Pretense Quotes

“Often it is the poor who recognize emptiness before the rest of us—and for obvious reasons. While I am not suggesting that poverty predisposes people to some form of righteousness, I have seen how their circumstances often free them from much of the pretense that our relative privilege affords us. So while the poor are not godlier on the basis of their poverty, they are often at least more authentic in their brokenness, and thus, perhaps, closer to honestly recognizing what true emptiness is.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci, Vulnerable Faith: Missional Living in the Radical Way of St. Patrick

“I prefer open hostility to the poisonous silence of supposed neutrality.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“Willingly embracing the emptiness of the tomb is more difficult for those of us in places of privilege. We have so much “stuff,” so many activities and endless sources of distraction and busyness to fill any potential emptiness, that our pretense is better fortified against any attempts to expose it, whether through circumstance or intentionality. This is why, in part, Jesus speaks so strongly against the love of money. He did not demonize money itself, but recognized how easily we become enslaved to a different master, in bondage to mammon, instead of following Christ in loving service of God and others.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci, Vulnerable Faith: Missional Living in the Radical Way of St. Patrick

“The problem with wearing a facade is that sooner or later life shows up with a big pair of scissors.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Pretending to be passionate when we are truly depressed doesn’t help. Numbing our feelings only makes things worse. Depression taught me to experience all of my feelings and not push them aside.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Emotional Gift: Memoir of a Highly Sensitive Person Who Overcame Depression

“A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.”
― Maya Angelou, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

“Above the keyhole the door has a latch. It is pretending to be an authentic old latch. The door is pretending to be an authentic old door. Maybe everything there is isn't authentic any more. Maybe everything there is is a kind of pretending.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“The smear artist reveals himself by his disparate treatment of people and situations. He drapes himself in a superhero cape, claiming to defend the aggrieved. He pretends to right societal wrongs. In fact, though, he's motivated primarily by paid interests and his own selfish agendas. By definition, the job requires that morality and conscience be cast aside”
― Sharyl Attkisson, The Smear: How the Secret Art of Character Assassination Controls What You Think, What You Read, and How You Vote

“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag--
It's so elegant
So intelligent”
― T. S. Eliot

“Genuine happiness is not nearly as common as a fake smile.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Life isn’t about being strong or pretending we are strong to impress others. It takes courage to be authentic with our feelings and acknowledge that real strength comes from recognizing our moments of weakness.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Emotional Gift: Memoir of a Highly Sensitive Person Who Overcame Depression

“Well, do you suppose I made up my mind then that what I had seen was something sickening? Not a bit of it. 'If it was done with such assurance and everyone thought it was necessary, then they must have known something I didn't,' was what I thought, and I tried to find out what it was. But I couldn't, no matter how hard I exerted myself. And since I couldn't, I couldn't join the army as I'd planned to, and not only did I not join the army, I couldn't find a place for myself anywhere in society, and ended up being no good for anything, as you can see.
'Oh yes, we know all about how you're no good for anything,' said one of us, 'But tell us: how many men would be no good for anything if it weren't for the likes of you?”
― Leo Tolstoy, After the Ball

“Perfect' - the most misattributed word in English language
A 'perfect' thing can never be improved - at least by what the meaning implies. Why should anyone want to be perfect?
Unfortunately, this happens to be my greatest flaw. Turning a relative idea into an absolute one. Seeking perfection in others - or should I say 'subconsciously seeking perfection in myself' and projecting a benchmark based in fantasy on others.
Makes one come across as judgmental, intolerant, arrogant or impatient - in short, a platinum-class jerk. But you, my friend, are too kind to tell me. Or you'd rather bear for the moment and cuss me roundly when I'm gone. That's unfair to us both.
If I have ever done this to you, I am sincerely sorry.
Accept my profound apologies”
― Eniitan Akinola

“A friend is way less likely than a boyfriend or girlfriend to make us pretend to be someone we are not; or that our family is a good family, or way better, or way less crazy or dysfunctional than it actually is.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, On Friendship: A Satirical Essay

