“
Well, I certainly don't," said Percy sanctimoniously. "I shudder to think what the state of my in-tray would be if I was away from work for five days."
"Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?" said Fred.
"That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway!" said Percy, going very red in the face. "It was nothing personal!"
"It was," Fred whispered to Harry as they got up from the table. "We sent it.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4))
“
That," I told Tatiana, "is the most fucked up law I have ever heard."
[...]
"You could change the quorum law if you wanted, you sanctimonious bitch!" I yelled back.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
“
You could change the quorum law if you wanted, you sanctimonious bitch!
”
”
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
“
Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it’s outward-directed—angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious. But often it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll glimpse submerged feelings you either weren’t aware of or didn’t want to show: fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, insecurity. And if you can tolerate these deeper feelings long enough to understand them and listen to what they’re telling you, you’ll not only manage your anger in more productive ways, you also won’t be so angry all the time.
”
”
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
“
He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women- it was just another way of legalizing violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say.
”
”
John Irving (The Cider House Rules)
“
Not evil. Moronic, which isn't quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn't stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced he's doing good, that he's always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around f***ing up ... anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or ... leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
“
Acting all sanctimonious while spouting bad info was a terrible way to win a debate, but a great way to piss people off.
”
”
Becky Chambers (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1))
“
depressing. I asked myself: ‘Where is God?’ I came to detest the sanctimonious attitude of people toward violence, always saying ‘it’s God’s will’.
”
”
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
“
I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.
”
”
Stephen Fry
“
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment...But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.
”
”
Thomas Jefferson
“
Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
Why are you being so cruel? (Kiara)
Honestly? Because I believed your bullshit lies when you spewed them and I don’t often make that mistake. I should have listened to myself and known that in the end, you’re just like every other sanctimonious ass out there who dares to call us callous and unfeeling. (Syn)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of the Night (The League, #1))
“
It’s no secret that the great American pastime is no longer baseball. Now it’s sanctimony.
”
”
Nathan Hill (The Nix)
“
Just shut up. Shut the fuck up, you stupid, uptight, don't drink, don't smoke, don't fuck, don't do anything that might almost be interpreted as fun, sanctimonious little fucking virgin. Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck, I've had enough. I'm not going to this fucking meeting, I don't care what happens to the fucking family, you can tell Athena what the fuck you like, just as long as you get out of my fucking face and stay out of it. - Apollo
”
”
Marie Phillips (Gods Behaving Badly)
“
It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed, and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to think upon. But the present generation will probably behave just as badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which the generality of mankind most hate—the necessity of revising their convictions. Let them, then, be charitable to us ancients; and if they behave no better than the men of my day to some new benefactor, let them recollect that, after all, our wrath did not come to much, and vented itself chiefly in the bad language of sanctimonious scolds. Let them as speedily perform a strategic right-about-face, and follow the truth wherever it leads.
”
”
Thomas Henry Huxley
“
She was her own spectacular individual. Perhaps I was still sanctimoniously belittling the two roles she was ultimately most proud of, unable to accept that the same degree of fulfillment may await those who wish to nurture and love as those to seek to earn and create. Her art was the love that beat on in her loved ones, a contribution to the world that could be just as monumental as a song or a book.
”
”
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
“
You sanctimonious philistines, who scoff at me!
What has your politics fed on
since you've been ruling the world?
On butchery and murder!
”
”
Charles de Coster (The Legend of the Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel in the Land of Flanders & Elsewhere)
“
A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
”
”
Mark Twain
“
His girl. His. Here in the Capitol, it was a given that Lucy Gray belonged to him, as if she’d had no life before her name was called out at the reaping. Even that sanctimonious Sejanus believed she was something he could trade for. If that wasn’t ownership, what was? With her song, Lucy Gray had repudiated all that by featuring a life that had nothing to do with him, and a great deal to do with someone else. Someone she referred to as “lover,” no less. And while he had no claim on her heart — he barely knew the girl! — he didn’t like the idea of anyone else having it either. Although the song had been a clear success, he felt somehow betrayed by it. Even humiliated.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0))
“
The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.
”
”
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
“
The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.
”
”
P.J. O'Rourke (Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer)
“
Pete couldn't believe how sanctimonious somebody could be just because they'd once had a soldering iron stuck up their arse.
”
”
Alexei Sayle (Barcelona Plates)
“
Will was making a speech, something about having been young and careless once, the sort of thing old-timers said when they issued a deathblow, as if they thought their sanctimonious ramblings disguised as empathy would be welcomed, but Evie was only half listening.
”
”
Libba Bray (The Diviners (The Diviners, #1))
“
Note to reporters: The sanctimony thing probably works better on someone who has never broken real stories.
”
”
Colin Flaherty (White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Race Riots to America)
“
I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is more like confused.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
“
He was dignity distorted, bravery become knavery, sanctimoniousness masking sin. He was a mirror, jeering at the subject it reflected. Yet so muted were the jeers, so delicate the inaccuracies of delineation, that they evaded detection. True and false were blended together. The false was merely an extended shadow of the true.
”
”
Jim Thompson (A Swell-Looking Babe (Mulholland Classic))
“
Moronic, which isn't quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decison, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn't stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced that he's doing good, that he's always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around f***g up anyone he perceives to be different form himself. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
“
moral voices can also become sanctimonious bullies.
”
”
Nicholas Kristof
“
You are...the embodiment
of immediate good karma.
The equalizer between bottom
feeders and the sanctimonious
cogs in the system.
”
”
G.A.P. Gutierrez (No Return Address: A collection of poems)
“
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment
”
”
Thomas Jefferson
“
The vermin explain their sin with sanctimonious language like, "We've prayed about it and sought counsel, and we feel it's the right thing to do." Don't let it down on them that to the Enemy what they feel is inconsequential. His moral laws don't give a rip about how any of them feel. The sludgebags have no more power to vote them in and out of existence than they have power to revoke the law of gravity.
”
”
Randy Alcorn (Lord Foulgrin's Letters)
“
Have you met thy Lord, my son?
Have you been dead before, father?
”
”
Toba Beta (Master of Stupidity)
“
Acting all sanctimonious while spouting bad info was a terrible way to win a debate, but a great way to piss people off. ‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ Lovey said. ‘They act like all AIs want a body. Granted, I think I do, but that doesn’t mean all of us do. That’s such an incredibly organic bias, the idea that your squishy physical existence is some sort of pinnacle that all programs aspire to.
”
”
Becky Chambers (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1))
“
It was difficult to write about someone I felt I knew so well. The words were unwieldy, engorged with pretension. I wanted to uncover something special about her that only I could reveal. That she was so much more than a housewife, than a mother. That she was her own spectacular individual. Perhaps I was still sanctimoniously belittling the two roles she was ultimately most proud of, unable to accept that the same degree of fulfillment may await those who wish to nurture and love as those who seek to earn and create. Her art was the love that beat on in her loved ones, a contribution to the world that could be just as monumental as a song or a book. There could not be one without the other. Maybe I was just terrified that I might be the closest thing she had to leaving a piece of herself behind.
”
”
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
“
Who knows how easily ambition disguises itself under the name of a calling, possibly in good faith and deceiving itself, in sanctimonious confusion?
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Miserables)
“
She settled for snatching up the apple strudel still warm in its tinfoil shroud and throwing it at him. ‘I’ll give you darkness, you sanctimonious fucker!
”
”
Sarra Manning (It Felt Like a Kiss)
“
Leafing through Forbes or Fortune [magazine]s is like reading the operating manual of a strangely sanctimonious pirate ship
”
”
Adam Gopnik
“
Hold on, you sanctimonious asshole!
”
”
Megan Lally (That's Not My Name)
“
I can't believe you lied about chocolate," Mallory said. "Lying about chocolate is...sanctimonious. Do you remember all those bad girl lessons you gave me?"
Amy rubbed the spot between her eyes where a headache was starting. "You mean the lessons that landed you the sexy hunk you're currently sleeping with?"
"Well, yes. But my point is that maybe you need good girl lessons. And good girl lesson number one is never tease when it comes to chocolate."
-Amy and Mallory
”
”
Jill Shalvis (At Last (Lucky Harbor, #5))
“
The word 'religion' has acquired a very bad name among those who really love truth, justice, charity. It also exhales the musty odor of sanctimony and falsehood.
”
”
Luther Burbank
“
But now the cartels murdered a Mexican journalist every few weeks, and Lydia recoiled from her husband’s integrity. It felt sanctimonious, selfish. She wanted Sebastián alive more than she wanted his strong principles.
”
”
Jeanine Cummins (American Dirt)
“
All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.
”
”
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
“
As for the sanctimony of people who seem blind to the fact that mass murder is still an annual event, look at Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Tibet, Burma and elsewhere-the truer shout is not "Never again" but "Again and again.
”
”
Paul Theroux (Ghost Train to the Eastern Star)
“
Not evil,” Fermín objected. “Moronic, which isn’t quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn’t stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced that he’s doing good, that he’s always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around fucking up, if you’ll excuse the French, anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or, as in the case of Don Federico, his leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
“
Bloody Facebook. Full of sanctimonious trolls.
”
”
Carla Kovach (The Next Girl (Detective Gina Harte, #1))
“
There was something religious in grandmother's face, not in any sanctimoniously devout or ecstatic sense,but a look full of religious feeling, serenity and resignation.
”
”
Anatoly Rybakov (Heavy Sand)
“
We live in an age where if anyone speaks about integrity, about truth, about honesty, he is shouted down as sanctimonious or as a hypocrite. It
”
”
Loay Ragheb (The Higher You: The Journey Within & The Rise From Defeat)
“
It was time for her to finally get that all of that sanctimonious drivel is just the opiate of the masses. Ha, even I was educated enough to know that quote. From Gandhi.
”
”
Jutta Profijt (Morgue Drawer Next Door (Morgue Drawer, #2))
“
...I mistrust folk who are always bringing God or Christ into their conversations. If it is not an actual blasphemy it is at least a presumption. It smacks of self-conceit, doesn't it?
”
”
Winston Graham (The Black Moon (Poldark, #5))
“
In the West, we've gone from living in holier-than-thou societies to more-liberal-than-thou ones. Call it secular piety but both are just different forms of the same sanctimoniousness.
