Pretense Quotes - Page 5

• And this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Taken, Class, Plunder

  Frederic Bastiat (2017). “The Law”, p.15, Lulu.com

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• High finance isn't burglary or obtaining money by false pretenses, but rather a judicious selection from the best features of those fine arts.

  Finley Peter Dunne

  Art, Finance, Burglary

  9 Copy quote

• The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is the pretense of intelligent ignorance. The former is teachable; the latter is not.

  Criss Jami

  Ignorance, Intelligent, Latter

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.34, Criss Jami

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Be niggards of advice on no pretense; For the worst avarice is that of sense.

  Alexander Pope

  Advice, Niggard, Worst

  Alexander Pope (2015). “An Essay on Criticism”, p.17, Sheba Blake Publishing

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• All actions and attitudes of children are graceful because they are the luxuriant and immediate offspring of the moment - divested of affectation and free from all pretense.

  Henry Fuseli

  Children, Attitude, Action

  Henry Fuseli (1831). “Lectures”, p.77

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile.

  Carter Heyward

  Love Is, Choices, Rational

  Carter Heyward (1984). “Our Passion for Justice: Images of Power, Sexuality, and Liberation”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Differences, Doe

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.397, Knopf

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods.

  Robert Benchley

  Justice, Exotic, Enthusiasm

  Robert Benchley (2016). “My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew”, p.303, Pickle Partners Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [T]he vast regulatory structure the federal government has erected in the name of the commerce power cannot be ended overnight, in many cases, but the pretense that such programs are constitutional can be ended, even as the programs themselves are phased out over time.

  Roger Pilon

  Government, Names, Program

  4 Copy quote

• No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals.

  Dean Koontz

  Love, Struggle, Ideas

  Dean Koontz (2016). “The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd”, p.912, Bantam

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• It has long been observed, that an atheist has no just reason for endeavouring conversions; and yet none harass those minds which they can influence, with more importunity of solicitation to adopt their opinions. In proportion as they doubt the truth of their own doctrines, they are desirous to gain the attestation of another understanding: and industriously labour to win a proselyte, and eagerly catch at the slightest pretense to dignify their sect with a distinguished name.

  Samuel Johnson

  Atheist, Winning, Names

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous”, p.40

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many times Christians state their love for the Lord and their willingness to die for Him. I will make no pretense of knowing the Lord's will in your life, but I do feel that in most cases the Lord is far more interested in our living for Him than He is in our dying for Him.

  Zig Ziglar

  Christian, Knowing, Dying

  Zig Ziglar, Dwight "Ike" Reighard (2013). “The One Year Daily Insights with Zig Ziglar”, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Giving advice is many times only the privilege of saying a foolish thing one's self, under the pretense of hindering another from doing one.

  Alexander Pope

  Self, Giving, Advice

  Alexander Pope, Alexander Chalmers (1807). “A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published”, p.122

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• So much of my life has been about self-effacement, pretense, masquerading, concealment, and indirection.

  Marlon Riggs

  Self, Confession, Has Beens

  10 Copy quote

• The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Power, Men

  60 Copy quote

• Sometimes a god comes.... He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Dream, Wall, Bridges

  "The Word for World Is Forest". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1972.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Home is the place where you are most thoroughly yourself, with no pretenses.

  Victoria Moran

  Home, Where You Are

  4 Copy quote

• I don’t claim to know an over-arching ‘Meaning of Life,’ but I do operate under the understanding that life should not be lived under the pretense that it is simply a test propagated by an invisible, intangible, Creator-God. And it should not be spent identifying with religious traditions and organized groups that, historically, have been at the root of a tremendous amount of oppression and violence.

  David G. McAfee

  Religious, Roots, Creator God

  FaceBook post by David G. McAfee from Aug 06, 2014

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Men, Long, Evil

  "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798) #31)". Book by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, 1968.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.

  Alan Watts

  Truth, Lying, Heart

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.38, New World Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

  Socrates

  Real, Knowing, Evil

  "Apology". 29a - b. By Plato. Translated by Benjamin Jowett,

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Grading creative writing is always an ethical dilemma. But what you brought up about grading personal stories versus the research paper is of course a truly volatile issue in teaching memoir or the personal essay, because there's no pretense that the narrator is a character.

  Debra Monroe

  Teaching, Writing, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sherlock: You're keeping a SCRAPBOOK. Only old ladies and pre-pubescent girls keep scrapbooks, John. John: It's not a scrapbook, Sherlock. I'm collecting papers relevant to the cases. It helps me remember the details. And it was locked away in my desk drawer. Sherlock: The lock on your desk drawer was insulting me with its pretense at security.

  Guy Adams

  Girl, Insulting, Details

  7 Copy quote

• He pulled the Carstairs family ring from his finger and held it out to Will. "Take it." Will let his eyes drift down toward it, and then up to Jem's face. A dozen awful things he could say, or do, went through his mind. One did not slough off a persona so quickly, he had found. He had pretended to be cruel for so many years that the pretense was still what he reached for first, as a man might absently turn his carriage toward the home he had lived in for all his life, despite the fact that he had recently moved. "You wish to marry me now?" he said, at last.

  Cassandra Clare

  Home, Eye, Men

  Cassandra Clare (2015). “Clockwork Princess”, p.79, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Peace, War, Animal Rights

  9 Copy quote