#pretense

The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude. ↗

— Peter L. Berger

#beliefs #between #certitude #different #different beliefs

It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end. ↗

— Washington Irving

#come #empty #end #hollow #keeping

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#confidence #especially #feel #i #influenced

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#cakes #humor #modesty #pretense #tea-parties

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing. ↗

— Aleister Crowley

#enormous #evil #exist #makes #menacing

You must not under any pretense allow your mind to dwell on any thought that is not positive, constructive, optimistic, kind. ↗

— Emmet Fox

#allow #any #constructive #dwell #kind

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

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

Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Theophrastus was right. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#knowledge #learning #mystery #nature #pretense

I don't like bullshit and pretense. I can't enjoy the joy at church... without some cash in my wallet. ↗

— Toba Beta

#money #pretense #money