”
”
Stewart Stafford
“
That she was so much more than a housewife, than a mother. That she was her own spectacular individual. Perhaps I was still sanctimoniously belittling the two roles she was ultimately most proud of, unable to accept that the same degree of fulfillment may await those who wish to nurture and love as those who seek to earn and create. Her art was the love that beat on in her loved ones, a contribution to the world that could be just as monumental as a song or a book.
”
”
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
“
I always say there’s nothing wrong with a bit of vice as long as it’s not taken to the extreme. Give me someone with a touch of vice over someone with an excess of sanctimonious hypocrisy any day.
”
”
C.S. Harris (What Darkness Brings (Sebastian St. Cyr, #8))
“
Jackson bit back the retort he had about how high and mighty ideals were fine … until you were staring down the barrel of a gun with nothing to defend yourself but sanctimony and self-righteousness.
”
”
Joshua Dalzelle (Counterstrike (Black Fleet Trilogy, #3))
“
If the political left weren't so joyless, humorless, intrusive, taxing, over-taxing, anarchistic, controlling, rudderless, chaos-prone, pedantic, unrealistic, hypocritical, clueless, politically correct, angry, cruel, sanctimonious, retributive, redistributive, intolerant, and if the political left wasn't hell-bent on expansion of said unpleasantness into all aspects of my family's life the truth is: I would not be in your life. If the democratic party were run by Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, if it had the slightest vestige of JFK and Henry "Scoop" Jackson I wouldn't be on the political map. If the American media were run by biased but not evil Tim Russert and David Brinkley types I wouldn't have joined the fight. You would not know who I am. The left made me do it, I swear, I am a reluctant cultural warrior.
”
”
Andrew Breitbart
“
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
”
”
Thomas Jefferson
“
We are not going to confine women to the home, cover their heads, lengthen their skirts, or beat up gay people, prohibit alcohol, censure film, theater, and literature, and codify tolerance in order to respect the overly sensitive whims of a few sanctimonious persons.
”
”
Pascal Bruckner (The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism)
“
There are reality shows for gold-diggers while televised Bridezillas and messy infidelities get sky-high ratings. To think that amidst all the infidelity, Americans actually had the nerve to try to get all sanctimonious when the gay marriage debate surfaced. Shut up! My
”
”
Issa Rae (The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl)
“
The Guardian's headline is 'How Going Green May Make You Mean.' We're inclined to think the chain of causation runs the other way—that people who are jerks to begin with gravitate toward verdant sanctimony.
”
”
James Taranto
“
You’re also sanctimonious and stubborn and short-tempered.” His eyes flicked open, and he frowned. I kissed his lips again. Gentle and slow. “Not to mention brooding, with a shit sense of humor.” When he opened his mouth to argue, I spoke over him. “But despite all that, you aren’t alone, Reid. You’ll never be alone.
”
”
Shelby Mahurin (Blood & Honey (Serpent & Dove, #2))
“
...but hearing and seeing only the bright hurry-gurdy carousel os his twirling thoughts, and the same hard little horses bobbing by on their braided rods. Here they came again. The outrage! The police! Poor Molly! Sanctimonious bastard! Call that a moral position? Up to his neck in shit! The outrage! And what about Molly....?
”
”
Ian McEwan (Amsterdam)
“
It’s important not just to confirm normal, commonsense assumptions, but to actually convert the uncertain. To win over those who want to be won over, and sharpen the spear of facts and puncture the flatulent balloon of sanctimonious outrage. We better find them, soon, before America turns into one giant daycare center for dipshits.
”
”
Greg Gutfeld (How To Be Right: The Art of Being Persuasively Correct)
“
And I’m good with that decision. I still believe it was the right thing to do. I thought we could leave the past in the past and it would all be okay. But you don’t get to be all sanctimonious with me now, you sorry son of a bitch. Because the only difference I can see between what Hudson did and what you did is he succeeded. And his target had it coming.
”
”
Tracy Wolff (Covet (Crave, #3))
“
No, if you haven’t lived through 1998, you don’t know what sanctimony is.
”
”
Philip Roth (The Human Stain (The American Trilogy, #3))
“
Sanctimony and self-regard are as American as smallpox blankets and supersize meals.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death)
“
He would go on fasts, just as he did as a teenager, and he became sanctimonious as he lectured others at the table on the virtues of whatever eating regimen he was following
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
At the end of the book, Athena’s original draft is unbearably sanctimonious.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (Yellowface)
Chloe Walsh (Redeeming 6 (Boys of Tommen, #4))
“
seemed pretty hypocritical for society to pop Xanax and Oxy like Smarties while sanctimoniously looking down on a man who appreciated the benefits of bourbon.
”
”
Jamie Beck (Worth the Risk (St. James #3))
“
I hate to be sanctimonious about it, but it turns out that good conversation solves a great many problems.
”
”
E.K. Johnston (That Inevitable Victorian Thing)
“
The most regretful behavior always leaches from a wound to our sanctimonious pride.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Suzanne Collins (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0))
“
For some reason, America produced an inexhaustible supply of sanctimonious killjoys endlessly crusading to improve everyone else’s life.
”
”
Jake Needham (And Brother It's Starting to Rain (Samuel Tay #5))
“
There was a drugged sanctimoniousness about the sappy-looking birds seated in the lobby. Studs felt that there wasn't a man or a regular guy among them.
”
”
James T. Farrell (Studs Lonigan A Trilogy)
“
Jefferson believed in the future, and why not? His own lifetime was testament to the possibility of political and intellectual progress. The past, he thought, should hold no magical, unexamined claim over the present. “Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched,” he wrote in 1816.40 They
”
”
Jon Meacham (Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power)
“
I open the gallery door, walk in with that sinking feeling I always have in galleries. It’s the carpets that do it to me, the hush, the sanctimoniousness of it all: galleries are too much like churches, there’s too much reverence, you feel there should be some genuflecting going on. Also I don’t like it that this is where paintings end up, on these neutral-toned walls with the track lighting, sterilized, rendered safe and acceptable. It’s as if somebody’s been around spraying the paintings with air freshener, to kill the smell. The smell of blood on the wall.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye)
“
She saw this in the US after every school shooting: a flurry of news stories, the sanctimonious tweets about thoughts and prayers, the predictable calls for gun control reform and then—silence. Parents and other survivors were left to their private lifelong grief, permanently out of step with a world that had moved on. Bloodstains were scrubbed from school walls before the students returned.
”
”
Thrity Umrigar (Honor)
“
Desire for goodness, Mister Reese, leads to earnestness. Earnestness in turn leads to sanctimonious self-righteousness, which breeds intolerance, upon which harsh judgment quickly follows, yielding dire punishment, inflicting general terror and paranoia, eventually culminating in revolt, leading to chaos, then dissolution, and thus, the end of civilisation.”
He slowly turned, looked down upon Emancipor.
“And we are creatures dependent upon civilisation. It is the only environment in which we can thrive.”
Emancipor frowned.
“The desire for goodness leads to the end of civilisation?”
“Precisely, Mister Reese.”
“But if the principal aim is to achieve good living and health among the populace, what is the harm in that?”
Bauchelain sighed.
“Very well, I shall try again. Good living and health, as you say, yielding well-being. But well-being is a contextual notion, a relative notion. Perceived benefits are measured by way of contrast. In any case, the result is smugness, and from that an overwhelming desire to deliver conformity among those perceived as less pure, less fortunate—the unenlightened, if you will. But conformity leads to ennui, and then indifference. From indifference, Mister Reese, dissolution follows as a natural course, and with it, once again, the end of civilisation.
”
”
Steven Erikson (Bauchelain and Korbal Broach (The Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, #1-3))
“
I think they are a group of sanctimonious billionaires who lied and cheated so they could make a handsome profit,” Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, said. “I truly believe that they have blood on their hands.
”
”
Patrick Radden Keefe (Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction)
“
Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it’s outward-directed — angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious. But often it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll glimpse submerged feelings you either weren’t aware of or didn’t want to show: fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, insecurity. And if you can tolerate these deeper feelings long enough to understand them and listen to what they’re telling you, you’ll not only manage your anger in more productive ways, you also won’t be so angry all the time. Of course, anger serves another function — it pushes people away and keeps them from getting close enough to see you.
”
”
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)
“
Perhaps I was still sanctimoniously belittling the two roles she was ultimately most proud of, unable to accept that the same degree of fulfillment may await those who wish to nurture and love as those who seek to earn and create.
”
”
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
“
All you have to do is convince the sanctimonious that they are free of all sin and they'll start throwing stones, or bombs, with gusto. In fact, it doesn't take much, because they can be convinced with the bare minimum of encouragement and excuses.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2))
“
Narcissa curled her lip. “Oh shut up, you sanctimonious whore. I’m sick of all your—” Hauk stunned her with his blaster. Narcissa cried out before she slumped to the floor. Hauk made no moves to break her fall. Instead, he holstered his weapon and met Desideria’s gaze unabashedly. “My mother always said that if you can’t improve the silence, you shouldn’t be speaking.” Fain let out a low whistle. “You stunned a girl, bro. Then let her hit the floor. Damn, and I thought I was callous.” Ignoring
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Shadows (The League, #4))
“
What a skeletal wreck of man this is.
Translucent flesh and feeble bones,
the kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic domes.
Running rampid with free thought to free form, and the free and clear.
When the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at a
laundry mat to sift and focus on the bigger, better, now.
We all have a little sin that needs venting,
virtues for the rending and laws and systems and stems are ripped
from the branches of office, do you know where your post entails?
Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve?
When in doubt inside your atavistic allure, the value of a summer spent, and a winter earned.
For the rest of us, there is always Sunday.
The day of the week the reeks of rest, but all we do is catch our breath,
so we can wade naked in the bloody pool, and place our hand on the big, black book.
To watch the knives zigzag between our aching fingers.
A vacation is a countdown, T minus your life and
counting, time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube,
and hope you get a taste.
WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FOR?
WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? SHUT UP!
I can go on and on but lets move on, shall we?
Say, your me, and I’m you, and they all watch the things we do,
and like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs,
haven’t felt like this in years.
The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse, let me go,
and punch me into the dead spout again.
That’s where you go when there’s no one else around,
it’s just you, and there was never anyone to begin with, now was there?
Sanctimonious pretentious dastardly bastards with their thumb on the pulse,
and a finger on the trigger.
CLASSIFIED MY ASS! THAT’S A FUCKING SECRET, AND YOU KNOW IT!
Government is another way to say better…than…you.
It’s like ice but no pick, a murder charge that won’t stick,
it’s like a whole other world where you can smell the food,
but you can’t touch the silverware.
Huh, what luck. Fascism you can vote for.
Humph, isn’t that sweet?
And we’re all gonna die some day, because that’s the American way,
and I’ve drunk too much, and said too little,
when your gaffer taped in the
middle, say a prayer, say a face, get your self together and see what’s happening.
SHUT UP! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!
I’m sorry, I could go on and on but
their times to move on so, remember: you’re a wreck, an accident.
Forget the freak, your just nature.
Keep the gun oiled, and the temple cleaned shit snort,
and blaspheme, let the heads cool, and the engine run.
Because in the end, everything we do, is just everything we’ve done.
”
”
Stone Sour (Stone Sour)
“
I was not the only one to die of the moral contagion, though perhaps I was the weakest of all. But all the past generation has grown up in an atmosphere of sanctimonious tranquillity, of forced respect to its elders, of lack of all individuality and dumbness.
”
”
Aleksandr Kuprin (The River of Life, and Other Stories: Exploring Human Emotions and Complexities in Early 20th-Century Russia)
“
The shakedown of Switzerland and Germany has been only a prelude to the grand finale: the shakedown of Eastern Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, alluring prospects opened up in the former heartland of European Jewry. Cloaking itself in the sanctimonious mantle of “needy Holocaust victims,” the Holocaust industry has sought to extort billions of dollars from these already impoverished countries. Pursuing this end with reckless and ruthless abandon, it has become the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe.
”
”
Norman G. Finkelstein (The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering)
“
Sometimes sexy women like to act stupid because it helps them get exactly what they want. Theresa Boudreaux was one of those types: a bodacious waffle-house waitress with a devilish streak. Unfortunately for a certain high-ranking elected leader, she had the wits to go to RadioShack and buy herself a nine-dollar phone-recording device. She then used it to tape her dirty phone calls with US Congressman Huey Hartley, a powerful, sanctimonious, married-for-thirty-years politician from the solidly red state of Mississippi.
”
”
Holly Peterson
“
This she? no, this is Diomed's Cressida:
If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,
If sanctimony be the gods' delight,
If there be rule in unity itself,
This is not she. O madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against itself!
Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth,
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof to enter.
Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates;
Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself;
The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed;
And with another knot, five-finger-tied,
The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics
Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida)
“
Which, all in all, is rather deflating and dismaying, since many of us would be loath to nominate Prussia in 1815, with its censorship, its lack of representative bodies, as our ideal of freedom. Indeed, if Prussia was Hegel’s ideal, he may well have approved, despite his dismissal of the morality of the East, the paternalistic and authoritarian Singapore—approved it far more than he would modern America, with its liberty bordering at times on chaos, its commercialized hedonism, its temper split between derision and sanctimoniousness.
”
”
David Denby (Great Books)
“
WHO AM I TO TELL others what ethical leadership is? Anyone claiming to write a book about ethical leadership can come across as presumptuous, even sanctimonious. All the more so if that author happens to be someone who was quite memorably and publicly fired from his last job.
”
”
James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
“
Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it’s outward-directed — angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious. But often it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll glimpse submerged feelings you either weren’t aware of or didn’t want to show: fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, insecurity. And if you can tolerate these deeper feelings long enough to understand them and listen to what they’re telling you, you’ll not only manage your anger in more productive ways, you also won’t be so angry all the time.
”
”
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)
“
Batman: "You should've listened to me."
-"I thought we were partners."
-"We are. But we're not equals, not even close.
-"You sanctimonious, self-righteous..."
-"You're not in it like I am, Barbara.
It's still a game for you, it's still a thrill. You haven't been taken to the edge yet."
-"The edge of what?"
-"The abyss, the place where you don't care anymore. Where all hope dies."
......
......
......
Barbara: "I saw that abyss you spoke about, very scary, but so tempting.
I don't know how you resist it.
I don't think it's humanly possible after a while.
Be careful.
”
”
Brian Bolland (Batman: The Killing Joke)
“
They were silent for a moment, each of them contemplating Anthony Comstock, a demagogue with too much power for such a limited understanding and narrow mind. Many saw him as nothing more than a sanctimonious buffoon, but those who paid attention knew him to be malicious and calculating.
”
”
Sara Donati (Where the Light Enters (Waverly Place #2))
“
One simple answer is that there has been a massive rise in the incidence of sanctimony and smugness among the successful that has nothing to do with any change in the underlying reality. Rather, it has been stimulated by politicians who have realized that it is possible to win power by recruiting the most economically successful forty per cent or so of the population in a crusade to roll back the gains made by their fellow citizens in the previous forty years. And how better to rationalize this than to tell people that they deserve the incomes that the market generates?
”
”
Brian M. Barry (Political Argument (California Series on Social Choice and Political Economy))
“
Willowgrove is the first time she's been around Christianity, and so to her, that's what faith is: judgemental, sanctimonious hypocrytes hiding hate behind Bible verses, twenty-four-karat crucifix necklaces, and charismatic white pastors with all the horrible secrets that money can protect.
”
”
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
“
I'm going to assist the shit out of you," I announced. "I hope you're ready for the full force of me and my sanctimonious assisting."
He gave his watch another baleful stare before glancing over at me. "I'm not sure how I could possibly prepare for something like that."
I nodded. "Fair point.
”
”
Kate Canterbary (Boss in the Bedsheets (The Santillian Triplets, #2))
“
Not evil,’ Fermín objected. ‘Moronic, which isn’t quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn’t stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like an animal, convinced that he’s doing good, that he’s always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around fucking up, if you’ll excuse the French, anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin colour, creed, language, nationality or, as in the case of Don Federico, his leisure pursuits. What the world really needs are more thoroughly
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow Of The Wind)
“
If the favored modes of the alt-right were the women-hating troll and the neo-Nazi meme, the favored modes of the alt-left were clickbait and the call-out, sentimental, meaningless outrage—“8 Signs Your Yoga Practice Is Culturally Appropriated”—and sanctimonious accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.
”
”
Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
“
Lukas Stolz’s life in Germany after the wall fell seemed surreal. He couldn’t ignore the widespread sense of optimism, nor fail to hear the talk of ‘hope’ and ‘opportunity’. They were all deluded, of course. The people had surrendered. Confessed their collective failure. They need only prostrate themselves before the altar of the holy trinity: ‘money, choice and liberty’. Absolution was the gift of the west. And the west’s sanctimony in pardoning them of their sins was unfettered.
”
”
Stephen Franks (The Milan Contract)
“
Rather than the sanctimonious bullshit of politicians about “the good people of this fair state,” I would joyously vote for any candidate who had the courage to stand up and say, “Look, I’m going to steal from you. I’m going to line my pockets and those of my friends, but I’m not going to steal too much. But in the deal I’ll give you better roads, safer schools, better education, and a happier condition of life. I’m not going to do it out of compassion or dedication to the good people of this fair state; I’m going to do it because if I do these things, you’ll elect me again and I can steal a little bit more.” That joker has my vote, no arguments.
”
”
Harlan Ellison (Paingod: And Other Delusions)
“
To treat the founding documents as Scripture would be to become a slave to the past. “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched,” Jefferson conceded. But when they do, “They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.
”
”
Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
“
To treat the founding documents as Scripture would be to become a slave to the past. “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched,” Jefferson conceded. But when they do, “They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.”33
”
”
Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
“
And in some environments, talking like an overly-educated, holier-than-thou reformer is an automatic hook. Don’t get any tribal feelings about that description, either. The most sanctimonious holier-than-thou people I know are progressive social activists, not religious zealots. (Ooooh. Look at all the labeling in that sentence!)
”
”
Rory Miller (ConCom: Conflict Communication A New Paradigm in Conscious Communication)
“
Two tiny sparrows hopped along the branch of a nearby pine tree, fluffing up their feathers in the rain and chirping at each other fondly. Animals, Nor had learned, have their own names for each other. Best translated, they were typically things like Winsome, Persnickety, and Sanctimonious. Of these two, one called himself Vigilant, the other Balderdash.
”
”
Leslye Walton (The Price Guide to the Occult)
“
Desire for goodness, Mister Reese, leads to earnestness. Earnestness in turn leads to sanctimonious selfrighteousness, which breeds intolerance, upon which harsh judgement quickly follows, yielding dire punishment, inflicting general terror and paranoia, eventually culminating in revolt, leading to chaos, then dissolution, and thus, the end of civilization.
”
”
Steven Erikson (The Tales Of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, Vol 1 (Malazan Empire))
“
A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
”
”
Maya Angelou (A Brave and Startling Truth)
“
Fascist art displays a utopian aesthetics—that of physical perfection. Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy.
”
”
Susan Sontag (Fascinating Fascism)
“
It is regrettable," resumed Azédarac, "that any question of my holiness and devotional probity should have been raised among the clergy of Averoigne. But I suppose it was inevitable sooner or later— even though the chief difference between myself and many other ecclesiastics is, that I serve the Devil wittingly and of my own free will, while they do the same in sanctimonious blindness.
”
”
Clark Ashton Smith (The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith)
“
It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,—put money in thy purse,—nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration;—put but money in thy purse.—These Moors are changeable in their wills:—fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse.—If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst; if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her.
”
”
William Shakespeare
“
I’m starting to feel that nowadays there’s no one more bigoted than a liberal. The right-wingers, at least they own their hatred and don’t try to dress it up in anything other than the intolerant, narrow-minded, self-serving bullshit that it is. You know where you are with the Right. But the Left? My God, disagree with them for even a moment, dare to ask a question or deviate from the company line, and they’re on you like flies on shit. They won’t stand for even an iota of disagreement, pleading for kindness while masking their own intolerance in sanctimony. It’s McCarthyism hidden beneath the umbrella of Wokeness.
”
”
John Boyne (The Echo Chamber)
“
The implication of his words stung more than I cared to admit, rekindling my anger. I’d only lied to him when absolutely necessary—like when the alternative had been him burning me alive. Or Morgane chopping off his head. Don’t lie to me, he said. Just as sanctimonious and arrogant as he’d always been. As if I were the problem. As if I were the one who’d spent the last fortnight lying to myself about who and what I was.
