Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and the storm within.
To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
Having nothing to do, I am correcting the Paris edition of Bach; not only the engraver's mistakes, but also the mistakes hallowed by those who are supposed to understand Bach (I have no pretensions to understand better, but I do think that sometimes I can guess).
. . . the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.
American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
I cannot pretend to do sculpture and make a woman the ridiculous pedestal of my pretensions. To render clothing poetic, yes--but one must preserve its dignity as clothing.
To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem. . . ridiculous.
The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.
I just know that he's Robbie Williams - he's massive, that's all I know! He nailed it. Working in the studio with him was cool. I got there at about six in the afternoon and then stayed until six in the morning. We only worked for like two hours, the rest of the time we were just chilling out the back. The way Robbie handles everything. . . he's a star, but there were never any pretensions, no ego. He put effort in.
If you try to go beyond your interests just for the sake of pretensions or wealth, your art becomes less legitimate.
He sighed deeply: to fall in love at first sight with this malodorous sleeping girl, with, as far as he could see, no pretensions to beauty or even good looks, was something he had not expected. But falling in love, he had always understood, was unpredictable, and, as far as he was concerned, irrevocable That they hadn't exchanged a word, nor spoken, made no difference. He, heart whole until that minute, and with no intention of marrying until it suited him, had lost that same heart.
They're innocent movies, and they're fun movies and there were no pretensions about 'em.
Your worst and most dangerous enemy is the person that injures you under the pretensions of friendship.
Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions.
Just make sure your intentions are not pretensions.
In those days, I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contadictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.
Nearly everywhere monarchs raised themselves further above the level of the greatest nobles and buttressed their new pretensions to respect and authority with cannons and taxation.
I don't know how to put on any tough guy pretensions.
It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument - their intellect - which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously.
The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.