#pretense

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

— Aleister Crowley

#enormous #evil #exist #makes #menacing

Frankly - and believe me, I say this without any pretense - when I see the road I've taken, I have to say that thanks to good luck, because without good luck one can do nothing, I've come out pretty well. ↗

— James MacArthur

#because #believe #come #frankly #good

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

— John Tillotson

#crafty #danger #dark #person #pretenses

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

Pretense cannot sustain blind power. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #poetry #poetry-quotes

There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#acting #artifice #falsehood #game #games

I despise the rituals of fake friendship. I wish we could just claw each other's eyes out and call it a day; instead we put on huge radiant smiles and spout compliments until our teeth hurt from the saccharine sweetness of it all. ↗

— Jody Gehrman

#fake #friends #friendship #humor #pretense

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

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

#bent #claimed #deceived #dupes #men

It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes. ↗

— Arianna Huffington

#attitudes #between #characteristics #differences #disastrous