Love Quote by Jessamyn West

There is something bracingly unsentimental in West's moral math: she gives the "honest rogue" a grudging absolution, then turns the knife on the "false saint". The line works because it refuses the usual binary. It doesn't pretend goodness and badness are stable categories; it treats character as a kind of contract. A rogue who admits he's playing rough is, paradoxically, easier to place in the world. You can negotiate with him. You can watch your wallet. His vice isn't trying to recruit you.

The false saint is offensive for a more intimate reason: hypocrisy is not just lying, it's a demand. It asks the audience to applaud, to defer, to hand over trust and status under false pretenses. West is diagnosing a social predator whose weapon is moral performance. The "saint" doesn't merely behave badly; he weaponizes virtue as camouflage and leverage, often to judge, shame, or control others. That's why the offense lands as visceral, not abstract. It's betrayal plus arrogance.

Coming from a 20th-century American novelist attentive to community life and its quiet coercions, the quote reads like a critique of respectability culture: churches, small towns, literary circles, political movements-any place where righteousness can become a brand. West's intent isn't to rehabilitate roguery; it's to expose how societies reward the appearance of virtue, even when it curdles into fraud. The line flatters no one, least of all the people certain they're on the side of the angels.