Pretense Quotes - Page 6

• What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?

  Richard Matheson

  Self, Harsh, Condemnation

  Richard Matheson (2007). “What Dreams May Come: A Novel”, p.84, Macmillan

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• They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.

  Tacitus

  Ambition, Land, Greed

  25 Copy quote

• They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.

  Joseph Conrad

  Stupid, Safety, Perfect

  Joseph Conrad (2016). “Heart of Darkness”, p.77, Xist Publishing

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• i discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Opposites, Style, Mind

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• Man was entering under false pretenses the sphere of incredible facilities, acquired too cheaply, below cost price, almost for nothing, and the disproportion between outlay and gain, the obvious fraud on nature, the excessive payment for a trick of genius, had to be offset by self-parody.

  Bruno Schulz

  Men, Self, Cost

  Bruno Schulz, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Goldfarb (2008). “The street of crocodiles and other stories”, Penguin Classics

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• 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

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• How to fool yourself into feeling younger: When you go to restaurants, always check a coat and a skateboard.

  Joan Rivers

  Feelings, Age, Coats

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• Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere.

  Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Way, Being Afraid, Cowardly

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• The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?

  Joe Haldeman

  War, Race, Hands

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• Perfection I've lived with the pretense of perfection for seventeen years. Give my room a cursory inspection, you'd think I have OCD. But it's only habit and not obsession that keeps it all orderly. Of course, I don't want to give the impression that it's all up to me.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Thinking, Years, Giving

  Ellen Hopkins (2008). “Impulse”, p.675, Simon and Schuster

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• Without community, there is no liberation...but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.

  Audre Lorde

  Mean, Differences, Community

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• 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

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• 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

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

  George Bernard Shaw

  Peace, War, Animal Rights

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• Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers. Let social busybodies and professional "public morals experts" in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.

  Samuel Gompers

  People, Done, Fads

  Samuel Gompers, John McBride, William Green (1922). “The American Federationist”

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• The natural impulses of every thoroughbred include his sense of honor; his love of fair play and courage; his dislike of pretense and of cheapness.

  Emily Post

  Play, Honor, His Love

  Emily Post (1945). “Children are People: And Ideal Parents are Comrades”

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• Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Real, California, Fake

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• Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another: they express ideas and emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; they make fun of honored figures and piously held beliefs; and they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking - as in Andersen's famous tale - that the emperor has no clothes.

  Alison Lurie

  Fun, Views, Ideas

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• It is high time that the American people should remember a few home truths, and that we should refuse to become partners with a militarism which is still stalking unchecked under the pretense of national needs and of international justice.

  Elisabeth Marbury

  Home, People, Justice

  Elisabeth Marbury (1924). “My Crystal Ball: Reminiscences”, New York : Boni and Liveright

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• In many patriarchies, language, as well as cultural tradition, reserve the human condition for the male. With the Indo-European languages this is a nearly inescapable habit of mind, for despite all the customary pretense that 'man' and 'humanity' are terms which apply equally to both sexes, the fact is hardly obscured that in practice, general application favors the male far more often than the female as referent, or even sole referent, for such designations.

  Kate Millett

  Sex, Men, Practice

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• All American and Israeli goods and products should be boycotted in a way that undermines American and Israeli interests so as to act as deterrence to their war against Muslims and Islam that is being waged under the pretence of fighting terrorism. This boycott should become an overwhelming trend that makes these two states feel that their economies are in a real and actual danger.

  Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

  Real, War, Fighting

  "Boycott of Israeli and US companies gaining momentum" by Shatha Khalil and Abdul Adil, archive.muslimnews.co.uk. June 28, 2002.

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• Children, I always think, are just putting on a performance of being naive and not understanding anything. I have worked with children in films, and they're treated as adults and they just drop the pretense of being children.

  Wallace Shawn

  Children, Thinking, Understanding

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Competence in heterosexuality, or at least the appearance or pretense of such competence, is as much a public affair as a privateone. Thus, going steady is a high school diploma in heterosexuality; engagement a BA; marriage an MA; and children a Ph.D.

  Thomas Szasz

  Children, School, Heterosexuality

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• By the by, who ever knew a man who never read or wrote neither who hadn't got some small back parlour which he would call a study!

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Study

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• How wide is all this long pretense!
  There is in love a sweetness ready penned,
  Copy out only that, and save expense.

  George Herbert

  Long, Poetry, Sweetness

  George Herbert (1871). “The English poems of George Herbert, together with his collection of proverbs entitled Jacula prudentum”, p.103

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