Top 89 Quotes About Pretence
#1. He had read and absorbed more than he could understand, so he lived by pastiche and pretence.
Stephen Fry
#2. The biggest hindrance in life is to live for other people and crave for their approval. This kind of behaviour diminishes your God given purpose and it leads you to live a barren life. Free yourself from the prison of pretence and live a purposeful lifestyle.
Euginia Herlihy
#3. For this was the real desert where differences of race and colour, of wealth and social standing, are almost meaningless; where coverings of pretence are stripped away and basic truths emerge.
Wilfred Thesiger
#4. All in the golden afternoon Full leisurely we glide; For both our oars, with little skill, By little arms are plied, While little hands make vain pretence Our wanderings to guide.
Lewis Carroll
#5. All zeal for a reform, that gives offence To peace and charity, is mere pretence.
William Cowper
#6. It raises my spleen more than any thing, to have the pretence of being asked, of being given a choice, and at the same time addressed in such a way as to oblige one to do the very thing - whatever it be!
Jane Austen
#7. Ane fals intent under ane fair pretence
Hes causit mony innocent for to de.
Grit folie is to gif over-sone credence
To all that speiks fairlie unto the.
Robert Henryson
#8. How far does a pretence of feeling, maintained with absolute conviction, become authentic?
Angela Carter
#9. The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretence, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists.
Arundhati Roy
#10. Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.
Marcus Aurelius
#11. 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
#12. I should be an affected women, if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son's inspiring such emotions; but I can't be indifferent to anyone who is so sensible on his merits
Charles Dickens
#13. 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
#14. All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.
Rebecca West
#15. Babies who have not yet been taught to speak any language are the only race of the earth, the race of man: all the rest is pretence, what we call civilization, hatred, fear, desire for strength.
William, Saroyan
#16. The pretence that numbers are not the humble creation of man, but are the exacting language of the Universe and therefore possess the secret of all things, is comforting, terrifying and mesmeric.
Peter Greenaway
#17. it's a good thing I'm used to this;
the process of shutting things out
as they fall apart,
the pretence of cool
in a dry, hot season,
the taste of redemption
in a t.v. screen
if God had a voice
what would it say?
Hima Raza
#18. I thought it out this very day,
Noon upon the clock,
A man may put pretence away
Who leans upon a stick,
May sing, and sing until he drop,
Whether to maid or hag ...
William Butler Yeats
#19. Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.
James Russell Lowell
#20. When the lord says you must 'become as one of these little ones,' I take Him to mean you must be stripped of all the accretions of smugness and pretence and triviality.
Marilynne Robinson
#21. 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
#22. Peace between good and evil is an impossibility; the very pretence of it would, in fact, be the triumph of the powers of darkness.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#23. 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
#24. My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people - and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.
Keith Johnstone
#25. Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.
Leo Tolstoy
#26. In England, literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education.
James Payn
#27. Friends make pretence of following to the grave but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand.
Robert Frost
#28. We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.
Mary Astell
#29. He would be the finer gentleman that should leave the world without having tasted of lying or pretence of any sort, or of wantonness or conceit.
Marcus Aurelius
#30. I don't like shoppy people. I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#31. It is man's pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#32. There we were, filled with pure animal need, as he pinned me to the wooden table, and cruelly whipped my naked bottom; the two of us sweaty and panting, me screaming, him grunting, our primal sexual natures overprinting the tea room's pretence at gentility, and refinement.
Fiona Thrust
#33. Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it; but the free-thinker alone is truly free.
George Berkeley
#34. PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method ... of obtaining money by false pretences [by] "reading character" in the wrinkles [of] the hand. The pretence is not altogether false ... for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe."
Ambrose Bierce
#35. It hurt to see the hatred on her face, pure and astonished, but sometimes a bit of pain's just what we need: to cauterize the wound, burn out the infection. She saw me and I saw her, both of us stripped of pretence in that empty moment, newlyweds naked for their conjugals.
Mark Lawrence
#36. Shopkeepers - the great landed and commercial interests - regularly sat and slept, and where the two publicans occupied pews, but seldom made even the pretence of worshipping.
Thomas Hughes
#37. The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.
Ai Weiwei
#38. A painter's hand has a thirst for thieving, it steals from heaven and makes a gift to the memories of men, it feigns eternity and it delights in this pretence almost as if it had created rules of its own, more durable and more profoundly true.
Dacia Maraini
#39. 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
#40. And so girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. Who silence themselves. Who cannot say what they truly think. Who have turned pretence into an art form. I
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown.
Plato
#48. 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
#49. '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
#51. I reject any pretence at kindness you have the hypocrisy to offer.
Emily Bronte
#52. The job of an actor is disclosure, not pretence!
Max Reinhardt
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#59. You should never leave your "house of bread", under any pretence, whether it is oppression, troubles or hardships.
Sunday Adelaja
#60. Unbelief is a burden, but the pretence of belief, hypocrisy, is death to all that is decent in you.
David Staines
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive.
Havelock Ellis
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature.
James Payn
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
Joseph Conrad
#75. 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
#76. Malice can always find a mark to shoot at, and a pretence to fire.
Charles Simmons
#77. There are people one knows and people one doesn't. One shouldn't cheapen the former by feigning intimacy with the latter.
Tony Horwitz
#78. Incessant smiling is one of the deadly tools used by someone whose intent is to make others cry.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#79. The only known technique to an imitator is to steal and rephrase, then with a mischievous smile, he said, "i did it", without any confidence and prove.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#80. Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners.
Cassandra Clare
#81. Life is an act and we are all actors in the arena of life. We all do act each day from dawn to dusk. Some act well but some act to cover their acts
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#82. There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter - an act.
Vera Nazarian
#83. Pretend to be poor in reality and you'll notice a decrease in your friends list and request.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. In a world of selfie-addiction smile usually is the brand name for an essential drug called pretense
Munia Khan
#87. Millions upon millions will attain your ceremony, but don't think all of them are in a ceremonius mood.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#88. 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
#89. Never destroy without thought your enemy's pretences; they are usually your best weapon against him.
Mary Renault
