Pompously Quotes & Sayings

Oh, did I mention that he's Spanish, as in from Spain, and that he occasionally slips into his native tongue? (Add your own sexual innuendo here. It's just too easy for me. Really.) He's from Madrid but has lived here for more than a decade, long enough to master English, but without flattening his Castilian quirks. Who knew a lispy accent could be so manly? So damn sexy? I hear those "ths" clinging to his tongue and go loco. — Megan McCafferty

The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain. — Thomas Paine

Many of the wonderful achievements of the 20th century were the result of the pursuit of profits. Unfortunately, demagoguery has led to profits becoming a dirty word. Nonprofit is seen as more righteous, particularly when people pompously stand before us and declare, 'We're a nonprofit organization.' — Walter E. Williams

It's people seeking more for themselves that has produced a better life for all Americans. — Walter E. Williams

The air soft as that of Seville in April, and so fragrant that it was delicious to breathe it. — Christopher Columbus

We live in an age of progress," announced Professor Wogglebug, pompously. "It is easier to swallow knowledge than to acquire it laboriously from books. Is it not so, my friends?" "Some — L. Frank Baum

I will conduct myself with all due decorum." Mr. Crepsley said pompously, then added beneath his breath, "but I will miss her. With all my heart and soul, I miss her. — Darren Shan

Sometimes we get so afraid of hitting bad shots (making bad pitches), we don't let ourselves hit (pitch) good ones. — Butch Harmon

I don't believe in luck; that is why I let black cats cross my path before facing any challenge. — Matshona Dhliwayo

In 1950, the [Gallup organization] asked high school kids, are you a very important person? Then 12 percent said yes. Asked again in 2005, 80 percent said, yes, I'm a very important person. — David Brooks

Everything that is ponderous, vicious and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying kinds of style, are developed in great variety among Germans. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value. — Robert A. Heinlein

I don't sort of sit in a chair and pompously feel proud of myself about all the things we might have accomplished. — Vidal Sassoon

WH Auden: "The first criterion of success in any human activity, the necessary preliminary, whether to scientific discovery or artistic vision, is intensity of attention or, less pompously, love. — ESPN Cricinfo

I know nothing that I may say can influence you," he said. "You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. — Jack London

Valdivia's actions symbolize man's indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile. If, in the moment the conquistador was facing death at the hands of tht invincible Araucanian Caupolican, he had not been overwhelmed with fury, like a hunted animal, I do not doubt that judging his life, Valdivia would have felt death was fully justified. He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural, and he had become the omnipotent ruler of a warrior nation. — Ernesto Che Guevara

H.M.," said the Woggle-Bug, pompously, "means Highly Magnified; and T.E. means Thoroughly Educated. I am, in reality, a very big bug, and doubtless the most intelligent being in all this broad domain."
"How well you disguise it," said the Wizard. — L. Frank Baum

The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show. — Charles Caleb Colton

Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions that free it from unwanted beliefs. Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive. — Jonathan Haidt

There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I never prophesy," he declared pompously. "It is true that I have the habit of being always right - but I do not boast of it. — Agatha Christie

People who are afraid of the truth never find it. — Amy Harmon

From her he had learned two fundamental things about love: first, that unlike what the romantics so pompously argued, love was more a gradual course than a sudden blossoming at first sight, and second, that he was capable of loving. — Elif Shafak

Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality - he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days after he would sell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a first-class actor. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72 — Mark Twain

She stretched herself up on tiptoe and peeped over the edge and her eyes immediately met those of a large blue caterpillar, that was sitting on the top, with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else. — Lewis Carroll

One of the greatest challenges facing humanity is that of being able to live with one another in a peaceful and civilized way. We all have our individual uniqueness and perceptions of how we believe the world ought to function. This creates conflict unless there is a deeper realization in the collective consciousness and an understanding that most human desires desecrate the beauty of the nowness of life. — Christopher Dines

Life itself is too great a miracle for us to make so much fuss about potty little reversals of what we pompously assume to be the natural order. — Robertson Davies

Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all. — Augustine Of Hippo

I've been prepping for my role as Medusa. — Joaquin Phoenix

Everything has happened before - not once, but over and over again. We may not be able to solve our problems through what are pompously called "the lessons of history," but at least we should be able to recognize the issues and perhaps avoid some of the solutions that have failed in the past. And we can take heart in our own dilemma by realizing that other people in other times have survived worse. — Elizabeth Peters

Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. — Azar Nafisi

In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. — Azar Nafisi

I should count myself most fortunate ... " Swann was beginning, a trifle pompously, when the Doctor broke in derisively. Having once heard it said, and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis and the use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a solemn word used seriously, as the word 'fortunate' had been used just now by Swann, he at once assumed that the speaker was being deliberately pedantic. And if, moreover, the same word happened to occur, also, in what he called an old 'tag' or 'saw,' however common it might still be in current usage, the Doctor jumped to the conclusion that the whole thing was a joke, and interrupted with the remaining words of the quotation, which he seemed to charge the speaker with having intended to introduce at that point, although in reality it had never entered his mind.
"Most fortunate for France!" he recited wickedly, shooting up both arms with great vigour. — Marcel Proust