“ The hypocrisy of kind-hearted people is one of the most painful exhibitions of human weakness. ”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Over the Teacups (1891). copy citation
| Author | Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. |
|---|---|
| Source | Over the Teacups |
| Topic | hypocrisy weakness |
| Date | 1891 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2689/2689-h/2689-h.htm |
Context
“They come with such insinuating humility,—they cannot bear to intrude upon my time, they know that I have a great many calls upon it,—and incontinently proceed to lay their additional weight on the load which is breaking my back.
The hypocrisy of kind-hearted people is one of the most painful exhibitions of human weakness. It has occurred to me that it might be profitable to reproduce some of my unwritten answers to correspondents. If those which were actually written and sent were to be printed in parallel columns with those mentally formed but not written out responses and comments, the reader would get some idea of the internal conflicts an honest and not unamiable person has to go through, when he finds himself driven to the wall by a correspondence which is draining his vocabulary to find expressions that sound as agreeably, and signify as little, as the phrases used by a diplomatist in closing an official communication.”
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