You say that no one lives up to their own teachings or follows the standards they preach. But why is that surprising? The words they speak are brave and strong — words that could survive any storm that destroys people. Yet the speakers themselves are struggling to escape from crosses where they've hammered in their own nails. At least people who are crucified hang from just one cross. But those who torture themselves are stretched across as many crosses as they have desires. Still, they love to criticize others. They act so superior when judging other people's faults that you'd think they had no faults of their own — except that even criminals on the gallows sometimes spit on the crowd watching them die.
You say that no one acts up to his professions, or lives according to the standard which he sets up in his discourses: what wonder, seeing that the words which they speak are brave, gigantic, and able to weather all the storms which wreck mankind, whereas they themselves are struggling to tear themselves away from crosses into which each one of you is driving his own nail. Yet men who are crucified hang from one single pole, but these who punish themselves are divided between as many crosses as they have lusts, but yet are given to evil speaking, and are so magnificent in their contempt of the vices of others that I should suppose that they had none of their own, were it not that some criminals when on the gibbet spit upon the spectators.