Gluttony is not a secret vice.

Welles’s line plays on the idea that some vices can be concealed (envy, lust, greed), while overeating tends to announce itself through visible behavior and social situations—meals, indulgent habits, and sometimes bodily consequences. The remark also carries a satiric edge: “gluttony” is not merely a private moral failing but a public performance, difficult to disguise and therefore easier for others to judge. In that sense, the quote comments on how society polices appetites and bodies, and how certain forms of excess become socially legible in a way that makes shame or self-deception harder to sustain.