”
”
Shelby Mahurin (Blood & Honey (Serpent & Dove, #2))
“
Cotillion tossed the apple aside, then reached out to grasp Kalam's upper arm. 'Step away and leave the rest to me.'
'Hold on a moment. Quick Ben's spells were dispelled – that's how I ended up stuck here—'
'Probably because he's unconscious.'
'He is?'
'Or dead. We should confirm things either way, yes?'
You sanctimonious blood-lapping sweat-sucking—
'Risky,' Cotillion cut in, 'making your cursing sound like praying.
”
”
Steven Erikson (The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #6))
“
American Indians share a magnificent history — rich in its astounding diversity, its integrity, its spirituality, its ongoing unique culture and dynamic tradition. It's also rich, I'm saddened to say, in tragedy, deceit, and genocide. Our sovereignty, our nationhood, our very identity — along with our sacred lands — have been stolen from us in one of the great thefts of human history. And I am referring not just to the thefts of previous centuries but to the great thefts that are still being perpetrated upon us today, at this very moment. Our human rights as indigenous peoples are being violated every day of our lives — and by the very same people who loudly and sanctimoniously proclaim to other nations the moral necessity of such rights.
Over the centuries our sacred lands have been repeatedly and routinely stolen from us by the governments and peoples of the United States and Canada. They callously pushed us onto remote reservations on what they thought was worthless wasteland, trying to sweep us under the rug of history. But today, that so-called wasteland has surprisingly become enormously valuable as the relentless technology of white society continues its determined assault on Mother Earth. White society would now like to terminate us as peoples and push us off our reservations so they can steal our remaining mineral and oil resources. It's nothing new for them to steal from nonwhite peoples. When the oppressors succeed with their illegal thefts and depredations, it's called colonialism. When their efforts to colonize indigenous peoples are met with resistance or anything but abject surrender, it's called war. When the colonized peoples attempt to resist their oppression and defend themselves, we're called criminals.
I write this book to bring about a greater understanding of what being an Indian means, of who we are as human beings. We're not quaint curiosities or stereotypical figures in a movie, but ordinary — and, yes, at times, extraordinary — human beings. Just like you. We feel. We bleed. We are born. We die. We aren't stuffed dummies in front of a souvenir shop; we aren't sports mascots for teams like the Redskins or the Indians or the Braves or a thousand others who steal and distort and ridicule our likeness. Imagine if they called their teams the Washington Whiteskins or the Washington Blackskins! Then you'd see a protest! With all else that's been taken from us, we ask that you leave us our name, our self-respect, our sense of belonging to the great human family of which we are all part.
Our voice, our collective voice, our eagle's cry, is just beginning to be heard. We call out to all of humanity. Hear us!
”
”
Leonard Peltier (Prison Writings)
“
Mis-define the law of brotherly love by giving men a claim on their neighbors and you have destroyed freedom, justified despotism, and assumed that there can be a master mind, in an ordinary human being, as the mind of God.
”
”
Frederick Nymeyer (Progressive Calvinism. Volume I, 1955: Essays Against Sanctimony and Legalized Coercion)
“
So, for example, if I had been raised in a critical or demanding environment, it might have been easier for me, relatively speaking, to find refuge in worse-than or need-to-be-seen-as justifications. Those who were raised in affluent or sanctimonious environments, on the other hand, may naturally gravitate to better-than and I-deserve justifications, and so on. Need-to-be-seen-as boxes might easily arise in such circumstances as well. “But the key point, and the point that is the same for all of us, is that we all grab for justification, however we can get it. Because grabbing for justification is something we do, we can undo it. Whether we find justification in how we are worse or in how we are better, we can each find our way to a place where we have no need for justification at all. We can find our way to peace—deep, lasting, authentic peace—even when war is breaking out around us.
”
”
Arbinger Institute (The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict)
“
I wiped the blade against my jeans and walked into the bar. It was mid-afternoon, very
hot and still. The bar was deserted. I ordered a whisky. The barman looked at the blood
and asked:
‘God?’
‘Yeah.’
‘S’pose it’s time someone finished that hypocritical little punk, always bragging about
his old man’s power…’
He smiled crookedly, insinuatingly, a slight nausea shuddered through me. I replied
weakly:
‘It was kind of sick, he didn’t fight back or anything, just kept trying to touch me and
shit, like one of those dogs that try to fuck your leg. Something in me snapped, the
whingeing had ground me down too low. I really hated that sanctimonious little creep.’
‘So you snuffed him?’
‘Yeah, I’ve killed him, knifed the life out of him, once I started I got frenzied, it was
an ecstasy, I never knew I could hate so much.’
I felt very calm, slightly light-headed. The whisky tasted good, vaporizing in my
throat. We were silent for a few moments. The barman looked at me levelly, the edge of
his eyes twitching slightly with anxiety:
There’ll be trouble though, don’tcha think?’
‘I don’t give a shit, the threats are all used up, I just don’t give a shit.’
‘You know what they say about his old man? Ruthless bastard they say. Cruel…’
‘I just hope I’ve hurt him, if he even exists.’
‘Woulden wanna cross him merself,’ he muttered.
I wanted to say ‘yeah, well that’s where we differ’, but the energy for it wasn’t there.
The fan rotated languidly, casting spidery shadows across the room. We sat in silence a
little longer. The barman broke first:
‘So God’s dead?’
‘If that’s who he was. That fucking kid lied all the time. I just hope it’s true this time.’
The barman worked at one of his teeth with his tongue, uneasily:
‘It’s kindova big crime though, isn’t it? You know how it is, when one of the cops
goes down and everything’s dropped ’til they find the guy who did it. I mean, you’re not
just breaking a law, your breaking LAW.’
I scraped my finger along my jeans, and suspended it over the bar, so that a thick clot
of blood fell down into my whisky, and dissolved. I smiled:
‘Maybe it’s a big crime,’ I mused vaguely ‘but maybe it’s nothing at all…’ ‘…and we
have killed him’ writes Nietzsche, but—destituted of community—I crave a little time
with him on my own.
In perfect communion I lick the dagger foamed with God’s blood.
”
”
Nick Land (The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (An Essay in Atheistic Religion))
“
We all have come here from somewhere else, and the vast majority of us are only a few generations removed from another land. Whether that is one generation or ten, it seems rather sanctimonious to claim that there is much of a difference. Not many of us can trace our arrival back a few hundred years, let alone millennia. But even the ancestors of the Native Americans are believed to have come across a land bridge from Asia—a reminder that we are a species of migrations, and always have been.
”
”
Dan Rather (What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism)
“
Well, as for slavery…it is true that I should not like to be one myself, yet Nelson was in favour of it and he said that the country’s shipping would be ruined if the trade were put down. Perhaps it comes more natural if you are black…but come, I remember how you tore that unfortunate scrub Bosville to pieces years ago in Barbados for saying that the slaves liked it – that it was in their masters’ interest to treat them kindly – that doing away with slavery would be shutting the gates of mercy on the negroes. Hey, hey! The strongest language I have ever heard you use. I wonder he did not ask for satisfaction.’ ‘I think I feel more strongly about slavery than anything else, even that vile Buonaparte who is in any case one aspect of it…Bosville…the sanctimonious hypocrite…the silly blackguard with his “gates of mercy”, his soul to the Devil – a mercy that includes chains and whips and branding with a hot iron. Satisfaction. I should have given it him with the utmost good-will: two ounces of lead or a span of sharp steel; though common ratsbane would have been more appropriate.’ ‘Why, Stephen, you are in quite a passion.’ ‘So I am. It is a retrospective passion, sure, but I feel it still. Thinking of that ill-looking flabby ornamented conceited self-complacent ignorant shallow mean-spirited cowardly young shite with absolute power over fifteen hundred blacks makes me fairly tremble even now – it moves me to grossness. I should have kicked him if ladies had not been present.
”
”
Patrick O'Brian (The Wine-Dark Sea (Aubrey/Maturin, #16))
“
Perhaps I was still sanctimoniously belittling the two roles she was ultimately most proud of, unable to accept that the same degree of fulfillment may await those who wish to nurture and love as those who seek to earn and create. Her art was the love that beat on in her loved ones, a contribution to the world that could be just as monumental as a song or a book. There could not be one without the other. Maybe I was just terrified that I might be the closest thing she had to leaving a piece of herself behind.
”
”
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
“
The Jedi - how he hated them! How he loathed their hollow sanctimoniousness, their pretense of piety, their hypocrisy. How he longed for the day when their Temple would be a ruin of of smoking rubble, littered with their crushed corpses. If he closed his eyes, he could see the apocalypse of the order as vividly as if it were reality. It was reality, after all - a future reality, but nonetheless valid. It was destined, ordained, predetermined. And he would be instrumental in bringing it about. It was what his entire life had been designed for.
”
”
Michael Reaves (Star Wars: Darth Maul - Shadow Hunter)
“
In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern,” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr. (The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.)
“
Yeah. I have an assassin running loose after my dad and you now have one after your mom. The only reason I agreed to attend that sanctimonious stratiotes was that I’d hoped the assassin would make a move on my father and I’d be able to capture him on the ship where the escape routes would be limited.” “Strat… what was that word you used?” “Stratiotes. It means a collection of morons. Is that really all you got out of my tirade?” “No, it wasn’t. It was just the part I didn’t understand. Just like I don’t understand who’s trying to kill my mother.” He
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Shadows (The League, #4))
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Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn’t stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced that he’s doing good, that he’s always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around fucking up, if you’ll excuse the French, anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or, as in the case of Don Federico, his leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.
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Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
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Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations. The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony.
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Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
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Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.
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R.B. Bernstein (Thomas Jefferson)
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Like Galileo’s colleagues, the “Lockdown Left” has abandoned the discipline of evidence-based medicine. Instead of scientific citation, they rely on appeals to often undeserving authorities who have manufactured “scientific consensus” by cherry-picking data to support a predetermined policy. Sanctimonious bromides to “follow the science,” “trust the experts,” most often mean blind dogmatic trust in the official—and often whimsical—pronouncements of amoral pharmaceutical companies and their venal government vassals at captive agencies like CDC, FDA, NIH, and WHO.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals)
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Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations. The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony. It reminds me of the old political joke: Why do you take such an instant dislike to people? It saves a lot of time.
