"Pretension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you not guess why it is generous? Then look at yourself in the glass, and you will see. I used to have some pretension to good looks, but I could never have stood beside you at the best of times, and now—— Your mother, even when I was at my best, always killed me if I was in the same room with her, and you are even handsomer than ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... all visitors. It is a custom which adds much to the amusement of visitors who are really lovers of art; but it must bring with it, one would think, consequences which must sometimes be not a little trying to the painter's or sculptor's temper and patience. Criticism from those who have some little pretension to the right to criticise is not always pleasant when volunteered, but criticism from such Philistines of the Philistines as often haunt the studios must be hard indeed to bear with common courtesy. Powers invariably received such with the most perfect suavity and good-temper, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... of poet, as it implies the possession of an inventive faculty, Sir William Jones has but little pretension. He borrows much; and what he takes he seldom makes hotter. Yet some portion of sweetness and elegance must he ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... narrow way, who live in a three-story house, originally of much pretension, but from whose front door hard times have removed almost all vestiges of paint, will ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... that all present should acknowledge his claim as lord paramount. The Scottish nobles present, with the exception of those who were privy to Edward's designs, were filled with astonishment and dismay at this pretension, and declared their ignorance of any claim of superiority of the King of England over Scotland. The king, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... of compromise are soon left behind; and if the writers who so severely criticize the present moderation of the Free-soilers are desirous to see the war become an abolition war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough they will be gratified. Without the smallest pretension to see further into futurity than other people, I at least have foreseen and foretold from the first, that if the South were not promptly put down, the contest would become distinctly an antislavery one; nor do I believe ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... circumstances would adhere to him, instancing the case of Mr. Canning, under circumstances not altogether dissimilar. Lord George replied: 'As for my rallying a personal party round myself, as Mr. Canning did, I have no pretension to anything of the kind; when Mr. Canning did that, the House of Commons, and England too, acknowledged him to be the greatest orator who had survived Pitt and Fox; he had been Secretary of State for foreign affairs, and had taken a conspicuous part in rousing the country ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... there was one corner where she was unafraid. Her first charges, Mistress Barbara and Mistress Anne, were young ladies of gentle spirit. Their sister had said of them that their spirit was as poor as their looks. It could not be said of them by any one that they had any pretension to beauty, but that which Mistress Clorinda rated at as poor spirit was the one element of comfort in their poor dependent kinswoman's life. They gave her no ill words, they indulged in no fantastical whims and vapours, and they did not even seem to expect other ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Frederic sent out a flag of truce soliciting a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours, that they might negotiate respecting peace. The peremptory reply returned was, that there should not be truce for a single moment, unless Frederic would renounce all pretension to the crown of Bohemia. With such a renunciation truce would be granted for eight hours. Frederic acceded to the demand, and the noise ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... article, he discanted largely on the pretension of Mahomet, and of their great influence and extent; and also of the particular tone given to the Christian religion by Constantine, who, holding the reigns of government, had superior means in extending ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... all one shout, in the midst of which poor Philetus took himself off as speedily as possible. Before Fleda had dried her eyes, her attention was taken by a lady and gentleman who had just got out of a vehicle of more than the ordinary pretension, and were coming up to the door. The gentleman was young the lady was not; both had a particularly amiable and pleasant appearance; but about the lady there was something that moved Fleda singularly, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... which nearly scared the soldiers out of their wits, by shaking down the little minars of one of the city gates, close to which they had unwittingly discharged it on first trial. The foreign office, like every building of pretension, whether public or private, in the land of the Lion and the Sun, is a substantial edifice of mud and brick, inclosing a square court-yard or garden, in which splashing fountains play amid a wealth of vegetation that springs, as if by waft of magician's ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... pretension is so little known in England that it may be well to state it. Spain has never been a land of the Salic Law; the story of her reigning queens—chief of all, Isabel la Catolica, shows this. It was not until the time of Philip V., the first of the Bourbons, that this absolute ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... which are foreign to the character of boys. If any proof of it is needed, it is only too true that if a boy applies any of the three adjectives holy, saintly, or pious to a person, it is not intended to be a compliment. The words in their mouths imply sanctimonious pretension, and a certain Pharisaical and even hypocritical scrupulousness. It