Pretense Quotes - Page 7

• War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.

  Omar N. Bradley

  Peace, War, Civilization

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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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• 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

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• Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been.

  Richard Matheson

  Memories, Light, Self

  Richard Matheson (1978). “What dreams may come: a novel”, Putnam Publishing Group

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• 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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• The habit of arguing in support of atheism, whether it be done from conviction or in pretense, is a wicked and impious practice.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Atheist, Practice, Support

  "On the Nature of the Gods". Book by Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC.

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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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• 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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• Ah, those were the days…The Dark-Hunters hunted us, we slaughtered them. We made our homes in underground catacombs and crypts where the Hunters couldn’t go without getting possessed. It was an interesting time to be Apollite or Daimon. But that was before we discovered civilization and modern conveniences. Before the human world developed enough to where we could exist at night under the pretense of being one of them. Apollites owning businesses and houses. Daimons playing Nintendo. What is this world coming to? (Thanatos)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Home, Dark, Night

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• Through an arrow loop in the wall she saw a familiar horse and rider tearing across the camp toward the healing rooms. Brigan pulled up at Nash's feet and dropped from the saddle. The two brothers threw their arms around each other and embraced hard. Shortly thereafter he stepped into the healing rooms and leaned in the doorway, looking across at her quietly. Brocker's son with the gentle gray eyes. She abandoned all pretense of decorum and ran at him.

  Kristin Cashore

  Brother, Horse, Wall

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• Or perhaps this hostility of yours is the pretense. Love does make liars out of your kind.

  Cassandra Clare

  Liars, Doe, Kind

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.578, Simon and Schuster

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• Give your heart to everybody you meet. The rest is pretense.

  Ethan Hawke

  Heart, Giving

  Ethan Hawke (2002). “Ash Wednesday: A Novel”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• My mind swirled with memories of the life I had led. The constant struggle to keep up appearances, the pretenses, the smiles that had been met with tears. The long sleepless nights, the loneliness that cloaked my spirit and turned me into a true ghost.

  Anchee Min

  Memories, Loneliness, Struggle

  Anchee Min (2004). “Empress Orchid”, Wheeler Publishing, Incorporated

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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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• Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

  William Hazlitt

  Wise, Men, Hypocrisy

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.307, Delphi Classics

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• Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves.

  Edward Dahlberg

  Men, Evil, Vices

  Edward Dahlberg (1972). “The sorrows of Priapus: consisting of The sorrows of Priapus and The carnal myth”, Not Avail

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• No pretense stop wasting my time. A virtuous woman is really hard to find.

  Buju Banton

  Wasting My Time, Virtuous Woman, Hard

  Song: I Wanna Be Loved, Album: 'Til Shiloh, 1995

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• I had come to discover that "safe" was an illusion, a pretense that adults wrapped around their children- and sometimes themselves- to make the world seem comfortable. I had discovered that under that thin cover of let's-pretend, monsters and nightmares lay, and that not all of them came from places like the moonroads or the nightling cities. Some of the monsters were people we knew. People we thought we could trust.

  Holly Lisle

  Children, Cities, People

  Holly Lisle (2009). “The Silver Door”, p.166, Scholastic Inc.

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• Churches are tax exempt because they are supposed to provide a public good. To prove that good to the IRS, churches arent supposed to hoard their money. They are supposed to spend it on goods and services for the faithful. Under this pretense, the church has made massive investments in tax free real estate all over the world. And when it comes to labor costs, they are almost free.

  Lawrence Wright

  Real, Faithful, Church

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• I believe 100% when your heart & mind are in the right place and there is no pretense, great things will come. It's that simple!

  Jimmy Wayne

  Believe, Heart, Simple

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• It is impossible not to bestow the imputation of deliberate imposture and deception upon the gross pretense of a similitude between a king of Great Britain and a magistrate of the character marked out for that of the President of the United States. It is still more impossible to withhold that imputation from the rash and barefaced expedients which have been employed to give success to the attempted imposition.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Kings, Character, Giving

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• My aim is to lay bare and proclaim the crying and horrible guilt of the bloody doctrine of persecution as one of the most seditious, destructive, blasphemous, and bloodiest in any or all the nations of the world, notwithstanding the many fine veils, pretenses, and colors of not persecuting Christ Jesus, but heretics; not God's truth or servants, but blasphemers and seducers; not persecuting men for their conscience, but for sinning against their conscience; and like specious reasonings to justify the cruelty of intolerance.

  Roger Williams

  Jesus, Men, Color

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

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