Pretends Quotes & Sayings

They touch life with gloves on. They're pretending about something all the time. Pretending quite nice and decent things, of course. But still ... '
'Everybody pretends,' Marya was thinking. 'French people pretend every bit as much, only about different things and not so obviously. She'll know that when she's been here as long as I have. — Jean Rhys

Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween. — Erma Bombeck

The unbeliever imagines that religion pretends to offer answers, while the believer knows that the only promise it makes is to multiply questions. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

The greatest genius will not be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them. — H.L. Mencken

All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely. — H.L. Mencken

Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed). This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct. A ridiculous pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him. In the process, the patient is wilfully blinded to the conduct that inevitably causes his misery in the first place. — Theodore Dalrymple

Because I swear to you, sometimes the nastiest shit happens behind the prettiest doors, while everyone laughs and smiles and pretends everything's okay. — Joanna Wylde

How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?"
"You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think. — Paul Hoffman

A cat, after being scolded, goes about its business. A dog slinks off into a corner and pretends to be doing a serious self-reappraisal. — Robert Breault

Kids want to know when Uncle Hold is coming back," James said with a shrug in his voice.

"Wow, and they're not even zombies yet?"

"No, but they're young, they have no taste."

"Maybe you're the one with no taste."

"Jimmy," he said, referring to his son, "eats crayons. Suzy," his daughter, "drinks air and pretends it's tea."

"Maybe you should feed them once in a while. — Anna Sullivan

Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. — Albert Camus

The way everyone pretends to be on the same wavelength without questioning or talking about things - it doesn't get anyone anywhere. — Haruki Murakami

Cat fish? "
" A cat fish is a person who pretends to be someone thay're not online, especially in romantic relationships." Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. She needed that now. She needed to spout facts and figures and definitions and not feel a damn thing. "Someone took your pictures and created an online profile for you and put it on a singles site. Two women who fell for the catfish-you are missing. — Harlan Coben

Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created. — Ludwig Von Mises

TCA pretends to be about raising money for charity. That's true, but only so far. If I had not taken time off from the Penn & Teller show to do The Celebrity Apprentice - if Teller and I had just done our show, gotten usual pay - I could have donated four times the amount of money that Trump had pledged to give my charity if I won the whole damn shooting match. Opportunity Village, "my" charity that helps intellectually disabled adults to enter society, got a lot of attention because I was on The Celebrity Apprentice, and that does count for something. And when I was "fired," my real bosses at Caesars, who own the Rio and the Penn & Teller Theater, said, "Oh, you wanted a quarter million for Opportunity Village? We don't have to do some jive TV show; we'll just write a check." They wrote the full winning amount to Opportunity Village and everyone was happy. — Penn Jillette

Every girl pretends she is a princess at one point, no matter how little her life is like that. — Alex Flinn

No one knows your success or failure best than your enemy who pretends to be your greatest friend. — Auliq Ice

Man is mortal. This is his fate. Man pretends not to be mortal. That is his sin. Man is a creature of time and place, whose perspectives and insights are invariably conditioned by his immediate circumstances. — Sylvan Barnet

Every sport pretends to a literature, but people don't believe it of any other sport but their own. — Alistair Cooke

The corrupt man is the one who sins but does not repent, who sins and pretends to be Christian, and it is this double life that is scandalous. The corrupt man does not know humility, he does not consider himself in need of help, he leads a double life. — Pope Francis

The best thing about Las Vegas is that no one pretends to be responsible for your behavior like they do in the rest of the country. There's no meddling self-righteous liberals or right-wing Christian demagogues telling you that you can't do something fun with your own time and money. If you can afford it, it's yours. — Drew Carey

He picks up one of the tests and pretends like he's Harry Potter, aiming the test at random objects around the small bathroom yelling, I curse you with my magic wand, punk toilet paper! — Tara Sivec

Stripped of its arrogance, its desire to make off with half of the patrimony and never be seen again, history belongs at the family table. If theology, the older brother, pretends not to need or notice him it will be a sign that he has forgotten, after all, who his father is. — N. T. Wright

In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political
especially that which pretends not to be. — Edward Abbey

Virgil is so exact in every word, that none can be changed but for a worse; nor any one removed from its place, but the harmony will be altered. He pretends sometimes to trip; but it is only to make you think him in danger of a fall, when he is most secure. — John Dryden

The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. — Eckhart Tolle

The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself. — H.L. Mencken

Literature is impossible, in exactly this sense: every new generation has so much 'catching up' to do that the real choice that presents itself soon is the following one: one either spends ones entire life just reading all the classics, or one pretends to be 'contemporary and hip' and never reads any of the classics because in order to pretend to be contemporary one has to at least superficially read the works of contemporaries. Hence the dilemma: one either does not care about being fashionable, or one is fashionable and just learns to mimic some knowledge about the classics. As time develops this rift just becomes bigger, because the amount of books written grows and grows to insane proportions. Conclusion: one can only be hip in the future if one does not read at all, which is a phenomenon I am already witnessing in the media. — Martijn Benders