is a great mistake to overlook this fact; I do not mean that a preacher should not attempt to praise these virtues, but if he does, he ought to be able to translate his thoughts into language which ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and they are to be called friends, but suspected as enemies: therefore the Scots are to be kept in readiness, to be let loose upon England on every occasion: and some banished nobleman is to be supported underhand (for by the league it cannot be done avowedly) who has a pretension to the crown, by which means that suspected prince may be kept in awe. Now when things are in so great a fermentation, and so many gallant men are joining councils, how to carry on the war, if so mean a man as I should stand ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... too, I am learning a lesson in patience through the lives of the humble fishermen. In season seven cents a day is the total of their earnings. At other times, two cents is the limit. On this they manage to live and laugh and raise a family. It is all so simple and childlike, so free from pretension, hurry and rush. Sometimes I wonder if it is not we, with our myriad interests, who have strayed from the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... to leave Dufresnoy at Metlaoui. In him I often admire that fine trait of his race: the clarifying instinct. He possesses—with no pretension at knowledge beyond his mining sphere—an innate rigour of judgment in every matter of the mind; he avoids crooked thinking by a process of ratiocination so swift and sure as to appear intuitive. Even as a true ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... receive it as a gift, and it must come into us before we can be in it. The point of comparison between the recipients of the kingdom and little children does not lie in any sentimental illusions about the innocence of childhood, but in its dependence, in its absence of pretension, in its sense of clinging helplessness, in its instinctive trust. All these things in the child are natural, spontaneous, unreflecting, and therefore of no value. You and I have to think ourselves back to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of mine—a Benedictine. It was not seen until after his death, when the manuscript was discovered in his cell. What is more remarkable is that the monk was distinguished for nothing but his piety, and had never made any pretension to learning ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... said he. "Confess! Have you not also boasted of special gifts, of visions, of miracles even, for all I know? You have been a great sinner? Prove that you are one no longer! Exonerate yourself if you can. Say how you have lived; explain this pretension of yours that God has called you; justify yourself for coming here to eat the monk's bread for nothing; for you did not wish to become a monk, and as to work, you have done little ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... ago that I thus became a member of the Twenty-first District Republican Association in the city of New York. The men I knew best were the men in the clubs of social pretension and the men of cultivated taste and easy life. When I began to make inquiries as to the whereabouts of the local Republican Association and the means of joining it, these men—and the big business men and lawyers also—laughed at me, and told me that ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... such a state of things the first duty of German Catholics is that they be united. It is necessary that the German church should remain in intimate union with the Holy Apostolic See, relinquishing all pretension to be a separate ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... story of their father's marvellous adventures. The wholesome morality, the charitableness and homely piety apparent throughout, give the narrative a charm denied to many works of greater literary pretension. When Peter Wilkins leaves his solitary home to live among the winged people, the interest of the story, it must be confessed, is somewhat diminished. The author's obligations to Swift in the latter part of the book are ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... that this or that belief must be true because so many generations have believed it, so many countries, so many famous men,—as if error, like stolen property, gained a title from prescription of time! Scot pierced this pretension with a single sentence: "Truth must not be measured by time, for every old opinion is not sound." "My great adversaries," he says, "are young ignorance and old custom. For what folly soever tract of time hath ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... with this ridiculous pretension. "If you said anything to Mr. Rodman about it, I wonder he didn't give the ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... two pamphlets he published at this time, "England, Ireland, and America," and "Russia," in which he opened the long struggle he was to wage against the restriction of commerce, and the policy of intervention in European feuds. It is no strained pretension to say that already Richard Cobden, the Manchester manufacturer, was fully possessed of the philosophic gift of feeling about society as a whole, and thinking about the problems of society ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... and probably their name to his confessor Darazi, who first attempted to promulgate his doctrine among them; some also impute to the Druse nation a dash of the blood of the Crusaders. One of their chief religious doctrines was that of divine incarnations. It seems to have originated in the pretension of Hakeem to be himself one; and as organized by the Persian mystic Hamzi, his Vizier and disciple, it included ten manifestations of this kind, of which Hakeem must have formed the last. Mr. Browning has assumed that in any great national emergency, the miracle ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... affectations about Burns, as when he talks big in his diary of observing character and finding this pursuit the greatest entertainment of his life in