Quotes About Pretense

It make one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment.

We sweat for our pretensions. It

Watching him was like opening the door to a singing telegram: you know it's supposed to be entertaining, but you can't get beyond the sad fact that this person actually thinks he's bringing some joy into your life.

But the corner is relentless and certain. It can't be underestimated. It can't be appeased with pretense or melodrama or the easy fatalism of youth. It waits. It works. It finishes whatever it begins in its own time, in its own way.

That's why I ca never be happy with simple, good people", she thought. "It isn't enough to be honest and good-to be happy they must pretend. They really must!

That's why I can never be happy with simple, good people", she thought. "It isn't enough to be honest and good-to be happy they must pretend. They really must!

Archie's marriage felt like buying a pair of shoes, taking them home and finding they don't fit. For the sake of appearances, he put up with them

I can't act!

I can always act.

I don't like affectation.

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.

I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too,before others quite reasonably, and it looks as tho I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

Often he declined invitations, because to accept meant that he had to dust off his brogues, iron a shirt, brush down his best suit, take a bath, and splash on some cologne. He had also to be affable, to drink and be merry, to talk to strangers with whom he had no inclination to talk and with whom he was not being paid to talk. In other words, he resented having to play the part of a normal human animal.

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

Fraser's mother, Janice, was actually quite a happy soul but she had to hide it because, like all pseudo intellectuals, she thought being cheery made her look stupid, which of course she was for believing that rubbish in the first place. She like to talk about Sartre sometimes, just as insurance.

bookshelves, which were full of what she thought of as "fake" books—the books were real enough but if Celia Baxter had read Thomas Pynchon or Samuel Beckett or even all—any!—of the Philip Roths and Saul Bellows lined in a row, she'd eat her mittens.

You have to fool yourself before you can fool the audience.

Someday, she was convinced, somebody would find out that she was an imposter in the adult world.

Sister Ferguson's method of dealing with misfortunes was to "wash them out". You never got anywhere if you sat down and brooded and felt sorry for yourself. The thing to do was to pretend you didn't care . . . then, after a bit, you found the pretence was true.

Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets.

There was no pretense to objectivity; 'Time' had a partisan Republican point of view, and if it was one not shared by many of its gentrified Ivy Leaguers, few felt the compulsion to quit.

All hat, no cattle...doing whatever it took to keep up the appearance of wealth, when in reality he is no better off than anyone else. - Texas saying

Finish the wine," he suggested softly, "and let me have my way with you. And in the morning we'll both pretend that you don't remember.