Top 104 Pretension Quotes & Sayings

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.

Never underestimate the role pretension plays when it comes to creating euphemistic language.

I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.

Music is primal: when it's done without pretension, you can really feel the shape of someone's soul.

My family is vital to me - just the sense of being surrounded by no pretension.

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.

Be thorough in all you do; and remember that although ignorance often may be innocent, pretension is always despicable.

Rock n' roll doesn't change. All the idiocies and pretension continue.

Arkansas, the state Bill Clinton loves and that loves him back, is a place with just no pretension at all.

Americans are generally very self-sufficient and I think generally averse to pretension, just as I am.

He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.

Faith begins where religious pretension ends

Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth.

The place where God has supremely destroyed all human arrogance and pretension is the cross.

General Otis is proclaimed American Military Governor of the Philippines and I protest a thousand times and with all the force in my soul against such pretension.

Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends.

News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be considered intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to communicate what they have just learned.

I have to say that my husband and my children are so tough, there really is no space for pretension.

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

Most good writing is clear, vigorous, honest, alive, sensuous, appropriate, unsentimental, rhythmic, without pretension, fresh, metaphorical, evocative in sound, economical, authoritative, surprising, memorable, and light.

The world is his who can see through its pretension.

Pretension is nothing; power is everything.

Oh, for a pin that would puncture pretension!

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.

Look, I was a water carrier, I don't reject my image. I didn't have the pretension to think that I could change a match by myself.

I have no pretension that I belong in D.C. I mean, I have to be cautious on how we do our restaurant.

In nakedness I behold the majesty of the essential instead of the trappings of pretension.

The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.

Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.

A Senate vote on gay marriage is a destructive pretension against the plan of God

I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.

The Tories have long since abdicated any pretension of principled global leadership.

If you take away a lot of the pretension and grandness from Shakespeare, a true poeticism is revealed.

The literary world is so full of pretension, and there's such an enormous gap between how seriously poets take themselves and how widely they're ignored by everybody else.

Inside, Penlee House is without pretension. It is a space that knows its limitations and its strengths - and makes the most of them.

I think people can stand to take themselves just a little less seriously. I'm fighting the war against pretension.

Even for southerners, Arkansans are amazingly friendly and extend hospitality to all strangers with astonishing openness. You couldn't find a pretension in that state if you hunted from Jonesboro to El Dorado.

I come from very common stock, and I've always been uncomfortable with pretension and all the forms it can take, including disingenuous broadcasting.

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply; for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.

I cannot avoid condemning all those who, from self-conceit have the pretension to imitate great artists of the past. If their powers of emotion be weak, their powers of expression will be likewise.

On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.

I actually want to write a treatise in defence of pretension. I think the word 'pretension' has become like the word 'ironic' - just this catch-all term to distance people from interesting experiences and cultural engagement and possible embarrassment.

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.

The mark of a man of the world is absence of pretension.

There is so much vulgarity in the everyday, that when somebody has the pretension to do something extraordinary for the community, then you have to suffer.

Borrowing something from one art form and relocating it in another always has a whiff of pretension about it, like in books if, instead of 'Chapter One,' you have 'First Movement.'

No Swaraj government with any pretension to being a popular government can possibly be organised and maintained on a war-footing.

What makes me mad is arrogance, pretension, putting on airs.

It was possible at last to hear the silence to appreciate that there was a silence, deep and potent, out there beyond the pretension of the light.

In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many.

For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?

I would define boastfulness to be the pretension to good which the boaster does not possess.

Elegance must be the right combination of distinction, naturalness, care and simplicity. Outside this, believe me, there is no elegance. Only pretension.

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.

I'm responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.

Take the shortest route. The one that nature planned - to speak and act in the healthiest way. Do that, and be free of pain and stress, free of all calculations and pretension.

Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

When you title yourself, you immediately lend yourself to all kinds of pretension