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.
For in religion as in friendship, they who profess most are ever the least sincere.
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.
We are in a position of financial and social power, and we could be agents of change in our society. Without pretension, I believe we could be a nice little gardener who takes care of the garden, and hopefully our neighbor will do the same. Then, maybe we'll achieve a better world.
He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.
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.
One who preserves all the exterior decencies of ignorance.
When we are aware of our inner-growth potential yet have no pretensions about ourselves, when we are vulnerable, then we can change.
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.
The higher the rank the less pretence, because there is less to pretend to.
Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.
Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.
No Swaraj government with any pretension to being a popular government can possibly be organised and maintained on a war-footing.
There are all these levels of pretension in LA. Every time you walk into a café or a bar or a restaurant in LA everybody turns around to see if you're famous. Everybody can seem like a celebrity. You can meet somebody who looks like Joe Schmoe and he turns out to be the head of HBO or something. Or you meet a person who just won an Oscar and he looks like he just won an Oscar. And it's a sprawling city, there's so many different parts to it.
For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?
Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends.
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.
Just make sure your intentions are not pretensions.
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.
I do assure you, Sir, that I have no pretension whatever of that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.