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Pomposity Quotes

Browse 34 quotes about Pomposity.

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Pomposity Quotes

“Detective Inspector Eccles sighed. He may ordinarily have met his sigh with the question of why the newly appointed Superintendent Dickinson was turning up to this late hour crime scene, he may also ordinarily question why his superior officer was dressed as Julius Caesar, in full tunic and green leafy wreath, yet ever since the new and youngest-ever-appointed superintendent had arrived at the Met it had been all too clear he was an officer who didn’t quite do things by the eBook.”

ComedyHumourMurderDetectivesEbooksPomposityCrime Scenes
Author:Tom Conrad
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“They docked at Buenos Aires. Cunégonde, Captain Candide, and the old woman went to call on the Governor, Don Fernando d'Ibaraa y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza. This grandee had a pride to match his many names. He spoke to people with the most noble disdain, sticking his nose so far in the air, speaking in such a mercilessly loud voice, adopting so high and mighty a tone, and affecting so haughty a gait, that all who greeted him were also tempted to hit him.”

DisdainCandideHaughtinessPomposity
Book:Candide
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“ERNEST FRIEDLANDER: Be quiet! Be quiet! LEO MERCURÉ: Why should we be quiet? You’re making enough row to blast the roof off! Why should you have the monopoly of noise? Why should your pompous moral pretensions be allowed to hurdle across the city without any competition? We’ve all got lungs. Let’s use them! Let’s shriek like mad! Let’s enjoy ourselves!”

EnjoymentEnjoy LifePompousUnconventionalPomposityBourgeois SocietyConventionalismPretensionsBohemianismUnconventionalityBabbitt
Book:Design for Living
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“I've always been slightly self-conscious as an actor, and I guess that sometimes reads as pomposity. Starting when I was 30, I somehow gave off an impression at an audition that had them mentally put me in a three-piece suit or put an attache case in my hand. If there was a stiff-guy part, the director would brighten up when I came in.”

IfsSelfSometimesHandsGuyThreeActorsCasesPiecesDirectorsConsciousStartingImpressionSuitsAuditionsSelf ConsciousPomposity
Author:Charles Kimbrough
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“I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman - I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.”

IfsYearsArtStudentsTaughtCollegeAimExpertsJust SayingCollege StudentsUndisputedPomposity
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“Well, the film's not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it's pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies. I had never read anything like this until I was doing the film, but Mark [Joffe, the director] and people showed me stuff where, like a flood, it mattered where the water came from. If you're flooded from above, you get the money; if you're flooded from below, you don't. What's that about?”

PeopleIfsThinkingWellsSometimesFilmStuffWaterChurchCompanyComedyDirectorsMarkFloodInsurance CompaniesPomposity
Author:Billy Connolly
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“I try to find a style that matches the book. In the Baroque Cycle, I got infected with the prose style of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which is my favorite era. It's recent enough that it is easy to read - easier than Elizabethan English - but it's pre-Victorian and so doesn't have the pomposity that is often a problem with 19th-century English prose. It is earthy and direct and frequently hilarious.”

TryingBookEnoughProblemEasyCenturyStyleEasierLateDirectMy FavoriteErasProseCycles19th CenturyVictorian18th CenturyBaroqueElizabethanPomposity
Author:Neal Stephenson
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“The middles cleave to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings towards pomposity. This is possible because most euphemisms permit the speaker to multiply syllables, and the middle class confuses sheer numerousness with weight and value.”

FactsValuesSocialClassMiddleWeightAidsMiddle ClassPermitYearningSpeakersSheerAvoidingSyllablesEuphemismPomposity
Book:Class: A Guide Through the American Status System
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“A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.”

ScienceMistakeCreativityGreatnessGeniusInnovationEnjoymentGravityDeceivedCheerfulnessCreativity And InnovationSolemnityEruditionHilarityPomposity
Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
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“In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge of significance. You just ain’t no good unless you can see a symbol hiding, like a scared gerbil, under every page. And in many creative writing course the little beasts multiply, the place swarms with them. What does this Mean? What does that Symbolize? What is the Underlying Mythos? Kids come lurching out of such courses with a brain full of gerbils. And they sit down and write a lot of empty pomposity, under the impression that that’s how Melville did it.”

WritingMeanLittlesDoeKidsCoursesGivenBrainCreativeCollegePagesEmptyDown AndScaredMythImpressionSymbolsBeastSignificanceHidingCreative WritingSwarmsMelvillePomposity
Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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“Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.”

PeopleThinkingBelieveHardSeemsKidsSufferingHouseEasyBitsRichCarDirectRelationHipsAssumptionBeautiful ThingsLives Of OthersPompousGlidingPomposity
Book:Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There
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“French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the 'star' system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.”

SelfStarsOpinionStageIntellectualHollywoodImportanceRidiculousExistentialismAbsurdityObsceneSelf-importanceInfantileStalinismIntellectual LifeLacanDerridaPomposity
Book:Chomsky Notebook
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