Quotes About Pretensions

If they wish to alleviate the sufferings of the exploited classes, let them live up to their pretensions, let them abandon the academy and go out there and work politically and economically and in a humanitarian spirit.

The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.

Love is an artful arrangement of artless pretensions, whereby we labor to appear innocent in what we desire to be most cunning.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

They were referred to as morning calls, that endless round of formal visits that took place daily amongst the members of Society in residence in London. But the truth was that no gentleman or lady with any pretensions to breeding would dream of appearing on the doorstep of any but his or her most intimate of friends before three o'clock.

You might imagine an uncharitable extraterrestrial observer looking down on our species... - with us excitedly chattering, The Universe is created for us! We're at the center! Everything pays homage to us! - and concluding that our pretensions are amusing, our aspirations pathetic, that this must be the planet of the idiots.

As a Christian, I'm passionately opposed to American pretensions that we have special standing with God; to political office-seekers who play on our religious differences; and to the religious arrogance that says, 'Our truth is the only truth.'

Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions, and this not by mere decrees but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws; and this court is none other than the critique of pure reason itself.

My personal peculiarities could not offend her since she was totally uninterested in my pretensions to be a person.

By nature, parties must also have a position on just about everything, while movements need not because they have no pretensions to governing.

The lower classes are viewed as uncouth parasites, annoyances to be endured, sometimes placated, and always controlled in the quest to amass more power and money. My hatred of authority, along with my loathing for the pretensions, heartlessness, and sense of entitlement of the rich, comes from living among the privileged.

The Roman character had a strong streak of snobbery: effectively, citizens preferred to vote for families with strong brand recognition, electing son after father after grandfather to the great magistracies of state, indulging the nobility's dynastic pretensions with a numbing regularity.

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

What divides men is less a difference in ideas than a likeness in pretensions.

She was indeed tired , as she'd claimed , but it wasn't the cooking that exhausted her. It was the effort of suppressing her contempt for he damn fools who were gathered in the lounge below. She'd called them friends once , these half-wits , with their poor jokes and poorer pretensions.

She was indeed tired , as she'd claimed , but it wasn't the cooking that exhausted her. It was the effort of suppressing her contempt for the damn fools who were gathered in the lounge below. She'd called them friends once , these half-wits , with their poor jokes and poorer pretensions.

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.

Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction or notoriety, even vice and infamy.

Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry could be one or the other, but it cannot--despite the pretensions and protestations of psichiatrists--be both.

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased. — Darcy

I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I are very good friends, and nothing more;' and she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into; and not very well pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and in want of counsel.

By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.