Xingu!" she scoffed. "Why, it was the fact of our knowing so much more about it than she did—unprepared though we were—that made Osric Dane so furious. I should have thought that was plain enough to everybody!

Edith Wharton

Tags: humor manners new-york puns behaviour didacticism dangerous-philosophy pretension



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Why do you pretend, when you can make it real? We like pretending to be someone else but the truth we just want to be ourselves.

Ann Marie Aguilar

Tags: pretending pretension



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The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.

Oscar Wilde

Tags: passion poetry literary-criticism poseurs affectations pretension algernon-charles-swinburne mimicry



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I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss—?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

Jane Austen

Tags: words reading books literature snobbery pretension



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...what goes on inside believers is mysterious. So far as it can be guessed at - if for some reason you wanted to guess at it - it appears to be a kind of anxious pretending, a kind of continual, nervous resistance to reality. It looks as if, to a believer, things can never be allowed just to be what they are. They always have to be translated, moralised - given an unnecessary and rather sentimental extra meaning. A sunset can't just be part of the mixed magnificence and cruelty and indifference of the world; it has to be a blessing. A meal has to be a present you're grateful for, even if it came from Tesco and the ingredients cost you £7.38. Sex can't be the spectrum of experiences you get used to as an adult, from occasional earthquake through to mild companionable buzz; it has to be, oh dear oh dear, a special thing that happens when mummies and daddies love each other very much...

Our fingers must be in our ears all the time - lalala, I can't hear you - just to keep out the plain sound of the real world.

The funny thing is that to me it's exactly the other way around. In my experience, it's belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. It's belief which demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending. Pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture.

Francis Spufford

Tags: pretension unapologetic



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…a kind of Calvinist in reverse; that is, he was uncompromisingly bohemian

Renata Adler

Tags: pretension bohemianism



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He had perfected the art of looking interested, and could grasp in surprise at any and every predictable punchline.

Ian Rankin

Tags: pretension



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People. Falling for each others’ pretensions, fakeness and whatever various faces they can put on to wear. And then they call it love. What a fantasy. What a blasphemy. Humanity bores me.

C. JoyBell C.

Tags: humanity warning warnings pretension wisdom-quotes fake-love



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