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Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
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Deacon began to speak of a woman who he had used; how he had turned up his nose at her because her loose and easy ways gave him the license to drop and despise her. That while the adultery preyed on him for a short while (very short), his long remorse was at having become what the Old Fathers cursed: the kind of man who set himself up to judge, rout and even destroy the needy, the defenseless, the different.
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Toni Morrison (Paradise (Beloved Trilogy, #3))
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So Rhodes will go to his corner, leading a charge he can’t really control because his caucus twitches at each tweet. Some days, my side isn’t much better. Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations. The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony. It reminds me of the old political joke: Why do you take such an instant dislike to people? It saves a lot of time.
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Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
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The most insidious of our country, the greediest and highest rung of our socioeconomic ladder, line their pockets with misappropriated funds as military personnel and hordes of civilians are maimed or killed. It’s not their children out there, blinded by manufactured patriotism or lured into the service with the promise of economic stability, all with the sanctimonious blessings of misguided public consent by way of corporate, state-sponsored media. It won’t be their children who are terrorized by Wahabbist insurgents tearing through city blocks and rural areas as only an ever-devouring plague could. It won’t be any of their loved ones watching thousands of years of civilization unraveling like an old sweater as each thread of wool is lit on fire or stolen to sell on the black market for greedy consumers with a fetish for hijacked Mesopotamian artifacts.
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M.B. Dallocchio (The Desert Warrior)
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Certainly, I believed that our democratic system of government was the best thing going. I was a flag-waver from way back. I was proud of my country. It was the moral weakness of our leaders that concerned me. They were prone to the same frailties of arrogance, greed, and sanctimony as those of any other country. The primitive concept of 'might makes right' still reigned supreme. Hadn't thousands of years of history taught us anything?
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Richard Cezar (MP (semi-autobiographical novel))
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very nature of his ailment continues to baffle me, and baffle us all. What is the source of this abnormality? Everywhere we observe plants, animals, systems with a core. Every flower has its seed. Every animal its heart. Every masterpiece its inspiration. Yet the answers I seek elude me. There is a root somewhere in his brain, a twisted root that sprouts madness and malice. I will find it. No matter the cost, no matter the difficulty, I will find it. I will live a truly great life. My colleagues will no doubt hang me metaphorically, but I say let them hang. Legality, morality, sympathy aside, I will pull madness out by its black root, and I will leave a legacy no man, however sanctimonious, can fault. A truly great life. That is what humanity deserves. Not an average life, not even a normal one—a life in which genius is not an anomaly but an expectation. But to achieve such things
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Madeleine Roux (Asylum (Asylum #1))
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But feeling ashamed and not telling anyone about it has NEVER HELPED. My hope is that by telling people about all this stuff, maybe others will relate. And then I won’t feel alone? And yes, of course, I’ll call my psychiatric nurse, Matt. Though he just changed insurances and I need to find somebody else. And Scott will call his therapist and his psychiatrist. And yes, we will call Deda and Jim from our Recovering Couples Anonymous meeting we’ve been attending and they will laugh. Deda will say, “Are you trying to scare each other?” Yes, yes we are! We thought it might help! And yes, twelve-steppers, we are “WORKING THE STEPS of the program,” you sanctimonious church basement carps! We are on step four, if you must know. I’d like to blame the above morning episode on myself or my poor diet or the city of Los Angeles or something about how and who I am that might be solved, but let’s just call it a Thursday.
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Maria Bamford (Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere)
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The only detail I knew about my dad’s experience in World War II was that he liked when they served chicken-fried steak.
I was probably 13 when he told that story, and with the unblinking sanctimony that only a teenager can wield, I remember saying, “Wasn’t that really unhealthy?” In a look that I can only describe as for-a-smart-kid-you’re-remarkably-stupid, my father replied, “We were in planes carrying bombs, and enemy planes were shooting at us. Fried food was not a problem.
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Gina Barreca
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Jefferson described and criticized this impulse to attribute to the past “a wisdom more than human” and to treat “constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.”10 Madison’s principal reason for deifying the Founders was his belief that the people could not be trusted to intelligently rule themselves. Citizens must be taught through habit and tradition to obey constituted governmental authority, and reverence for the Founders served that purpose. Without it, the people might too frequently change their constitution, which would “in a great measure, deprive the government of that veneration which time bestows on everything, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability.” Experiments in the system of government were “of too ticklish a nature to be unnecessarily multiplied.” It was dangerous to “disturb the public tranquility by interesting too strongly the public passions.
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Michael J. Klarman (The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution)
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My dear mother: I have received everything in the way of food and necessaries in life unfortunately, too, your letter, which made me feel very wretched. Really these dissertations on Christianity and on opinions of this man and that as to what I should do and ought to think on the subject should no longer be directed to my address. My patience won't stand it! The atmosphere in which you live, among 'good Christians', with their one-sided and often presumptuous judgements, is as opposed as it possibly can be my own feelings and most remote aims. I do not say anything about it, but I know that if people of this kind, even including my mother and sister, had an inkling of what I am aiming at, they would have alternative but to become my natural enemies. This cannot be helped; the reasons for it lie in the nature of things. It spoils my love of life to live among such people, and I have to exercise considerable self-control in order to not react constantly against sanctimonious atmosphere . . .
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche)
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The church was only round the corner and they made it as the last bell was an echo, marching down the aisle together, the old man and the old lady and the kids, the eight kids. Eight kids and not enough bread for one. Kneeling together, praying together, marching out again into the cold gloomy Chicago Sunday. The hot sweating Chicago Sunday.
“It’s a fine family you have there, Mr...”
The old man puffing himself up and accepting the compliments on the church steps and the old lady smirking timidly and fingering her worn black gloves. She blacked them with shoe blacking on Saturday nights. The kids standing like clodhoppers with their welts itching under their sawtoothed winter underwear, under their sweaty summer floursacks.
The priest in his stained cassock looking like a pale, pious, nearsighted Saint. Saints didn’t belong in a slum church; there ought to have been a fighting priest like an avenging angel with a fiery sword. To whack the old man down. To strike the old man and his sanctimonious Sunday smile dead on the church steps
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Dorothy B. Hughes (Ride the Pink Horse)
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It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy in all of its truculent and sanctimonious power. Trump inaugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican “rapists,” only to be later revealed as a proud violator. White supremacy has always had a perverse sexual tint. It is thus appropriate that Trump’s rise was shepherded by Steve Bannon, a man who mocks his white male opponents as “cucks.” The word, derived from cuckold, is specifically meant to debase by fear/fantasy—the target is so weak that he would submit to the humiliation of having his white wife lie with black men. That the slur cuck casts white men as victims aligns with the dictums of whiteness, which seek to alchemize one’s profligate sins into virtue. So it was with Virginia slaveholders claiming that Britain sought to make slaves of them. So it was with rapacious Klansmen organized against alleged outrages. So it was with a candidate who called for a foreign power to hack his opponent’s email and a president now claiming to be the victim of “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates (We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy)
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In the age of democratic nationalism, imperialism needed deeper self-justifications:
The idea that despotism of any kind was an offence against humanity, had crystallised into an instinctive feeling, and modern morality and sentiment revolted against the enslavement of nation by nation, of class by class or of man by man. Imperialism had to justify itself to this modern sentiment and could only do so by pretending to be a trustee of liberty, commissioned from on high to civilize the uncivilized and train the untrained until the time had come when the benevolent conqueror had done his work and could unselfishly retire. Such were the professions with which England justified her usurpation of the heritage of the Moghul and dazzled us into acquiescence in servitude by the splendour of her uprightness and generosity. Such was the pretence with which she veiled her annexation of Egypt. These Pharisiac pretensions were especially necessary to British Imperialism because in England the Puritanic middle class had risen to power and imparted to the English temperament a sanctimonious self-righteousness which refused to indulge in injustice and selfish spoliation except under a cloak of virtue, benevolence and unselfish altruism.
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Pankaj Mishra (From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia)
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For all their sanctimony, socialists are more materialistic than capitalists. Their passion for equalizing incomes stems from covetousness—the preoccupation with what others have. To wish to dispossess others of their property is, essentially, greed. “Greed is woven through every human heart, and it is a mistake to assume that alternatives to capitalism will render greed vanished,” writes Lauren Reiff. “It doesn’t go away—it merely is channeled somewhere else, into taking from others namely, and that’s a dangerous game. That capitalism’s most fashionable smear is that it is greedy is awfully telling but absolutely not the correct allegation to make.
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David Limbaugh (Guilty By Reason of Insanity: Why The Democrats Must Not Win)
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Good reader, I was exactly the Church Youth Group Girl you think I was. Christian T-shirts and youth choir with a side of sanctimony. It pains me to admit this, but my class voted me “Most Inspirational” my senior year. I was a lot of fun, bless my heart. I grew up immersed in typical Christian culture: heavy emphasis on morality, fairly dogmatic, linear, and authoritative. Because my experience was so homogenous and my skill set included Flying Right, I found wild success within the paradigm. My interpretations were rarely challenged by diversity, suffering, or disparity. Since the bull’s-eye was good behavior (we called it “holiness”), I earned an A.
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Jen Hatmaker (For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards)
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Kevin D. Williamson in a sneering screed published in March 2016 in National Review, a leading conservative journal: The problem isn’t that Americans cannot sustain families, but that they do not wish to. If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog—you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that. Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence—and the incomprehensible malice—of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. For
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Brian Alexander (Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town)
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Ninety-eight in New England was a summer of exquisite warmth and sunshine, in baseball a summer of mythical battle between a home-run god who was white and a home-run god who was brown, and in America the summer of an enormous piety binge, a purity binge, when terrorism—which had replaced communism as the prevailing threat to the country’s security—was succeeded by cocksucking, and a virile, youthful middle-aged president and a brash, smitten twenty-one-year-old employee carrying on in the Oval Office like two teenage kids in a parking lot revived America’s oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony.
