Pretenses Quotes & Sayings

By 1911 I found it impossible to continue my pretenses to orthodoxy; — Will Durant

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. — Eric Hoffer

People liked to imagine their feelings were obvious, that their emotions were written all over their face. But generally, no one looked carefully enough to notice anything, or knew you well enough to understand what they noticed. — Rose Lerner

< ... > the persons who get to the consulting rooms of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts are not a cross-section of the population. By and large they are the ones for whom the conventional pretenses and defenses of the society no longer work. Very often they are the more sensitive and gifted members of the society; they need to get help, broadly speaking, because they are less successful at rationalizing than the "well-adjusted" citizen who is able for the time being to cover up his underlying conflicts. — Rollo May

Music, unleashed, can uplift and create and destroy, stripping away pretenses and leaving raw, exposed vulnerability behind. — C.E. Murphy

The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses. — H.L. Mencken

People say things die in winter, but it isn't true, mostly. They just gather their strength. — Rose Lerner

sold to the public on false pretenses, high officials confessing to ordering torture in violation of treaty and domestic law, and an economic meltdown even former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledges involved massive fraud - and no one has been prosecuted, no one has gone to prison, and Americans continue to dutifully cast their votes for the Democratic/Republican duopoly responsible for these disasters. — Barry Eisler

Any company? Or was Olga here?" "No." I shrugged. "That requires no practice." I leaned to her a little. "Look, Mrs. Jaffee, I might as well admit it. I'm here under false pretenses. I said we wanted information, Mr. Wolfe and I, and we do, but we also want help. Of course you know of the provisions of Priscilla's father's will? Now that she is dead, you know that five people - Helmar, Brucker, Quest, Pitkin, and Miss Duday - you know that they will own most of the Softdown stock?" "Yes, certainly." She was frowning, concentrating at me. — Rex Stout

There are two groups of people who have a history of trying to join Christian support group and move into leadership under false pretenses. The first of these are white supremacists, many of whom are involved in neo-Nazi or survivalist groups ... The second group seeking admittance in increasing numbers to local support groups are homosexual and lesbian parents. God's Word clearly condemns these sexual perversions. Again, to keep these people out, you need a clear statement in the founding documents — Gregg Harris

You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That'€s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world. — Octave Mirbeau

I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses. — Janet Frame

The easiest and cheapest trick for any leader is to take his country to war on false pretenses. — John Le Carre

The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent. — John Tillotson

BDSM is about dropping the pretenses; I want you completely exposed. — Sierra Cartwright

I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people. — Henry Miller

My mind swirled with memories of the life I had led. The constant struggle to keep up appearances, the pretenses, the smiles that had been met with tears. The long sleepless nights, the loneliness that cloaked my spirit and turned me into a true ghost. — Anchee Min

In careless ignorance they think it civilization, when in reality it is a portion of their slavery ... To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false pretenses, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. — Tacitus

They weren't ashamed of their bodily functions and they didn't lie to themselves or others. They had no patience for small talk or false pretenses. They would laugh when they wanted to like there was no tomorrow, and cry their eyes out when they felt like it. Basically, I had finally found my people. HOW I LOST MY VIRGINITY I always fantasized about losing my virginity the way I think most girls envision their weddings: being surrounded by my friends and family, with a clergyman present. — Amy Schumer

She stares in my eyes and loves me with a vehemence all her own. A scary, passionate type of love. One that rips away all pretenses and allows us to love each other bare and without consequence. — Alessandra Torre

Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another: they express ideas and emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; they make fun of honored figures and piously held beliefs; and they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking - as in Andersen's famous tale - that the emperor has no clothes. — Alison Lurie

Your problem, dear chap, as I have had occassion to remind you, is that you see but you do not observe; you hear but you do not listen. For a literary man, Watson - and note that I do not comment on the merit of your latest account of my little problems - for a man with the pretenses of being a writer, you are singularly unobservant. Honestly, sometimes I am close to despair. — Edward B. Hanna

