#pretension

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike. ↗

— Margot Fonteyn

#any #art #artists #find #great

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#extraordinary #mankind #must #pretensions #race

In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many. ↗

— Adam Ferguson

#commercial #depress #equal #equal rights #every

Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike. ↗

— Margot Fonteyn

#any #art #induces #life #mediocrity

I have to say that my husband and my children are so tough, there really is no space for pretension. ↗

— Miuccia Prada

#husband #i #pretension #really #say

Nearly everywhere monarchs raised themselves further above the level of the greatest nobles and buttressed their new pretensions to respect and authority with cannons and taxation. ↗

— J. M. Roberts

#authority #cannons #everywhere #further #greatest

Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth. ↗

— E. T. Bell

#absolute truth #eternal #makes #pretension #science

The first, that their pretensions to this possession of an art properly so called in their art of speaking are entirely unfounded; and the second, that they are involved in a profound mistake in their confusion of the good with the pleasant. ↗

— Friedrich Schleiermacher

#called #confusion #entirely #first #good

It's the time of year when the literati give advice on what we should be reading on our summer holidays. These terrifying lists often leave me appalled at my own ignorance, but also suspicious about the pretension of their advocates. ↗

— Arthur Smith

#advice #also #appalled #give #holidays

She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses… Orlando then came to the conclusion (opening half-a-dozen books)…that it would be impolitic in the extreme to wrap a ten-pound note round the sugar tongs when Miss Christina Rossetti came to tea…next (here were half-a-dozen invitations to celebrate centenaries by dining) that literature since it all these dinners must be growing very corpulent; next (she was invited to a score of lectures on the Influence of this upon that; the Classical revival; the Romantic survival, and other titles of the same engaging kind) that literature since it listened to all these lectures must be growing very dry; next (here she attended a reception given by a peeress) that literature since it wore all those fur tippets must be growing very respectable; next (here she visited Carlyle’s sound-proof room at Chelsea) that genius since it needed all this coddling must be growing very delicate… ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#pretensions #respect