The people we care about are always worth more to us than the people we don't. No matter what anyone pretends. — Michelle Hodkin

If what I feel for you is dislike -- for coming between me and my work sometime every day in the last fifteen months --if that's dislike...If being unable to forget your voice, or the way you turn your neck, or the lights in your hair -- if that's dislike...If wanting to hear that you're married and dreading to hear that you're married...If resenting the condescension that pretends you're not out of my reach...Perhaps you can identify these symptoms for me. — Winston Graham

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much: Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy: Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late, Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty ... It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos. — Umberto Eco

Psychobabble is ... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It's an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems. — Richard Rosen

A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond. — Paul Klee

He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)
French philosopher and writer. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Everything is nothing that pretends to be. — Jonathan Simard

In the worst of circumstances, the hypocrite who pretends to be good does less harm than the public sinner. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose — Eckhart Tolle

Not necessarily reputation, rank, societal position or status,but the happiness and enjoyment that a person pretends or fakes to derive with his possessed money or wealth or both make largely others jealous and envious of him. — Anuj

Anyone who pretends to "understand" Latin America is a fool. — Michael Hogan

Bina and Landsman were twisted together, a braided pair of chromosomes with a mystery flaw. And now? Now each of them pretends not to see the other and looks away.
Landsman looks away. — Michael Chabon

You really want my honest opinion?" I ask.
Anton gestures for me to go on. "Please, this is why I hired you, devochka."
I detect a little hint of sarcasm, but I go ahead and say, "I hate restaurants like this."
"Why?" He seems genuinely curious to know why.
"Because - because they're expensive."
"What is the problem? I'm paying for everything."
I shake my head. "It's not that - you see," I lower my voice, " this is where famous people eat."
"Famous?" Anton pretends to look around. "Where?"
"I think that's the guy from that prank show. And there's that guy from those vampire movies. And Maya Findlay."
"Yeah? I don't know who they are."
"Really?" I ask dubiously.
"I'm not into the famous people thing too."
"Really."
"Yes."
"Which is why you only date models who want to become actresses." I notice him giving me a look. "Sorry," I say sheepishly. — Maria Malonzo

Here's what we [Americans] need: a 30 second you tube video of some guy at a party constantly checking out everyone else at the party, while he pretends to be speaking to the other person. We're the other person. The guy are the politicians. And the distraction is the corruption: We need a Congress that can afford to talk to us. For at least one drink or so. — Lawrence Lessig

A city that pretends to be nothing but what it is, an enormous machine of exchange - of spectacle for money, of sensation for money, of money for more money, of pleasure for whatever be tomorrow's abstract cost. — David Foster Wallace

A sampler of England's hottest 'chefs' would include a mostly hairless young blond lad named Jamie Oliver, who is referred to as the Naked Chef. As best as I can comprehend, he's a really rich guy who pretends he scoots around on a Vespa, hangs out in some East End cold-water flat, and cooks green curry for his 'mates'. He's a TV chef, so few actually eat his food. I've never seen him naked. I believe the 'Naked' refers to his 'simple, straightforward, unadorned' food; though I gather that a great number of matronly housewives would like to believe otherwise. Every time I watch his show, I want to go back in time and bully him at school. — Anthony Bourdain

The poet is a pretender. / He pretends so completely, / that he even pretends that it is pain / the pain he really feels. — Fernando Pessoa

Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil
the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be. — William George Jordan

No one pretends that Shakespeare was (divinely) inspired, and yet all the writers of the books of the Old Testament put together, could not have produced Hamlet. — Robert G. Ingersoll

The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign - for all these titles are synonymous - imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once ... [and so] property engenders despotism ... That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse ... if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings - kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Memory is a sly devil that pretends to wear the cloak of truth, but deceives us both in our youth and our age. — Harley King

I wanted to get away from having a minister who pretends to be a certain type of role model. I don't want my life to serve as an example for anyone. — Kristina Schroder

I never liked the news; it pretends to be all different, every day, when in fact it is all the same. — Adam Roberts

Let us alone, little woman. We understand each other, don't we, doctor? Why, bless your life, he gives me better than he gets many a time; only, you see, he sugars it over, and says a sharp thing, and pretends it's all civility and humility; but I can tell when he's giving me a pill. — Elizabeth Gaskell

Whenever someone 'pretends' as perfect, never made a mistake, error, sin in his life, I know that he has never been in the field... — Assegid Habtewold