“In some cases, it is not the person that has changed, but their decision not to be themselves.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“everyone would just keep on keeping on, pretending that nothing much had happened, and the pretense would become habitual, until, eventually, the lie would seem more real than the truth.”
― Jo Baker, Longbourn

“I feel, think and behave the same, whether I am talking to a president of a nation, a scholar, a janitor or a sex worker. I have nothing to hide and nothing to gain, hence I have no need for pretense.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Revolution Indomable

“In an artistic sense, cool came to refer to someone with a signature artistic style so integral as to exude an authentic mode-of-being in the world: Miles, Bogart, Brando, Eastwood, Greco, Elvis, Lady Day, Sinatra. Such a person created something from nothing and gave the world some new artistic or psychological 'equipment for living,' to use a phrase of Kenneth Burke's. A signature style is yours and can only be carried by you: it cannot be abstracted except through dilution and commodification since it reflects an individual's complex personal experience. In this sense, cool was 'making a dollar out of fifteen cents,' to pull another phrase from the Africa-American vernacular. Lester Young was once at a bar when a tenor saxophone solo floated out of the jukebox. 'That's me,' he said happily. As he listened his mood collapsed - he realized it was one of his many imitators. 'No, that's not me,' he said sadly. To steal someone else's sound or style and capitalize on it has always been un-cool, the pretense of posers.”
― Joel Dinerstein, The Origins of Cool in Postwar America

“But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming-everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class. And his arrangements looked so much like everyone else's that they were unremarkable, though he saw them as something truly distinctive.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

“I kept becoming larger in her presence, kept returning to who I would have been without the pretense of who I thought I should be.”
― Geneen Roth, Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment

“But under the beards--and this was K.'s real discovery­ --badges of various sizes and colors gleamed on their coat­ collars. They all wore those badges as far he could see. They were all colleagues, these ostensible parties of the right and left, and as he turned round suddently he saw the same badges on the coat collar of the Examining Magistrate, who was sitting quietly watching the scene with his hands on his knees. "So!" cried K. flinging his arms in the air, his sudden enlightenment had to break out, "every man jack of you is an official, I see, you are yourselves the corrupt agents of whom I have been speaking, you've all come rushing here to listen and nose out what you can about me, making a pretense of party divisions, and half of you applauded merely to lead me on, you wanted some practice in fooling an innocent man.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“I act through the day like you don’t matter anymore, till my tired bones refuse to carry it to bed. And there the pretense lies crestfallen as tears soaking the pillow, till morning makes it invisible again.”
― Nitya Prakash

“How comfortable if, from a position of power, we think, although comfort is the most dangerous thing—it confuses value with power, vision with illusion, (confessions don't help) and that is how a mistake is born. We know much about people and wars—or we think we do; and despite all these words we know, something terrible always happens to remind us of our blindness.”
― Dejan Stojanović

“The crux of military operations lies in the pretense of accommodating one's self to the designs of the enemy.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“A son and the mother was at a round table discussing how to better their lifes. They both concluded. The conclusion of the son was an act while the conclusion of the mother bring an unending story.”
― Abayomi Kayode Patrick

“She looks at me and smiles in that brisk efficient way. A modern professional smile. the kind of smile that never existed before, say, the telephone.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“He tugged at his hair more, and then added, "He knew Burt Reynolds and what's-her-name that he married. Debra, what's that name?"
"Loni Anderson, Daddy," Debra said. She turned to me. "Harry knew them really well. He knew everything about them. He told me that Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson would get divorced way before anyone else knew.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book

“A wedding is an occasion during and with which the bride and groom greatly exaggerate their love for each other, especially in cases where they really love each other.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It is not a matter of knowledge, it is not a matter of power, but rather a powerful eye blind before the obvious, offering an illusion that even unrecognized pretense can be sold as a recognized solution; and, as with the dying pretense, only what is real survives: pretense cannot sustain blind power; courage is more important than to be deceived by shallow victory waiting for a delayed defeat.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“There is something worse than obvious immorality and that is false morality.”
― C.A.A. Savastano