The higher the rank the less pretence, because there is less to pretend to. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Copy Share Image
To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing… — Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Copy Share Image
I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather I fear to lose truth by the pretension to possess it… — William James Copy Share Image
The place where God has supremely destroyed all human arrogance and pretension is the cross. — D. A. Carson 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
The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. — Frank Herbert Copy Share Image
Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation. — Francis Bacon Copy Share Image
Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply; for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I cannot pretend to do sculpture and make a woman the ridiculous pedestal of my pretensions. To render clothing poetic, yes--but one… — Yves Saint Laurent Copy Share Image
The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture…He takes upon himself… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants… — George W. Bush Copy Share Image
Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
I wondered why people consider escapism so bad, even the escapism on display right then. At first it might appear unseemly, but… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
Psychoanalysis will fade away just as mesmerism and phrenology did, and for the same reason - its exploded pretensions will deprive it… — Frederick Crews Copy Share Image
News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be considered intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to… — Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann Copy Share Image
I've been playing piano my whole life but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made really. Try to imagine if… — Caio Fonseca Copy Share Image
“In walking, far from any vehicle or machine, from any mediation, I am replaying the earthly human condition, embodying once again man’s… — Frédéric Gros Copy Share Image
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or… — Daniel J. Boorstin Copy Share Image
He sighed deeply; to fall in love at first sight with this malodorous sleeping girl, with, as far as he could see,… — Betty Neels Copy Share Image
The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for… — Laurence Sterne Copy Share Image
In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be… — Ishmael Reed Copy Share Image
Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“Pretension is a question of optics. The pessimist sees pretension as a sham. The optimist views it as innocent, tragicomic, an excess… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation? — John Campbell Shairp Copy Share Image
Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment. — Roger L'Estrange Copy Share Image
Americans are generally very self-sufficient and I think generally averse to pretension, just as I am. — Tom Bodett 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
A Senate vote on gay marriage is a destructive pretension against the plan of God — Pope Francis 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
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but… — Richard Whately Copy Share Image
Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if… — Angela Carter Copy Share Image
There is more jealousy between rival wits than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex. But in both cases there must be… — Charles Caleb Colton Copy Share Image
It may be laid down as a general rule, that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well… — Henry Fielding Copy Share Image
We're a phenomenally snobby society, and it's such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it's the class I know… — J. K. Rowling Copy Share Image
Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. Such friendship is… — John O'Donohue Copy Share Image
I actually want to write a treatise in defence of pretension. I think the word 'pretension' has become like the word 'ironic'… — James Murphy Copy Share Image
I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptible… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
We are in a position of financial and social power, and we could be agents of change in our society. Without pretension,… — Guy Laliberte Copy Share Image
