Quotes About Pretence

You may charge me with murder - Or want of sense (We are all of us weak at times): But the slightest approach to a false pretence Was never among my crimes!

And emerging from these houses and going in, and seeing the pretence of paint and stucco year after year until it all peeled away, the souls of the poor owners of those houses sought to be other souls until they grew weary of it.

Pretence? Reality? To hell with it all! Never in my life has such a thing happened to me. I've lost a whole day over these people, a whole day!

When an Englishman wants something, George Bernard Shaw observed, he never publicly admits to his wanting it; instead, his want is expressed as 'a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants'. Durant is scathing about this pretence: 'Hypocrisy was added to brutality, while the robbery went on.' And

W]hen we kill people,' a British sea-captain says in the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, 'we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history.' I cannot presume to write on behalf of history, but as an Indian, I find it far easier to forgive than to forget.

the silent tutting infuriated him as symptomatic of a generation. The assumed air of gravity and the fraudulent pretence of judgement in situations that required only answer or action struck him as the manner in which old men concealed their hollowness.

how vain, I say, it is to expect demonstration and certainty in things not capable of it; and refuse assent to very rational propositions, and act contrary to very plain and clear truths, because they cannot be made out so evident as to surmount every the least (I will not say reason, but) pretence of doubting.

The word 'eavesdropper' originally referred to people who, under the pretence of taking in some fresh air, would stand under the 'eavesdrip' of their house - from which the collected raindrops would fall - in the hopes of catching any juicy tid-bits of information that might come their way from their neighbour's property.

The abuse of power in the film and television industry is a tale as old as time. I've lost count of the amount of times I have attended professional meetings with someone in a more powerful position than myself under the pretence of work.

He knows the only way to fake emotion's to fake (but not too well) lack of emotion but not to get too tied up in its absence (or, if you like, the pretence of its absence).

Mr False Pretence, you don't make sense I just don't know you But you make me cry, where's my kiss goodbye I think I love you

All men naturally hate one another. They employ lust as far as possible in the service of the public weal. But this is only a pretence and a false image of love; for at bottom it is only hate.

For half an hour I kept up the pretence, but I knew perfectly well that he knew what was going on in me, or he would not have kept off the subject of the greatest importance to us both; the evening of the day before.

She is perhaps wiser than we think,' Prazek observed after making a scene of swallowing. 'This sausage mocks the pretence. But,' he added, spearing another piece, 'I am assured that it lodges in the pit of the belly, and remains silent, if not unobtrusive, until the moment of its rebirth into the world.

My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people—and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.

The rise of Donald Trump established a new ground zero for liberal media, requiring no pretence of balance - better yet, with a kind of political brain haemorrhage, everybody seemed to have lost the ability to be balanced.

The Relation we bear to the Wisdom of the Father, the Son of His Love, gives us indeed a dignity which otherwise we have no pretence to. It makes us something, something considerable even in God's Eyes.

In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature.

Am I in earnest? Oh dear no! Don't you know that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and pretence; and that you are not to believe one word of it, even if it is true?

I should be an affected women, if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son's inspiring such emotions; but I can't be indifferent to anyone who is so sensible on his merits

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

I list not trust the air With utterance of our pretence therein, For fear the privy whisp'ring of the wind Convey our words amongst unfriendly ears, That lie too open to advantages.

War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure.