#pretense

I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with . . . For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants . . . but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being. ↗

— Leonid Borodin

#intellectualism #intellectuals #posturing #pretense #faith

I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself God's enemy. ↗

— Criss Jami

#christianity #enemies #fabrications #facts #flattery

We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful of who we pretend to be. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#pretense #inspirational

How much self-love comes in the guise of selfless devotion! ↗

— Susan Sontag

#pretense #self-love #selflessness #love

We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be. ↗

— Patrick Rothfuss

#pretending #pretense #danger

You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it. ↗

— Alan Moore

#pretense #truthfulness #honesty

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#disguise #method-acting #pretense #role-playing #sherlock-holmes

I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good. ↗

— Sarah Vowell

#any #background #college #come #european

So may the outward shows be least themselves: The world is still deceived with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#falsehood #law #ornament #pretense #religion

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

#emptiness #evil #greatest #hardest #hide