A Quote by Theophrastus

I would define boastfulness to be the pretension to good which the boaster does not possess. — © Theophrastus
I would define boastfulness to be the pretension to good which the boaster does not possess.
While one party may possess the levers of power, one party does not possess a monopoly on good ideas. Good lawmaking, after all, is about the ability to craft effective solutions.
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.
Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.
Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.
Marriage is not a natural phenomenon. It is artificial, arbitrary. And when it disappears you cannot do anything to bring it back. You can pretend, but that pretension makes you a hypocrite. And your pretension cannot deceive the woman, because she has known your love and the pretension cannot become the substitute. The only way is to separate - in friendship, because you have given each other so much.
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.
I come from an Irish working-class background but went to a posh school, and any type of pretension was quickly mocked at home. I've always had a keen eye for pretension.
Art does not imitate nature, but founds itself on the study of nature, takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz: The mind and soul of man.
I would rather make a bad film which does well at the box office than a good film which does badly.
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Truly, this earth is a trophy cup for the industrious man. And this rightly so, in the service of natural selection. He who does not possess the force to secure his Lebensraum in this world, and, if necessary, to enlarge it, does not deserve to possess the necessities of life. He must step aside and allow stronger peoples to pass him by.
Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.
No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with the gratitude to the Giver of good who has blessed us.
Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess.
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.
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