace
To describe both a mere mask and a true face?
To equate artifice with sincerity
Is to confound appearance and reality.
To admire a shadow as much as you do
Is to prefer counterfeit money to true.
The majority of men are strangely made!
And their true natures are rarely displayed.
For them the bounds of reason are too small;
In their shabby souls they love to lounge and sprawl.
And very often they spoil a noble deed
By their urge for excess and reckless speed . . .
These people who, with a shop-keeper’s soul,
Make cheap trinkets to trade on the Credo,
And hope to purchase credit and favor
Bought with sly winks and affected fervor;
These people, I say, whose uncommon hurry
On the path to Heaven leads through their treasury,
Who, writhing and praying, demand a profit each day
And call for a Retreat while pocketing their pay,
Who know how to tally their zeal with their vices,-
Faithless, vindictive, full of artifices-
To ruin someone they’ll conceal their resentment
With a capacious cloak of Godly contentment.
They are doubly dangerous in their vicious ire
Because they destroy us with what we admire,
And their piety, which gains them an accolade,
Is a tool to slay us with a sacred blade.
Molière