#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

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

#pretense #inspirational

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

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

#aftermath #because #bush #connected #false

Comics, at least in periodical form, exist almost entirely free of any pretense; the critical world of art hardly touches them, and they're 100% personal. ↗

— Chris Ware

#any #art #comics #critical #entirely

To copy beauty forfeits all pretense to fame; to copy faults is want of sense. ↗

— Charles Churchill

#copy #fame #faults #forfeits #pretense

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying. ↗

— Mikhail Bakunin

#equality #fraud #freedom #lie #lying

Look on beauty, And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it: So are those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#beauty #falsehood #ornament #pretense #beauty

After we passed a few more houses, the street ceased to mantain any pretense of urbanity, like a man returning to his little village who, piece by piece, strips off his Sunday best, slowly changing back into a peasant as he gets closer to his home. ↗

— Bruno Schulz

#pretense #urbanity #change