#pretense

Men wholly bent on wordly treasures were the dupes of their own passions, rather than deceived by the writings or pretenses of those who claimed to be Alchemists. ↗

— Ethan A. Hitchcock

#bent #claimed #deceived #dupes #men

It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes. ↗

— Arianna Huffington

#attitudes #between #characteristics #differences #disastrous

It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end. ↗

— Washington Irving

#come #empty #end #hollow #keeping

I ask every Communist individually to set an example, by deeds and without pretense, a real example worthy of a man and a Communist, in restoring order, starting normal life, in resuming work and production, and in laying the foundations of an ordered life. ↗

— Janos Kadar

#communist #deeds #every #example #foundations

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#confidence #especially #feel #i #influenced

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#beauty #pretense #art

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#been #close #even #expand #fair

If there is no hell, a good many preachers are obtaining money under false pretenses. ↗

— Billy Sunday

#good #hell #many #money #obtaining

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend! ↗

— Edith Wharton

#family #friends #insincerity #kindness #loneliness

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#cakes #humor #modesty #pretense #tea-parties