Top 48 No Pretence Quotes
#1. Give immediate instruction to all your posts in said territory, under your direction, at no time and on no pretence to hoist, or suffer be hoisted, the English flag.
Zebulon Pike
#2. The Relation we bear to the Wisdom of the Father, the Son of His Love, gives us indeed a dignity which otherwise we have no pretence to. It makes us something, something considerable even in God's Eyes.
Mary Astell
#4. The essence of vulgarity seemed to lie in the pretence at being or the attempt to be, something that one really was not, with the resulting lack of ease and dignity and taste.
Ann Bridge
#5. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
Joseph Conrad
#6. Dr August, there is no greater isolation a man may experience than to be lonely in a crowd. He may nod, and smile, and say the right thing, but even by this pretence his soul is pushed further away from the kinship of men.
Claire North
#7. The Count himself was ready to die, and he would be glad to die here alone, without pretence and mockery, with no troop of expectant relatives about his bed. The world was not what he had thought it at twenty
or even at forty.
Willa Cather
#8. In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature.
James Payn
#9. And hast thou sworn on every slight pretence,
Till perjuries are common as bad pence,
While thousands, careless of the damning sin,
Kiss the book's outside, who ne'er look'd within?
William Cowper
#10. We contrive to make revenge itself look like religion. We call down thunder on many a head under pretence, that those on whom we invoke it are God's enemies, when perhaps we invoke it because they are ours.
Hannah More
#11. I have always disliked shrouding ... especially feelings and emotions. I discovered quite later in life that truth and transparency are expected but exploited and disliked.
Balroop Singh
#12. Must we, under the happy hope of a false tranquility, sacrifice to the people in power the public welfare, and under vain pretence of preserving the peace, abandon the empire to robbers who would plunder it
Claude Adrien Helvetius
#13. Malice can always find a mark to shoot at, and a pretence to fire.
Charles Simmons
#14. When you find me attempting to break into your house to take your plate, under any pretence whatsoever, but most of all under pretence of purity of religion and Christian charity shoot me for a robber and a hypocrite, as in that case I shall certainly be.
Edmund Burke
#15. If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
#16. Men will look back in amusement at the pretence that once caused people to refer to General Dynamics and North American Aviation and AT&T as private business.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#17. Mr False Pretence, you don't make sense
I just don't know you
But you make me cry, where's my kiss goodbye
I think I love you
Amy Winehouse
#18. Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive.
Havelock Ellis
#19. Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man! He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still.
John Greenleaf Whittier
#20. Fish is held out to be one of the greatest luxuries of the table and not only necessary, but even indispensable at all dinners where there is any pretence of excellence or fashion.
Isabella Beeton
#21. Unbelief is a burden, but the pretence of belief, hypocrisy, is death to all that is decent in you.
David Staines
#22. 'Tis dangerous to think - For who by thinking tempts his jealous Fate, Is straight arraign'd as Traytor to the State, And none that come within the Verge of Sense, Have to Preferment now the least Pretence ...
John Wilmot
#23. Watch out for those who celebrate your success with bitterness in their hearts! surely, they'll hail you for what you are, and hate you for what you have become.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#24. You should never leave your "house of bread", under any pretence, whether it is oppression, troubles or hardships.
Sunday Adelaja
#25. I don't make any pretence of knowing about the existence of a Supreme Entity, neither do I make any attempt to create any friction among religions. If anything, I have spared myself no pains in my endeavor to smoothen the ongoing friction among all religions of the world.
Abhijit Naskar
#26. There's something almost weightless about our world, I think, something fleeting and insubstantial that's ill at ease with any pretence of certainty.
Deirdre Madden
#27. Tom hunts alone. While shunned by all he sees, he grows aware that, in reality, life is lived alone. When with a hen, there's only an illusion of sharing; a pretence that life's trials are easier to endure. Even sleep is a barrier that can't be shared.
Peter Gray
#28. I don't like shoppy people. I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#29. What she couldn't stand, she said, was pretence of any kind, especially the pretence of desire, wherein someone feigned the need to possess her wholly when in fact what he wanted was to use her temporarily.
Rachel Cusk
#30. We ought to punish pitilessly that shameful pretence of friendly intercourse. I like a man to be a man, and to show on all occasions the bottom of his heart in his discourse. Let that be the thing to speak, and never let our feelings be beneath vain compliments
Moliere
#31. Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretence. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.
Adyashanti
#32. Never destroy without thought your enemy's pretences; they are usually your best weapon against him.
Mary Renault
#33. A stupid is one who thinks that those in power today had clandestine means of getting there, yet wants to get there without thinking of the clandestine route they would be taking.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#34. Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.
Charles Dickens
#35. The job of an actor is disclosure, not pretence!
Max Reinhardt
#36. I reject any pretence at kindness you have the hypocrisy to offer.
Emily Bronte
#38. Of course, we need not be surprised if artistic excellence goes unrecognized on account of being unknown; but there should be the greatest indignation when, as often, good judges are flattered by the charm of social entertainments into an approbation which is a mere a pretence.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
#39. Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.
John Adams
#40. The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown.
Plato
#41. Millions upon millions will attain your ceremony, but don't think all of them are in a ceremonius mood.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#42. Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child ... Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.
Orson Scott Card
#43. You may charge me with murder
or want of sense
(We are all of us weak at times):
But the slightest approach to a false pretence
Was never among my crimes!
Lewis Carroll
#44. In a world of selfie-addiction smile usually is the brand name for an essential drug called pretense
Munia Khan
#46. I love the idea of spies in love. How would it work between two people who were so programmed to lie and be suspicious, who have a whole life based on pretence?
Tony Gilroy
#47. Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out;
Thomas More
#48. Where 'Paranormal Activity' really comes into its own is its rhetoric of legitimacy - how it uses itself to authenticate itself, and thus furthers the pretence of being real.
Stephen Graham Jones