Despite all of our pretenses and fantasies, we always have been and will remain a biological species tied to this particular biological world. Millions of years of evolution are indelibly encoded in our genes. History without the wildlands is no history at all. — Edward O. Wilson

As you recover, you will find yourself letting go of many of your negative beliefs. You will discover that many of the so-called truths you were raised with and forced to believe are not truths at all. With this perspective, you will come to see, for example, that the names you were called as a child are simply not true. You are not 'stupid,' 'lazy,' 'ugly,' or a 'liar'. You can discover just who you really are. You can let go of your pretenses and masks and discover who the real person is underneath. — Beverly Engel

When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn't bother with the pretenses. They're just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code - the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel. — Jim Butcher

I mean honestly, who just sits around in a house with a bunch of short guys waiting for their prince to come? So your mom is a bitch and wants to kill you because her mirror told her to? Cry me a river why don't you? Your big plan is sitting around cleaning house waiting for the other shoe to drop? And speaking of shoes, everyone has been picked on by mean girls. You do not wait for some old lady to pop in and transmogrify some innocent rodents just so you can sneak in to a dance under false pretenses. And let's say you do sneak in. For the love of all that is holy take your mask off and look the guy in the face and say. "Hi, I'm Cindy from down the street, I have this thing at midnight. Can we do coffee later?" This nonsense with a shoe and searching the entire village for one girl, it's crap. — John Goode

We had given in to our vulnerability and cast down any pretenses that we were too strong to be weak. — Kellie Thacker

Man was entering under false pretenses the sphere of incredible facilities, acquired too cheaply, below cost price, almost for nothing, and the disproportion between outlay and gain, the obvious fraud on nature, the excessive payment for a trick of genius, had to be offset by self-parody. — Bruno Schulz

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

She hated seeing monsters smile. Monsters should growl and snarl and be done with the pretenses. — Faith McKay

We would be attending the conference under false pretenses and dealing, from the start, with a crowd that was convened for the stated purpose of putting people like us in jail. We were the Menace - not in disguise, but stone-obvious drug abusers, with a flagrantly cranked-up act that we intended to push all the way to the limit ... not to prove any final, sociological point, and not event as a conscious mockery: It was mainly a matter of life-style, a sense of obligation and even duty. If the Pigs were gathering in Vegas for a top-level Drug Conference, we felt the drug culture should be represented. — Hunter S. Thompson

Afternoon tea needn't stand on ceremony. Anything that becomes more important than sweet fellowship, whether lace or linen or the china itself, is pretense. How much more we enjoy life when the pretenses are discarded! — Paul F. Kortepeter

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

Booze makes you stupid and like it. It makes you fall around and not care. And eventually, stupid is the only way you know how to be. Cocaine makes you feel important, that life matters, that you matter. That the music is better than it really is. That every conversation
is profound and that all pretenses have been stripped away. Ecstasy makes you dance all night and love your friends so much, in a way that you've never been able to tell them about before. Acid makes you see pretty colours and makes things breathe. But Sadness, there is nothing like Sadness. — Pleasefindthis

I don't do interviews under false pretenses. — Tom Stoppard

Drek. He was definitely in love with her now. — Rose Lerner

Music is the one thing in which there is no use trying to deceive others or make false pretenses. — Confucius

Regardless of all our pretenses, deep within, we are still unconsciously the same old cave-people. — Abhijit Naskar

The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake. — H.L. Mencken

One cannot understand an economy without researching the activities of all its participants, and the process through which they are born, taught, and defended by their families. To try to do so is, quite simply, stupid. That Nobel laureates and entire economic departments pretend to, and that policies in great countries is sometimes made on such pretenses makes it no less stupid. Once that reality is faced, the choice is simple. One may do stupid work on men and individuals only, or do the job right and study women, households, and classes too. — Hill Gates

Sometimes a god comes," Selver said. "He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another. — Ursula K. Le Guin

They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger ... they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor ... They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace. — Tacitus

People defend nothing more violently than the pretenses they live by. — Allen Drury