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Philip Roth (The Human Stain (The American Trilogy, #3))
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At Prim’s side was a woman with a politician’s face (supercilious, sanctimonious, vacuous, terrified, smarmy, disingenuous, small-minded, vengeful, coldhearted, opportunistic, petty, deceitful, evidence-ignoring, bullying, arrogant, smug, obnoxious, contemptuous, ignorant, reactionary, condescending, patronizing, blinkered, vacillating, corrupt, morally bankrupt, blackmailing, blackmailable, dodgy, wavering, backstabbing, bought, sold, stinking rich, unqualified, sleazy, teeth-capped, kneecapping, corporate-owned, hate-mongering, fear-mongering, button-pushing, deflecting, evading, brazening, hit-song-stealing, nostalgia-worshipping, distorting, no-tax-returning, tax-evading, offshore-holding, shady-business-partnering, election-stealing, arms-dealing, collateral-damage signing-offing, hypocritically family-value bleating but sexually deviant-ing, honest-forthright-honorable—a paragon-of-integrity [lying], spiteful, unreliable, Teflon-coated, Saran-wrapped, white-breaded, xenophobic, cynical, uncomprehending of irony-ing, witless, thin-skinned, insecure, unfulfilled, blindly ambitious, power-hungry, sadistic, self-righteous, incapable of contemplation-ing, prevaricating, privileged, pampered, Ivy League–educated [in something useless like political science, economics, or law], pompous, ego-centered, centered, narcissistic, shallow, bullshitting, manipulative, backtracking, quote-denying, what-climate-changing?, alternate-truth-ing, prejudice-feeding, hate-inciting, racketeering, blame-shifting, warmongering, autocratic, megalomaniacal, possibly sociopathic, blathering, self-serving, unreliable, cliquey, cagey, crafty, cunning, daft, dull, ethically destitute, irredeemable, oil-burning, fracking [but NIMBY], self-pay-raising, self-congratulating, self-aggrandizing, but all that was just first impressions so who can say?).
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Steven Erikson (Willful Child: The Search for Spark)
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What is a good life? What is its opposite? These are questions to which no two men will give the same answers. In these our cowardly times, we deny the grandeur of the Universal, and assert and glorify our local Bigotries, and so we cannot agree on much. In these our degenerate times, men bent on nothing but vainglory and personal gain—hollow, bombastic men for whom nothing is off-limits if it advances their petty cause—will claim to be great leaders and benefactors, acting in the common good, and calling all who oppose them liars, envious, little people, stupid people, stiffs, and, in a precise reversal of the truth, dishonest and corrupt. We are so divided, so hostile to one another, so driven by sanctimony and scorn, so lost in cynicism, that we call our pomposity idealism, so disenchanted with our rulers, so willing to jeer at the institutions of our state, that the very word goodness has been emptied of meaning and needs, perhaps, to be set aside for a time, like all the other poisoned words, spirituality, for example, final solution, for example, and (at least when applied to skyscrapers and fried potatoes) freedom.
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Salman Rushdie (The Golden House)
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By appealing to the moral and philosophical foundation work of the nation, Lincoln hoped to provide common ground on which good men in both the North and the South could stand. “I am not now combating the argument of necessity, arising from the fact that the blacks are already amongst us; but I am combating what is set up as moral argument for allowing them to be taken where they have never yet been.” Unlike the majority of antislavery orators, who denounced the South and castigated slaveowners as corrupt and un-Christian, Lincoln pointedly denied fundamental differences between Northerners and Southerners. He argued that “they are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. . . . When it is said that the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.” And, finally, “when they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them . . . and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives.” Rather than upbraid slaveowners, Lincoln sought to comprehend their position through empathy. More than a decade earlier, he had employed a similar approach when he advised temperance advocates to refrain from denouncing drinkers in “thundering tones of anathema and denunciation,” for denunciation would inevitably be met with denunciation, “crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema.” In a passage directed at abolitionists as well as temperance reformers, he had observed that it was the nature of man, when told that he should be “shunned and despised,” and condemned as the author “of all the vice and misery and crime in the land,” to “retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart.” Though the cause be “naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel,” the sanctimonious reformer could no more pierce the heart of the drinker or the slaveowner than “penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him.” In order to “win a man to your cause,” Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, “the great high road to his reason.” This, he concluded, was the only road to victory—to that glorious day “when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth.” Building on his rhetorical advice, Lincoln tried to place
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
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Many left-leaning Americans, especially younger ones, don’t remotely understand some of the ideas they support, such as socialism, and what their implementation would really mean. They are simply caught up in promoting a “noble” cause. They serve as foot soldiers for policies that produce results exactly opposite of their stated intention and ultimately lead to impoverishment, slavery, and tyranny. Imbued with a sanctimonious sense of self-worth, they look down on their political opponents and are stubbornly impervious to reason.
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David Limbaugh (Guilty By Reason of Insanity: Why The Democrats Must Not Win)
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As a child in the deep South, I’d grown-up fearing the lynch mobs...as an adult, I was starting to wonder if I’ve been afraid of the wrong white people all along. My worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia but in Washington DC where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.
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Clarence Thomas (My Grandfather's Son)
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We all have come here from somewhere else, and the vast majority of us are only a few generations removed from another land. Whether that is one generation or ten, it seems rather sanctimonious to claim that there is much of a difference. Not many of us can trace our arrival back a few hundred years, let alone millennia. But even the ancestors of the Native Americans are believed to have come across a land bridge from Asia—a reminder that we are a species of migrations, and always have been. Of course, not all migrations have been voluntary; many are here because their ancestors were ripped from their homelands in Africa and carried across the ocean in bondage.
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Dan Rather (What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism)
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MAD DOG
—To those who talk sanctimoniously about human rights
After suffering heartless ridicule
It’s hard to see myself as human
It’s as though I have become a rabid dog
Wandering unrestrained through the world
But I am not yet a rabid dog
Not yet exposed to starvation and the cold
Anyway, I wish I had become this dog
To learn even more about the hardship of existence
Yet I am not as good as a rabid dog!
It would jump these walls if forced
But I can only endure silence
My life holds far fewer choices
If I could really become this dog
I would break free from these indifferent chains
I would not hesitate for a moment
To leave behind so-called sacred human rights
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Shi Zhi (Winter Sun: Poems (Volume 1) (Chinese Literature Today Book Series))
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Washington frowned upon these Puritan descendants as greedy, sanctimonious hypocrites, telling Joseph Reed that “there is no nation under the sun (that I ever came across) pay greater adoration to money than they do.
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Ron Chernow (Washington: A Life)
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I asked the hotel if they’d take the alcohol out of the room. We don’t need drink to have a good time.’ ‘Did you actually just say that? You sanctimonious prick.
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Harriet Tyce (Blood Orange)
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Learn to recognize useless guides without getting sanctimonious about it. There are good reasons there are bad adults; be thankful you are ignorant of a great many of them.
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Shawn Davis (The Talk: A Young Person's Guide to Life's Big Questions)
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In the sanctuary of the bathroom, Perry gives vent to his rage. Safe: how he has come to hate that word! As if the world can ever be free of risk and danger. And the sanctimony of Cora's voice as she delivered her tirade as if her grievances were commensurate with the pain in the world. She, who can marry the woman she loves, raise children independently, who has completed two university degrees and who has blithely escaped the strictures of tradition. As if his own heart doesn't thump when faced with a dark alley and an approaching loud group. He should never have come back Their childishness floors him. He hates it here - precisely becuase it is safe.
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Christos Tsiolkas (The In-Between)
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In the sanctuary of the bathroom, Perry gives vent to his rage. Safe: how he has come to hate that word! As if the world can ever be free of risk and danger. And the sanctimony of Cora's voice as she delivered her tirade as if her grievances were commensurate with the pain in the world. She, who can marry the woman she loves, raise children independently, who has completed two university degrees and who has blithely escaped the strictures of tradition. As if his own heart doesn't thump when faced with a dark alley and an approaching loud group. He should never have come back. Their childishness floors him. He hates it here - precisely because it is safe.
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Christos Tsiolkas (The In-Between)
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Hear the good news. Whatever your story: The hurt you can’t let go of. The gossip and backbiting and double-talk. The forgiveness you withheld until it was too late. The doubts that linger. The disappointments you still resent. The relationship you let fester. The lies you tell to shroud your addiction. The truth you’re too cowardly to come out with. The handout you withheld. The frustration that others aren’t as faithful as you. The gift you gave with strings attached. The if-bombs you throw down as conditions of your love. The prodigal you won’t welcome home. The prejudice. The self-righteousness and sanctimony that feels good for a second—especially when it’s about politics—but then it sticks on you like a bad smell on your shoe. The secret you keep hidden in the dark corner closet of your heart. Whatever your story—what story? Christ Jesus has set you free from that story by becoming that story for you.
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Jason Micheli (A Quid without Any Quo: Gospel Freedom according to Galatians)
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I am sick of the crap I hand out as personal philosophy; the last two words make me spew. I hate my eternal hypocrisy and insincerity and, to cap it all, my sanctimonious whingeing about myself.
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Gordon Roddick, 1963
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People can question the existence of cancel culture or they can rebrand it as a culture of accountability, but I don’t think anyone can question the stifling and deadening effect of the fear of cancellation – or even just getting it wrong – on art, writing, public discourse and even comedy. It has made the world of ideas so relentlessly uninteresting. […] But it’s understandable that certain people behave in this way. We are, as a species, meaning-seeking creatures. That is what defines us.
What do you mean by ‘meaning-seeking’?
I just think the traditional institutions in which people once sought meaning and validation have been eroded, certainly in this country. It is natural for people to look for meaning elsewhere, to look for unity and a sense of belonging. Ironically, I think the rise of woke culture is akin to a fundamentalist religious impulse. Come to think of it, it may reflect an unconscious desire to return to a non-secular society. […] Well, it’s as if autocratic ideas of virtue and sin have come into play, and, as a result, prohibitions and punishments have been put in place, enforced by a kind of moral callousness that, in my view, is akin to the very worst aspects of religion – the fundamentalist, joyless, sanctimonious aspects that have nothing to do with mercy. Cancellation is a particularly ugly part of its weaponry and can end up as a kind of sadism dressed up as virtue.
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Nick Cave (Faith, Hope and Carnage)
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Their whole project seemed snotty to her. Arrogant. Sanctimonious. Even sort of grossly entitled: that was a pre-globalized world, a pre-9/11 world, a pre–housing bubble world, a world before the Great Recession, when they all sort of understood implicitly that however much they resented and resisted the mass economy, they would also have little trouble eventually finding a job and a livelihood within it. It made Elizabeth think that maybe those friends who’d migrated to the suburbs were in fact the most enlightened ones. They’d been the first to see through the delusion.
