False Witness

I found this quote over at Jesse's today.

"The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

                                                               Hannah Arendt

I have always been leery of the folks who brand others as hypocrites.   As the above quote states, the hypocrite seems to be worse than the criminal.

But this seems to me to be shaky thought.  If one takes to heart a set of standards for conduct, and they are high standards, that are difficult to attain, and still thinks that those are the correct standards that he wishes to hew to, does that make him a hypocrite when he fails?

Of just a sinner.