I cannot help being astonished at the furious and ungoverned execration which all reference to the possibility of a fusion of the races draws down upon those who suggest it, because nobody pretends to deny that, throughout the South, a large proportion of the population is the offspring of white men and colored women. — Fanny Kemble

Everyone pretends to be normal and be your best friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other's tapes and find out what each of us was really like. — James Franco

The Wizard of Oz was a humbug. He's not great and powerful. He just pretends to be great and powerful. The Wicked Witch of the West is greater and powerfuller. She's got flying monkeys. She's like a mad scientist. She even has a secret weakness. Water is like Kryptonite to her. — Kelly Link

Lies, fictions and untrue suppositions can create new human truths which build technology, art, language, everything that is distinctly of Man. The word "stone" for instance is not a stone, it is an oral pattern of vocal, dental and labial sounds or a scriptive arrangement of ink on a white surface, but man pretends that it is actually the thing it refers to. Every time he wishes to tell another man about a stone he can use the word instead of the thing itself. The word bodies forth the object in the mind of the listener and both speaker and listener are able to imagine a stone without seeing one. All the qualities of stone can be metaphorically and metonymically expressed. "I was stoned, stony broke, stone blind, stone cold sober, stonily silent," oh, whatever occurs. More than that, a man can look at a stone and call it a weapon, a paperweight, a doorstep, a jewel, an idol. He can give it function, he can possess it. — Stephen Fry

Autumn truly is what summer pretends to be: the best of all seasons. It is as glorious as summer is tedious; as subtle as summer is obvious; as refreshing as summer is wearying. Autumn seems like paradise. — Gregg Easterbrook

What is inadmissible, both morally and scientifically, is the hubris that pretends to understand the behavior of human agents without for a moment listening systematically to how they understand what they are doing and how they explain themselves. — James C. Scott

What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibi lity of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes ... — Joy Williams

The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward. — William Makepeace Thackeray

The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoning women; through torture and imprisonment; by threats of violence against the victim's friends and family; by force-feeding his own people a philosophy not only false and wicked now but false and wicked the day it was first announced by some imaginary lord and used to purchase or preserve his privileges and hoodwink the world. — William H Gass

You cannot explain the whole world in one photograph. Photography pretends. You can see everything that's in front of the camera, but there's always something beside it. — Thomas Ruff

First of all, I think that sex, like love, is a sacred thing..if I were going to live beyond puberty, it would be really important to me to keep sex as a sort of marvelous sacrament. And secondly, a teenager who pretends to be an adult is still a teenager. If you imagine that getting high at a party and sleeping around is going to propel you into a state of full adulthood, that's like thinking that dressing up as an Indian is going to make you an Indian. And thirdly, it's a really weird way of looking at life to want to become an adult by imitating everything that is most catastrophic about adulthood. — Muriel Barbery

When one becomes a liberal, he or she pretends to advocate tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, they're doing so for purely selfish reasons. It's the human equivalent of a puppy dog's face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. In short, liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler, than saying something like, 'please lower my taxes.' — Greg Gutfeld

A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals. — Henry James

Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn't quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them? — Orson Scott Card

Any writer who pretends to a disaffection for recognition, I think they're being duplicitous. — Harlan Ellison

The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

A diva is someone who pretends to know who she is and looks fabulous doing it. — Jenifer Lewis

I can't wait to see the debate between Ryan and Joe Biden. Biden is said to be already trying out different strategies. So far the one that Obama likes is where Biden pretends to have food poisoning and they cancel the debate. — Craig Ferguson

When you recognise that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. — Eckhart Tolle

Dresses well. Pretends that dress is superficial - but knows that it isn't. 3. — F Scott Fitzgerald

There is something strikingly different about the quality of photographs of that time. It has nothing to do with age or colour, or the feel of paper ... In modern family photographs the camera pretends to circulate like a friend, clicking its shutters at those moments when its subjects have disarranged themselves to present to it those postures which they would like to think of as informal. But in pictures of that time, the camera is still a public and alien eye, faced with which people feel bound either to challenge the intrusion by striking postures of defiant hilarity, or else to compose their faces, and straighten their shoulders, not always formally, but usually with just that hint of stiffness which suggests a public face. — Amitav Ghosh

The disease of philosophy. - Philosophy is itself the disease for which it pretends to be the cure: the wise man does not pursue wisdom but lives his life, and therein precisely does his wisdom lie. — Bruce Lee

There's nothing worse than a smartass who pretends not to understand hyperbole. — Steven Brust

I loved love til' it resented me, and if it's still a stranger then I love who it pretends to be. — Joe Budden

If the show of any thing be good for any thing, I am sure sincerity is better; for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? — John Tillotson

An ad that pretends to be art is
at absolute best
like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair. — David Foster Wallace

Those soapbubbles that kid
Amuses himself with by blowing them from a straw
Are transparently a whole philosophy.