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Nathan Hill (Wellness)
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All across his empire, monumental sacred spaces were created, in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Sinai and Ravenna, where, in mosaics that still exist, we can see Justinian and Theodora as they saw themselves, he decisive, russet-haired and rosy-cheeked, she skinny, intense, pale, sanctimonious, imperious.
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Simon Sebag Montefiore (The World: A Family History of Humanity)
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I can’t think of a morning I haven’t woken up with the thought of STRANGLING you! That sanctimonious image of yours fooled everyone – except me! Because I! KNOW! EVIL!
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Lex Luthor, Public Enemies
“
With all her talk about saving the planet, AOC has put a new spin on the phrase “limousine liberal.” According to a story in the New York Post, she runs up Uber tabs like crazy. It wouldn’t be so bad if she had no other way to get around. But her congressional district, which includes parts of Queens and the Bronx, has about five or six subway lines. She responded to the article in typical sanctimonious fashion: “Living in the world as it is isn’t an argument against working towards a better future.” Hey, listen, girlfriend, you want to get driven around by Uber, go for it. But if you’re going to keep telling people the apocalypse is upon us, you might want to think about carrying a MetroCard.
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Donald Trump Jr. (Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us)
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There are only three problems with this: (a) Hippocrates never actually said these words,[*1] (b) it’s sanctimonious bullshit, and (c) it’s unhelpful on multiple levels.
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Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
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Well, I’d say a bad therapist is someone who thinks they know how you should live, someone who thinks that their moral compass is more accurate than yours and who believes they are smarter than you because you are in some sort of distress or discomfort. This kind of douchery is fairly common among therapists I have met, and although some people may enjoy being bossed around by a sanctimonious cunt, that’s never really been my thing. I believe that a good therapist is someone who, for want of a more accurate expression, “re-parents” you as an adult. Someone who listens to you describe what you believe is your problem and then offers a different perspective. Perhaps, with a little luck and a lot of skill and patience, that new perspective will help you reach an insight which in turn offers you relief.
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Craig Ferguson (Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations)
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What was individual about each man—Carnegie’s self-serving sanctimoniousness, Grant’s essential decency, Ford’s matter-of-fact pragmatism, Coolidge’s rhetorical thrift and so on—yielded to what I thought, at the time, they all had in common: they all believed, without any sort of doubt, that they deserved to be heard, that their words ought to be heard, that the narratives of their faultless lives must be heard. They all had the same unwavering certainty my father had. And I understood that this was the certainty that Bevel wanted on the page.
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Hernan Diaz (Trust)
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Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it’s outward-directed—angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious. But often it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll glimpse submerged feelings you either weren’t aware of or didn’t want to show: fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, insecurity.
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Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
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They’d spent an hour “negotiating” his room rate. She had stubbornly refused to take his “dirty Gates money” while he wasn’t interested in her “sanctimonious Moody charity.” It was the most fun he’d had in months.
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Lucy Score (The Fine Art of Faking It (Blue Moon, #6))
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However, the apprentice he sent to Master Nathaniel was almost as respectable looking as he was himself. He wore a neat black wig, and his expression was sanctimonious in the extreme, with the corners of his mouth turned down, like one of his master's clocks that had stopped at 7:25.
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Hope Mirrlees (Lud-in-the-Mist)
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His expression is sad instead of angry now. Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it’s outward-directed—angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious. But often it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll glimpse submerged feelings you either weren’t aware of or didn’t want to show: fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, insecurity. And if you can tolerate these deeper feelings long enough to understand them and listen to what they’re telling you, you’ll not only manage your anger in more productive ways, you also won’t be so angry all the time. Of course, anger serves another function—it pushes people away and keeps them from getting close enough to see you. I wonder if John needs people to be angry at him so that they won’t see his sadness.
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Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
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The FBI may have gone to “save” the Branch Davidians, but when they killed them instead, few Americans cared, because they weren’t a church—they were a “cult.” Alas, the semantics of sanctimony.
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Amanda Montell (Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism—Understanding the Social Science of Cult Influence)
“
living in an unsustainable realm. It combined sanctimony, decadence, insecurity and snobbery in a weird, neurotic brew. It was parasitic.
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China Miéville (Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1))
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Listen,” she said in a fierce voice, barely controlled below a shout, “you sanctimonious, know-nothing, backward, shriveled son-of-a-bitch. It’s attitudes like yours that screw up the world! You talk about your religion and culture, but you’re just a self-serving, patriarchal, fanatic. You wouldn’t know Satan if she bit you on the ass!
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J. Craig Wheeler (Krone Ascending (Book 2))
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When I criticised that #iStandWithBuhari movement and made it known the then proposed march was uncalled for considering the state of our economy and plight of the masses, I was called an enemy of change and anti-Buhari.
Today, even the President Buhari has dissociated himself from the hypocritical and sanctimonious movement.
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OMOSOHWOFA CASEY
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I’d always despised the so-called born-again Christians. To me, those sanctimonious, hypocritical fundamentalist churches were to faith what whorehouses were to love.
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Jonathan Shaw (Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes)
“
The forces at work in healthy party politics are centripetal; they encourage factions and interests to come together to work out common goals and strategies. They oblige everyone to think, or at least speak, about the common good. In movement politics, the forces are all centrifugal, encouraging splits into smaller and smaller factions obsessed with single issues and practicing rituals of ideological one-upmanship. So the New Left's legacy to liberalism was a double one. It spawned issue-based movements that helped to bring about progressive change in a number of areas, most notably the environment and human rights abroad. And it spawned identity-based social movements -- for affirmative action and diversity, feminism, gay liberation -- that have made this country a more tolerant, more just, and more inclusive place than it was fifty years ago.
What the New Left did not do was contribute to the unification of the Democratic Party and the development of a liberal vision of Americans' shared future. And as interest slowly shifted from issue-based ones, the focus of American liberalism also shifted from commonality to difference. And what replaced a broad political vision was a pseudo-political and distinctly American rhetoric of the feeling self and its struggle for recognition. Which turned out to be not all that different from Reagan's anti-political rhetoric of the producing self and its struggle for profit. Just less sentimental and more sanctimonious.
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Mark Lilla (The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics)
“
wanted to hit the bitch for her smug, sanctimonious condemnation. Thanks for proving me right, princess … Most of all he was angry at himself for believing her when she’d lied to him. When was he ever going to learn? He wanted her blood, especially since Nykyrian had almost died while protecting her crybaby ass. “Tell me exactly how many assassins were there today?” “I don’t know. Fifteen. Twenty maybe.” He gave her a snide glare. “Twenty trained assassins against one guy who had his guts lasered last night … Lady, I think they had more than a fair shot at surviving and we’re damn lucky you and Kip are alive right now. Instead of being upset with him, you should be grateful.
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Night (The League, #1))
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if I had been raised in a critical or demanding environment, it might have been easier for me, relatively speaking, to find refuge in worse-than or need-to-be-seen-as justifications. Those who were raised in affluent or sanctimonious environments, on the other hand, may naturally gravitate to better-than and I-deserve justifications, and so on. Need-to-be-seen-as boxes might easily arise in such circumstances as well.
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Arbinger Institute (The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict)
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Unit 731's crimes against humanity continue. Chinese citizens are still dying from the chemical weapons that Hirohito's henchmen unleashed on them. Many of them have sued. Japan's sanctimonious, parsimonious, and hypocritical position on financial compensation is that the issue was settled as part of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. In that treaty, Japan agreed to surrender unconditionally
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Declan Hayes (Japan the Toothless Tiger)
“
Continuation of Andy’s comments Young, this is how I remember that incident: When we entered the visitors’ lounge, that arrogant nitwit was smoking his pipe. The way he stared at you made me cringe. God only knows what would’ve happened if I weren’t with you. He would have molested you without reservation. When he catechized your “formidable” counterproposal, which you had every right to stipulate, I was ready to punch that fool in the face. He was lucky I held back and did not allow my rage to cloud my better judgment. Otherwise, I would had knocked him out cold! I don’t think Dr. Dean Higgins would have appreciated a dead aristocrat on the school’s floor.☺ I was relieved when I read of his demise from Parkinson’s disease back in 1980. To this day, I’m still grateful for Uncle James’ timely warning to beware of this sanctimonious hypocrite. My dear fella, I’m glad this despotic fascist is no longer living in our midst. Andy XOXOXO
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Young (Turpitude (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 4))
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India is the land of the profound and the profane; a place where spirituality and sanctimoniousness sit miles apart. I
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Sarah Macdonald (Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure)
“
Forneus?” Great. That was just the maggot-licking bastard he needed to suffer in this mood. What? Were the gods really that bored? Reining in his temper as best he could, he turned to find the last creature he wanted to face. Second only to his father. Folding his wings down, Thorn crossed his arms over his chest. “Michael … been a while.” Seven feet in height, he was a massive bastard. Whereas most of the Seraphim were pretty enough to pass as women, Michael was ruggedly handsome. No one would ever mistake him for a Seraphia. And in his Seraph form, he was snow white—armor, weapons, every part of him. Even his eyes were a stark silvery blue. So it was always shocking to Thorn how dark the tool was whenever he donned a more human appearance. Dark hair, tanned skin. The only thing that remained the same were those celestial blue eyes that glittered like spiked icicles in front of a setting sun. And they had the same effect today that they always did on him. He wanted to punch the sanctimonious bastard in the face. “What are you doing here, Mikey? Last I heard, none of you would sully yourself by crossing the boundary into this dimension.” “You have something that belongs to me.” “No. I have something that belongs to your bloodline and I promised her that I’d return it. So sod off.
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Deadmen Walking (Deadman's Cross #1))
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Directing his smile to the widow, Martin bowed slightly, and it was not until his gaze lifted and he actually met her deep green eyes behind thick gold spectacles that he sensed a familiarity.
No, it was more than that. For some strange reason, those green eyes were like a punch to his gut. But why? Who was she? A former conquest he'd carelessly cast aside? No, that wasn't it.
Then suddenly, he remembered.
But no, it couldn't be. Could it?
Good God, it was. The wealthy prize widow was, of all people, Miss Evelyn Foster from his wildest days at Eton!
