Quotes About Pretentiousness

#1. I don't think literature will be purged until its philosophic pretentiousness is extruded, and I shant live to see that purge, nor perhaps when it has happened will anything survive.

E. M. Forster

#2. The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy that pretense.

Chuck Palahniuk

#3. Pretentiousness is a comedy vein filled with riches.

Torry Martin

#4. Pretentiousness is closely allied to stupidity and that simplicity has a subtle but agreeable flavour.

Marcel Proust

#5. There must always be some pretentiousness about literature, or else no one would take its pains or endure its disappointments.

Glenway Wescott

#6. I got into music, I was in a band, I was at art school. I was quite trendy, although I'd hate to meet myself. The over-preening, the pretentiousness, the arrogance of youth! I think, 'Oh, that guy was so full of himself.'

Peter Capaldi

#7. Pretentiousness repels but authenticity attracts, and vulnerability is the pathway to intimacy.

Rick Warren

#8. Educationists are entertaining. We can always find a good laugh in their prose, with its special, ludicrous combination of ignorance and pretentiousness.

Richard Mitchell

#9. We hated pretentiousness; it was a form of self-hatred.

Aleksandar Hemon

#10. You can't really come into a concept record objectively, because you immediately associate it with Yes, stuff from the 1970s that punk rock kicked against, the pretentiousness.

Colin Meloy

#11. A classical education saves you from being fooled by pretentiousness, which is what most current fiction is too full of.

Raymond Chandler

#12. The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.

Brenda Ueland

#13. However, it must not be assumed that bullshit always and necessarily has pretentiousness as its motive.

Harry G. Frankfurt

#14. Pretentiousness isn't always just big words and meaningless jargon, but also pretty words that either when put into action don't mean beans or hurt you in the long run. Oftentimes, the former appeals to the intellect whereas the latter appeals to the heart.

Criss Jami

#15. In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime.

Karl Popper

#16. She [Comedy] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook.

George Meredith

#17. These were wannabe elites who, once they popped on big-boy pants, would be infiltrating New York with their pretentiousness.

Alexandra Martin

#18. Repetition for no reason is a sign of carelessness or pretentiousness, but there are plenty of good reasons to repeat words and phrases.

Steven Millhauser

#19. Whisky nosers, as they called themselves, eschewed what they saw as the pretentiousness of wine vocabulary. While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky nosers spoke the language of everyday life, detecting hints of stale seaweed, or even diesel fuel.

Alexander McCall Smith

#20. Even after all these years, she still said the word "gig" self-consciously, in the same way that she always said "croissant" with the proper French pronunciation, but with an apologetic, self-deprecating look to make up for her pretentiousness.

Liane Moriarty

#21. The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it.

Criss Jami

#22. I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it

Marianne Moore

#23. To be full of yourself is to make a fool of yourself.

Ashly Lorenzana

#24. Only assholes put a nickname on their business card.

Michael Crichton

#25. He had an air of magnificent melancholy sophistication, as if his proper place were elsewhere, somewhere infinitely more compelling even than Brakebills, and he'd been confined to his present setting by a grotesque divine oversight, which he tolerated with as much good humor as could be expected.

Lev Grossman

#26. The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is the pretense of intelligent ignorance. The former is teachable; the latter is not.

Criss Jami

#27. If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.

Annie Dillard

#28. The words of the Greeks are born on their lips, but those of the Romans in their hearts.

Marcus Porcius Cato

#29. A wise man's goal shouldn't be to say something profound, but to say something useful.

Criss Jami

#30. A person only experiences the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars that constitute reality by giving up the distorting spectacles of our egotistical appetites and repulsive pretensions, shedding artificial attachments, living without grand illusions, and free of deceptive delusions.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#31. Never trust someone that claims they care nothing of what society thinks of them. Instead of conquering obstacles, they simply pretend they don't exist.

Tiffany Madison

#32. All right, all right for you, you pretentious kneecap! How would you like a punch in the eye?

Peter S. Beagle

#33. A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn't know.

Criss Jami

#34. I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.

Criss Jami

#35. Pseudo-artists think that being an artist means opposing whatever seems to be an establishment. That is not creative at all. True creativity is the ability to gain perspective wherever you may have missed it before.

Criss Jami