To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified. — William James Copy Share Image
The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint. — Johann Kaspar Lavater Copy Share Image
The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld Copy Share Image
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man. — Washington Irving Copy Share Image
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
I think people can stand to take themselves just a little less seriously. I'm fighting the war against pretension. — Kesha Copy Share Image
A Senate vote on gay marriage is a destructive pretension against the plan of God — Pope Francis Copy Share Image
It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities . . . — Arianna Huffington Copy Share Image
Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation. — Francis Bacon Copy Share Image
The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. — Frank Herbert Copy Share Image
Love is an artful arrangement of artless pretensions, whereby we labor to appear innocent in what we desire to be most cunning. — Norm MacDonald Copy Share Image
Show some mercy to this chair which has stretched out its arms to you for so long; please satisfy its desire to… — Moliere Copy Share Image
There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting… — Greg Bear Copy Share Image
and it was always without pretensions of loving or being loved although always in the hope of finding something that resembled love… — Gabriel Garcia Marquez Copy Share Image
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who… — Frank Herbert Copy Share Image
Having nothing to do, I am correcting the Paris edition of Bach; not only the engraver's mistakes, but also the mistakes hallowed… — Frederic Chopin Copy Share Image
General Otis is proclaimed American Military Governor of the Philippines and I protest a thousand times and with all the force in… — Emilio Aguinaldo Copy Share Image
But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible… — Anthony Trollope Copy Share Image
The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension,… — J. K. Rowling Copy Share Image
Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real… — Virat Kohli Copy Share Image
The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.… — Ada Lovelace Copy Share Image
I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable… — William James Copy Share Image
“Perhaps it is only when we realize and celebrate the intrinsic value of every human life that celebrity - true celebrity -… — Nancy Cobb Copy Share Image
Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Bernard Williams has been a distinctive presence on the intellectual scene for more than three decades. . . . His writings do… — Colin McGinn Copy Share Image
“What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's King Cheops erected the first pyramid And largest, thinking it was just the thing… — Lord Byron Copy Share Image
This re-appearance of the doctrine of freewill serves to support that of the pretension of the natural man to be not irremediably… — John Nelson Darby Copy Share Image
Civilisation is only a pretense. In crisis we have become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and instead… — Orson Scott Card Copy Share Image
Rock n' roll doesn't change. All the idiocies and pretension continue. — Harry Shearer Copy Share Image