I am apparently gentle, unstable, and full of pretenses. I will die a poet killed by the nonpoets, will renounce no dream, resign myself to no ugliness, accept nothing of the world but the one I made myself. I wrote, lived, loved like Don Quixote, and on the day of my death I will say: 'Excuse me, it was all a dream,' and by that time I may have found one who will say: 'Not at all, it was true, absolutely true. — Anais Nin

Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies. — Jim Morrison

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions - by abandoning every value except the will to power - they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. — George W. Bush

I realized my room was just next to hers.
It was a mirror image of her room, but completely different in all of the ways that couldn't be seen. This shower hadn't washed away our pretenses last night; we hadn't slept together, curled around each other in this bed. These walls hadn't been filled with the sounds of her coming apart beneath me. This desk wasn't broken from a late-morning quickie. — Christina Lauren

Last night I swallowed froth
and its vulnerabilities within a populous coast.
I swallowed it like I was brought
forth from a deep agony.
And you were the host.
They say the sleep returns us to the senses,
I slept all the while fiddling with the pretenses
that I don't see you; that I won't see you.
I must have been a fool over the utterance of "who"
Last night I took a bow,
I must have been in love. — Ashfaq Saraf

Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses ... Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand. — Colin Powell

We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute. — Thomas Paine

Is it not the artist who - like our dreams - dissolves the pretenses that hide us from ourselves, disclosing both our self-serving fantasies and our unsuspected potentialities? — Dorothy Norman

We assume that others are receiving the kind of appreciation we want for ourselves, and we proceed on the assumption that since we are not loveable as we are, we must become lovable under false pretenses, as if we were something better than we are. — Thomas Merton

Say what you want to say about the rest of his presidency, including his tone-deaf response to Katrina and a war waged in Iraq on false pretenses, Bush connected with Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 because he looked as frail and unforgiving as we felt. — Ron Fournier

It's for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear. We give out the reasons, and we let a few of the ordinary ones in, those that would do in the world; but that's just protective coloration. Like the church in the Middle Ages, which didn't give a damn about the laity or even about God, we have our pretenses in order to survive. And we shall survive - because we have to. — John Edward Williams

The human heart is like a big mess of embroidery silks, and the more you pull, the more they tangle. The thing is, the threads have only got one end, if that. You can't sort them all out into colors. You just pick the ones you want and hold one to them as best you can. — Rose Lerner

Secrets are my profession. I know them inside and out. What separates me from someone I'm lying to isn't the lie. It's that I know I'm lying. It's a pane of glass---they can't see it, but I don't forget it's there. — Rose Lerner

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax relief for the wealthy. — Joseph Stiglitz

The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.
Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me? — Joe Haldeman

But is it really you
behind the pretenses
beyond dust and distances
beneath the salt and the siren
announcements and ancient
impurities and decays
that claim to be you — W.S. Merwin

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both. — William Hazlitt

She eyed him steadily, wondering at his sudden ... humanity. Maybe dying did away with the usual games, the pretenses of the living dance. — Steven Erikson

There are pretenses which are very sincere, and marriage is their school. — Miguel De Unamuno

I don't have any interest in helping you keep your job," I say, shifting my weight onto my heels, suddenly tired and
resigned. "But I promise to do what I can to keep you from being fired over false pretenses. If you get thrown out of here,
it'll be your fault, not mine, and not Mr. Dade's."
"You say that now - "
" - and I'll say it tomorrow." I turn and pull open the door. "Good night, Asha. Go home and get some sleep."
"I'm not tired."
"Then go to the park and pull the wings off butterflies," I say with a sardonic smile. "That seems like the kind of
thing you would enjoy."
She smiles back, shakes her head. "Butterflies are too weak."
"Then shoot a coyote, whatever," I suggest. "But your work day's over. We all need our rest and if I'm going to be a
dictator, I'm going to try to be a benevolent one. — Kyra Davis