Clear, useless and fleeting like Nature,
Friends to the eyes like things,
They are what they are
With a little round airy precision,
And nobody, not even the kid who's making them,
Pretends they're more than they appear to be.

Some are hard to see in the clear air.
They're like a breeze that blows and barely touches the flowers
And we only know it's blowing
Because something lightens in us
And accepts everything more clearly. — Alberto Caeiro

Yet most women I know - no matter how clever, no matter how strong - are dragged down by husbands or fathers or titles or too many petticoats, or priests clutching at their hems, telling them, 'No, you cannot do that, you cannot be that.' I never listened. That's rare. Even a woman like the Comtesse pretends to pay attention to the sermons and the instructions, but then does whatever she wishes. I — Kelly Gardiner

Indian cricket, and the youngsters themselves, are dealing with issues inconceivable a few summers ago. Riches and all the attendant temptations are thrown at them before they have started shaving regularly. It's not their fault. It's no one's fault. That is the marketplace. Inevitably, though, it can distract attention from the long struggle towards mastery. Cricket does not give itself away; it expects players to apply themselves, to think and study and seek. It plays tricks, too, pretends that sixes and slower balls and the other shortcuts matter. Cricket sets traps, flatters players and calls them kings when they are barely princes. — Peter Roebuck

Now, the scene you just saw," I began, pointing to the stage.
"Was about you and T.C.," he concluded, nodding like he already knew.
"What??"
"She pretends she doesn't like him and he pretends he doesn't care."
I had no handy rebuttal to that particular allegation and wouldn't have been able to come up with one if I'd been given a week's notice. So I countered with the only safe reply I could think of.
"The toilet is not working properly. — Steve Kluger

One man pretends to be rich, yet has nothing; another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth. — Solomon

The drive of his own nature to keep developing prevents him from believing that anything is final and complete, yet everything he encounters behaves as though it were final and complete. He suspects that the given order of things is not as solid as it pretends to be; no thing, no self, no form, no principle, is safe, everything is undergoing an invisible but ceaseless transformation, the unsettled holds more of the future than the settled, and the present is nothing but a hypothesis that has not yet been surmounted. What better can he do than hold himself apart from the world, in the good sense exemplified by the scientist's guarded attitude toward facts that might be tempting him to premature conclusions? Hence he hesitates in trying to make something of himself; a character, a profession, a fixed mode of being, are for him concepts that already shadow forth the outlines of the skeleton, which is all that will be left of him in the end. — Robert Musil

Prose pretends to be straightforward in its application to the truth, but truth itself is a dissembler. Poetry, much more honest, knows the deception can't be overcome. — Laurence Overmire

Max: "Okay guys, I had a couple thoughts I wanted to go over with you."
Iggy: (pretends to snore loudy)
Max: (throws another pinecone at him)
Iggy: "Quit throwing things at me!"
Max: "Glad you could join us. — James Patterson

The vast difference between astrology and other sciences, if I may put it thus, is that astrology deals not with facts but with profundities. The solid ground on which the scientist pretends to rest gives way, in astrology, to imponderables. — Henry Miller

It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself. — G.K. Chesterton

Someone has farted; no one knows just who, but this isn't like a normal adult place where everybody coolly pretends a fart didn't happen; here everybody has to make their little comment. — David Foster Wallace

She pretends to be an actress, even though she hasn't even done enough acting to be a wannabe. But she's a real Academy Award winning manipulator. — Kenneth Eade

But say he forgets about me or meets someone else or pretends I don't exist.
I look at her and then at Trini and Raffy.
"Teresa, Teresa. Have we taught you nothing?" Raffy says in an irritated voice. "It's war. You go in and you hunt him down until he realises that he's made a mistake"
Teresa looks hopeful.
"It's not as if men haven't gone to war for dumber reasons" Trini adds. — Melina Marchetta

The wisdom of God exceeds that of the wisest man, more than his wisdom exceeds that of a child. If a child were to conjecture how an army is to be formed in the day of battle
how a city is to be fortified, or a state governed
what chance has he to guess right? As little chance has the wisest man when he pretends to conjecture how the planets move in their courses, how the sea ebbs and flows, and how our minds act upon our bodies. — Thomas Reid

I notice, however, that Peter only pretends to inject himself - when he presses the plunger down, the fluid runs down his throat, and he wipes it casually with a sleeve.
I wonder what it feels like to volunteer to forget everything. — Veronica Roth

Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's the whole fun of it - just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, — Alan W. Watts

The only thing worse than a coach or CEO who doesn't care about his people is one who pretends to care. People can spot a phony every time. — Jimmy Johnson

Even Russia nowadays pretends to be a democracy. Victory — Yuval Noah Harari

My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named. — Stephen Spender