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Pretension Quotes

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Pretension Quotes

“There is no sense in refusing honours. That is in fact to do them too much honour. The only strategy is to act so that they never weigh upon you. Your delicious (and malicious) certainty that you are a beautiful woman only subjugates yourself. How is one to approach her to be subjugated oneself? It seems difficult to meet the woman of your life when you have several (lives). In fact, as soon as you have a double life . . . Popular fame is what we should aspire to. Nothing will ever match the distracted gaze of the woman serving in the butcher's who has seen you on television. With their feet caught in the ice like the pink flamingos, they still thought they were God's gift to mankind.”

WomenFameDistractionPopularityPretensionBeautiful PeopleTransmigration Of The SoulHonours And Prizes
Book:Cool memories
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“I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss—?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.”

ReadingLiteratureBooksWordsPretensionSnobbery
Book:Northanger abbey
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“I pick up the list of Benji's five favorite books because we've got work to do: "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. He's a pretentious fuck and a liar. "Underworld" by Don DeLillo. He's a snob. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He's a spoiled passport-carrying fuck stunted in eighth grade. "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace. Enough already. "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane. He's got Mayflowers in his blood.”

HumorPretensionPretentiousnessJack KerouacFavorite BooksDavid Foster WallaceDon DelilloThomas PynchonStephen Crane
Book:You
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“A fig for your precious society with its bridge parties, its inane chatter, its cheap mentality; its dances and vulgar banquets; its snobbery and cheap pretension. The humblest library can show you upon a single shelf better society and far more select company than all the drawing-rooms of Europe, America, and South Africa.”

SocietyLibraryPretensionLibrariesPretensionsBibliomania
Book:Round My Library Fire: A Book about Books
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“Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation; some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted; some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.”

MenWorldMayArtCommonAttentionQualityImagineFameProjectsEvery ManReputationMortalsHopelessImagine ThatCompelledHerdsPretension
Author:Samuel Johnson
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“Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.”

LooksCharacterInterestImaginationStageOughtKingsConsequenceHatredRidiculousJudgementAbstractFavourAllegianceMonstrousApprehensionPretensionDisagreeableDazzleSplendour
Book:Characters of Shakespeare's Plays
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“If fallacies come knocking at my door,I'd rather feed, and shelter full a score,Than hide behind the black portcullis, doubt,And run the risk of barring one Truth out.And if pretension for a time deceive,And prove me one too ready to believe,Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act,I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact.”

IfsBelieveFactsRunningLyingBlackBehindsDoubtRiskDoorsReadyProveShameBrandsScoreShelterDeceivingStubbornKnockingFallacyPretensionColossal
Book:Leafs On An Idle Breeze - My Inspirational Poems (Annotated Edition)
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“I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.”

MenMatterFactsGivenLosesDealsDoubtLoversIntellectualIdealsDelightMortalsRejectsDisorderRationalityMatter Of FactPretensionInstabilityDogmaticIncorrigible
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
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“But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling.”

SinAnswersDutyAssertionPretensionBreach
Book:Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...
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“Contemporary philosophers have exercised themselves with the problem of our knowledge of other minds. Enmeshed in the dogma of the ghost in the machine, they have found it impossible to discover any logically satisfactory evidence warranting one person in believing that there exist minds other than his own. I can witness what your body does, but I cannot witness what your mind does, and my pretensions to infer from what your body does to what your mind does all collapse, since the premises for such inferences are either inadequate or unknowable.”

MindBelievePersonsDoeI CanProblemBodyFoundImpossibleEvidenceMachinesPhilosopherYour BodyGhostContemporaryWitnessCollapseDogmaPremisesInadequatePretensionInference
Book:The Concept of Mind
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“I HAVE no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality. The experiences of the nursery, the school, the University, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary.”

MenChildrenSchoolBornNaturalDifferencesEffortMoralBoysCareersTeachWrittenObjectsBabyCreatingUniversityBe GoodProofContraryTalesChainsAgencyApplicationSteadySoleHypothesisPretensionNurseryImpliedUnqualifiedNo PatienceProfessional CareerI Have No Patience
Book:Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences
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“Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.”

WorldWritingLittlesTwoBookMaterialsJudgmentTasksThirdsLaysFormerApplicationPretension
Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, L. L. D.: In Twelve Volumes
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“Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.”

ThinkingPassionWishQualityPrideAdvantageUniversalVicesAppearanceEnvyRidiculousFollyDistinctionSuperiorityConceitPretensionTriflingInfamyNotoriety
Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
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“That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves.”

SometimesCharacterHappensOrderTermSucceedDistanceAssumingMeetingsRidiculousExcellentEaseMeritScoreReservesFamiliarityPolitenessPretensionColdnessCondescensionPresumptuous
Book:Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
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“The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense end knowledge than a man was worth; and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind.”

MenWorldMindLongEndsBodyDesignTaughtGainsEssenceCreditWitTricksMysteriousDefinedDeceitGravityLong AgoDefectsPretensionCarriages
Book:The Works of Laurence Sterne, in One Volume
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“Society,--the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world's university, at once a school and a theater, the spur and the crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns the lazy Church in fixing the moral sense of the eye.”

WorldGivingIdeasRealCharacterGovernmentEyeSchoolSexTermChurchMoralOpinionSocietyFieldsMetsAmbitionTheaterUniversityMeritRealmsLazyCrownsStampsArenaPublic OpinionCradleFixingSpursPretensionCrucibleOutrunTribunals
Book:Speeches, Lectures, and Letters
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