He was standing so close to her that he detected the faint fragrance of lemons in her hair. He sensed rather than felt the stiffness of her body. Was she remembering the blistering heat of their lovemaking? He had suffered for hours afterward, his loins aching viciously, his hands itching for the feel of her soft, silken flesh. It had not been easy to leave her that night. Yet he hadn't been able to take her innocence under false pretenses.
Someday he would be back in her arms, with no deception between them. And the next time, no power in Heaven or hell would be enough to stop him. — Lisa Kleypas

In America, after 9/11, and after the death of bin Laden, and after two wars, one of them fought, a lot of people think, on false pretenses, and definitely post the Patriot Act, there are a lot of these questions about what can we do to our citizens in order to prevent the next attack. — Gideon Raff

War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization. — Omar N. Bradley

The actions of yesterday, the pretenses of tomorrow, and the presence of now, have forever added to history. — Brandy Nacole

Perhaps extreme danger strips us of all pretenses, all ambitions, all confusions, focusing us more intensely than we are otherwise ever focused, so that we remember what we otherwise spend most of our lives forgetting: that our nature and purpose is, more than anything else, to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any of us as are the present and the past. — Dean Koontz

If the authorities under various false pretenses, continue curtailing the rights of citizens, so that they merely become serfs to a handful of multinational companies, a global rebellion of ordinary people against super capitalism is certainly not inconceivable. — A.J. Beirens

We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love. — Audre Lorde

When you write a book there are no more pretenses or facades to hide behind. It is very liberating to proclaim "this is who I am. — Jonathan Heatt

All government, whatever its forms or pretenses, is a dead weight that paralyzes the free spirit and activities of the masses. — Emma Goldman

This world is filled with loud pretenses, sound republics, blind kingdoms, all bare and out of sorts. — Dew Platt

But on a Sunday morning when I want to grab an omelet over girl talk, I'm at a loss. My Chicago friends are the let's-get-dinner-on-the-books-a-month-in-advance type. We email, trading dates until we find an open calendar slot amidst our tight schedules of workout classes, volunteer obligations (no false pretenses here, the volunteers are my friends, not me, sadly), work events, concert tickets and other dinners scheduled with other girls. I'm looking for someone to invite to watch The Biggest Loser with me at the last minute or to text "pedicure in half an hour?" on a Saturday morning. To me, that's what BFFs are. — Rachel Bertsche

Am discovering her pretenses. She is always smiling, gay, but underneath she feels unreal, remote, detached from experience. She acts as if she were asleep. She is trying to awaken by falling into bed with anyone who invites her. — Anais Nin

High finance isn't burglary or obtaining money by false pretenses, but rather a judicious selection from the best features of those fine arts. — Finley Peter Dunne

Home is the place where you are most thoroughly yourself, with no pretenses. — Victoria Moran

Why me, Trav?"
I had a thing for you since the night of that first fight."
What?"
"It's true. You in that cardigan with blood all over you? You looked absolutely ridiculous,
"Thanks."
"It was when you looked up at me. That was the moment. You had this wide-eyeyed, innocent look ... no pretenses. You didn't look at me like I was Travis Maddox," "you looked at me like I was ... I don't know, a person I guess."
"News flash, Trav. You are a person."
No, before you came, Shepley was the only one that treated me like anyone else. You didn't get all awkward, or flirt, or run your fingers through your hair. You saw me."
"I was a complete bitch to you, Travis."
He kissed my neck. "That's what sealed the deal."
"I hope this gets old soon. I don't see myself ever getting tired of you."
"Promise?" he asked — Jamie McGuire

There is a constant rush to judgment in Foucault. He is filled with specious generalizations, false categories, distortions, fudging, pretenses to knowledge in areas where he was ignorant. He had no ability whatsoever to distinguish among historical sources, where he makes terrible blunders. — Camille Paglia

Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretenses are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage. — Iris Murdoch

Audiences will see what they want to see. Some will come out, hopefully enjoying two hours of action. Some people will find themselves gravitating towards the emotional dilemma that the characters find themselves in. Other people will see that there is some layer of subversions to the storytelling aspect of poking a finger of judgment at certain governments to the idea of foreign invasion, others maybe false pretenses. — Colin Farrell