His first impulse was to laugh out loud at the absurdity of the coincidence, but naturally, he preserved his composure. He was having a hard time speaking, however, because he had not expected to meet a woman he had known once before, and certainly not the prudish young girl who had constantly ignored him. The same girl who had snuck into his dormitory and caused him to be suspended, then had the sanctimonious nerve to tell him that he needed to put himself on the straight and narrow.
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Julianne MacLean (Surrender to a Scoundrel (American Heiresses, #6))
“
All my dreams have been turned into psychedelic nightmares with
Rosemary's baby pissing in my face and Tiny Tim
sticking his moldy penis into my bleeding mind as it cries for the
strength to repel the sanctimonious sounds of the white rock group
the Grateful…DEAD!
from the Last Poets' "This is Madness
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Umar Bin Hassan
“
What a perfectionistic system creates is a “how to get it right” behavioral script. In such a script one is taught how to act loving and righteous. It’s actually more important to act loving and righteous than to be loving and righteous. The feeling of righteousness and acting sanctimoniously are wonderful ways to mood-alter toxic shame. They are often ways to interpersonally transfer one’s shame to others.
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John Bradshaw (Healing the Shame that Binds You)
“
I believe that it is necessary for the Saints to have amusement, but it must be of the proper kind. I do not believe the Lord intends and desires that we should pull a long face and look sanctimonious and hypocritical. I think he expects us to be happy and of a cheerful countenance, but he does not expect of us the indulgence in boisterous and unseemly conduct and the seeking after the vain and foolish things which amuse and entertain the world. He has commanded us to the contrary for our own good and eternal welfare.
I deplore the fact that these modern dances, some of which had their origin in unsavory places, have come among us. I regret beyond measure the public dance which, in my judgment, in its baneful results, the destruction of good morals and virtue, is second only to the saloon. This evil is growing and taking root in the stakes of Zion, in the communities of Latter-day Saints. There is today an excess in dancing. In some communities one or two each week which is not good no matter how innocent the dance may be. In these public dance halls, which are run for the making of money, the people, in some localities without regard to character or standing of the individual, permit any one to enter without question, if he will pay the price of admission.
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Joseph Fielding Smith
“
There can he greater, more authentic piety in a man's curses than in the sanctimonious prayers of the religious. As
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Douglas John Hall (Bound and Free: A Theologian's Journey)
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The Haunt The haunt walks counting the bodies held in cubicle chambers; each night the rattle of his keys reminds one of the living dead who are keyless. The Turnkey continues his nightly watch to ensure none of the living dead commits suicide. To be truly dead is forbidden, unless the State sanctions the kill. This ritual first began as a means of penitence, and Auburn was the first N.Y.S. penitentiary and silence was the means to repentance, silence and reading the bible. Back then, the penitent memorized the portions of the bible: when Cain killed Abel, Joshua’s war on Jericho, and all about Ruth, Mary, and Esther — with little thought of God. Over 100 years, the haunt walks with the sanctimonious sentiments of a sentinel, with self-righteous indignation which the living dead attempt to repel with false braggadocio — but when the lights go out, the sudden screams, and all- night talk to prohibit nightmares — awaiting the dawn — permit the haunt to smile with arrogant knowing. The torture of the night is the haunt’s pleasure, making the rounds smelling the decay of dreams deferred, the putrid stench of justice, like the full bowels of slave ships. Gun towers stand reminiscent of the hanging trees with its strange fruit that the haunt picks at leisure appraising its ripeness in terms of life sentences. As steel bangs against steel, chains clang with the echoes of gangs dressed in strips of day and night, black and white; the fright prohibits flight as jail cells constrict and severely depict the absence of liberty. The haunt of Auburn, year by year decade by decade, in a century has never escaped the nightly count of tormented souls, himself chained to the ball of the imprisoned — a spirit’s horror of lost freedom.
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Jalil Muntaqim (Escaping the Prism... Fade to Black: Poetry and Essays by Jalil Muntaqim)
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Christianity and communism cannot be reconciled;
they are opposing systems.
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Frederick Nymeyer (Progressive Calvinism. Volume I, 1955: Essays Against Sanctimony and Legalized Coercion)
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If you are not disturbing the peace, if you are not annoying the political scum, if you are not provoking the prevailing culture by making its sanctimonious arbiters of what is naughty and what is nice squirm in their sticky underwear, how can you possibly call yourself a satirist?
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David Gustafson
“
Goliath could not tell for sure until the lad had reached to within fifty or so feet of him. He was puny. And he wore no armor. He was clad as a shepherd without his cloak. He had a shepherd’s staff and sling in his hand. He looked like a teenager. In fact, he was quite handsome and Goliath thought it would be a pleasure to sexually violate this stripling. But he was insulted by the challenge. He boiled with rage. He screamed out to his enemies on the hillside, “AM I A DOG THAT YOU COME TO ME WITH STICKS? I CURSE YOU BY DAGON, BA’ALZEBUL, MOLECH AND ASHERAH! YOU FILTHY HEBREW COWARDS!” Goliath turned to David and said, “Come to me, boy. I will give your flesh to the vultures and jackals. After I have my way with you!” David shouted to him, “You come with scimitar and javelin, but I come in the name of Yahweh of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have blasphemed! This day Yahweh will deliver you into my hand and I will smite you and cut off your head!” Goliath laughed with incredulity. And it is a puny pontificating pipsqueak no less. I wonder if the little rat is going to keep on talking. He did. “I will give your body to the vultures and jackals, and all the earth will know that there is a god in Israel whose name is Yahweh Elohim! And this assembly will know that Yahweh saves not with sword or spear! For the battle is Yahweh’s and he will give you into our hands!” Goliath muttered, “Sanctimonious little twat.
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Brian Godawa (David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim, #7))
“
1. The conglomerate movement, “with all its fancy rhetoric about synergism and leverage.” 2. Accountants who played footsie with stock-promoting managements by certifying earnings that weren’t earnings at all. 3. “Modern” corporate treasurers who looked upon their company pension funds as new-found profit centers and pressured their investment advisers into speculating with them. 4. Investment advisers who massacred clients’ portfolios because they were trying to make good on the over-promises that they had made to attract the business. 5. The new breed of investment managers who bought and churned the worst collection of new issues and other junk in history, and the underwriters who made fortunes bringing them out. 6. Elements of the financial press which promoted into new investment geniuses a group of neophytes who didn’t even have the first requisite for managing other people’s money—namely, a sense of responsibility. 7. The securities salesmen who peddle the items with the best stories—or the biggest markups—even though such issues were totally unsuited to the customers’ needs. 8. The sanctimonious partners of major investment houses who wrung their hands over all these shameless happenings while they deployed an army of untrained salesmen to forage among even less trained investors. 9. Mutual fund managers who tried to become millionaires overnight by using every gimmick imaginable to manufacture their own paper performance. 10. Portfolio managers who collected bonanza incentives of the “heads I win, tails you lose” kind, which made them fortunes in the bull market but turned the portfolios they managed into disasters in the bear market. 11. Security analysts who forgot about their professional ethics to become storytellers and let their institutions be taken in by a whole parade of confidence men. This was the “list of horrors that people in our field did to set the stage for the greatest blood bath in forty years,
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Adam Smith (Supermoney (Wiley Investment Classics Book 38))
“
Eisenhower read the Alsop columns and fulminated. He called the missile-gap men “sanctimonious, hypocritical bastards.” But he also bowed to mounting pressure from his own senior staff to beef up the evidence that the missile gap did not exist. This was why he allowed two more U-2 flights before the summit. It was an understandable decision, and a disastrous one. It
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Giles Whittell (Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War)
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Of what? Wasn’t he my very own brother? Shouldn’t that cover over everything else in a blanket of sanctimony? Surely I could trust him—but with everything? With my secret identity, my Fortress of Solitude—and even Lily Anne, my Kryptonite?
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Jeff Lindsay (Dexter is Delicious (Dexter, #5))
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George W. Bush’s legacy was a nation impoverished by debt, besieged by doubt, struggling with the aftereffects of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and deeply engaged in military conflicts of our own choosing. His tin ear for traditional conservative values, his sanctimonious religiosity, his support for Guantánamo, CIA “renditions,” and government snooping have eroded public trust in the United States at home and abroad. For eight years Bush made the decisions that put the United States on a collision course with reality. To argue that by taking the actions that he did, the president kept America safe is meretricious: the type of post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis that could justify any action, regardless of its impropriety. The fact is, the threat of terrorism that confronts the United States is in many respects a direct result of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
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Jean Edward Smith (Bush)
“
all those who go around draped with a false sanctimoniousness do it by the devil’s prodding; because no one can worship God rightly with outward ceremonies, for true worshipers adore him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). Secondly,
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John Calvin (Commentaries, 22 Vols)
“
what I found difficult was the mixture of finger pointing and sanctimony in the whole piece, your righteous standpoint over the material, I wasn't so sure about that
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Mike McCormack (Solar Bones)
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His words are not the uncompromising utterances of politicians or the sanctimonious banalities that try to appease everyone's good conscience. Rather,
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José Ángel N. (Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant (Latinos in Chicago and Midwest))
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Remembering what gross and scandalous falsehoods are sometimes deliberately told of our own contemporaries, even by people of respectable and sanctimonious exterior, I cannot admit that there is any truth in those stories of the Gauls and their Druids who are unable to return with their explanation. It is probable that either Caesar was misinformed or some ceremony, observed by the Gauls in putting criminals to death, was misinterpreted to him or by him. At all events, there is no reason at all to think that human sacrifice ever was practised in Ireland.
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Laurence Ginnell (The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook)
“
Ebeneezor was a paragon of dignity and respectability, and it was a joke in Lud society that you could not really be sure of your social status till he came to wind your clocks himself, instead of sending one of his apprentices.
However, the apprentice he sent to Master Nathaniel was almost as respectable looking as he was himself. He wore a neat black wig, and his expression was sanctimonious in the extreme, with the corners of his mouth turned down, like one of his master's clocks that had stopped at 7:25.
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Hope Mirrlees (Lud-In-The-Mist)
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Naturals (The Naturals, #1))
“
America’s “otherness” is not accepted as such by Europeans or even considered under the rubric of that motto “Other countries—other customs.” On the contrary: The American “other” serves the purpose of turning America on the whole into a laughingstock, of mocking, ridiculing, and sanctimoniously instructing America, but never viewing it as an equal on the same plane with Europe.
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Andrei S. Markovits (Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (The Public Square Book 5))