Edinburgh, with a pretension very general among half-educated persons: but there is no reason to believe that he was not quite genuine about his predecessors. A poet is not necessarily a critic; and Allan Ramsay's fame had been exactly of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Oracles were seated, and Audience given to the Enquirers, in all which the Devil, or some Body for him, Permissu Superiorum, for either vindictive or other hidden Ends and Purposes, was allow'd to make at least a Pretension to the Knowledge of Things to come; but, as publick Cheats generally do, they acted in Masquerade, and gave such uncertain and inconsistent Responses, that they were oblig'd to use the utmost ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... run no hazard by this proceeding, because the preliminary articles would have no force before a general peace was signed: therefore it was not doubted but Mons. Mesnager would have orders to waive this new pretension, and go on in treating upon that foot which was at first proposed. In short, the ministers required a positive and speedy answer to the articles in question, since they contained only such advantages ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... vine, or a sweetbriar, against the wall of an house, or in the hole of a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door where people are going in and out all day long. This bird does not make the least pretension to song, but uses a little inward wailing note when it thinks its young in danger from cats or other annoyances: it breeds but ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... fact. Another figure at the barristers' table was Samuel Peters Jarvis, his hands yet red with the blood of young John Ridout, ruthlessly shed by him in a duel two years before, and never to be effaced from the tablets of his memory. There, too, sat Henry John Boulton, a young man of much pretension but mediocre intellect, who had been appointed acting Solicitor-General during the previous year, and who united in his own person all the bigotry and narrow selfishness of the faction to which he belonged. He, also, had been concerned in the shedding ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... of the country round himself and his friends, and to restore the repute of his political connection, thought fit, without consulting his colleagues, to publish a manifesto denouncing the aggression of the Pope upon our Protestantism as insolent and insidious, and as expressing a pretension of supremacy over the realm of England which made ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the politics of the county, the State, and even of the nation. Jokes and stories, often most uncouth and gross, whiled away the time. It was in these groceries, and in the rough crucible of such talk, wherein grotesque imagery and extravagant phrases were used to ridicule pretension and to bring every man to his place, sometimes also to escape taking a hard fact too hardly, that what we now call "American humor," with its peculiar native flavor, was born. To this it is matter ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... good figure, a pretty face, and a very agreeable countenance; and her air, though it had not all the decided pretension, the resolute stylishness of Miss Thorpe's, had more real elegance. Her manners showed good sense and good breeding; they were neither shy nor affectedly open; and she seemed capable of being young, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... dare say it was sad stuff, furbished up at a moment's notice. We carried the election. Cobden sent me a challenge to attend a public discussion of the subject. Whether this was quite fair, I am not certain, for I was young, made no pretension to be an expert, and had never opened my lips in parliament on the subject. But it afforded me an excellent opportunity to decline with modesty and with courtesy as well as reason. I am sorry to say that, to the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humourous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... ex-emperor, ere the governor had been a week at St. Helena, condescended to insult him to his face by language so extravagantly, intolerably, and vulgarly offensive, as never ought, under any circumstances whatever, to have stained the lips of one who made any pretension to the character of a gentleman. Granting that Sir Hudson Lowe was not an officer of the first distinction—it must be admitted that he did no wrong in accepting a duty offered to him by his government; and that Napoleon was guilty, not only of indecorum, but ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... fear that our gravest readers will think the extract too long. Our quotation is from the volume called "Tales from Denmark." There is another collection called, "The Shoes of Fortune;" these are higher in pretension, and inferior ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... pretension to comfortable spaciousness in the closely built parts of the town were all of the one, general, Spanish-American plan. Honore led the doctor through the cool, high, tessellated carriage-hall, on one side of which were ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... scientifically organized structure, the best material already wrought out, and existing as natural growth in the dead and living languages now extant; by absorbing them, so to speak, in itself. It would have no pretension, therefore, directly to supersede any of the existing languages, nor even ultimately to dispense with the great mass of the material found in any ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... which is "brickmaker." Chopin may have played upon the word. A mistake, however, is likewise possible, as the Polish for engraver is sztycharz.] (engravers') errors, but, I think, the harmonic errors committed by those who pretend to understand Bach. I do not do it with the pretension that I understand him better than they, but from a conviction that I sometimes guess how it ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... great iron gates which enclosed the courtyard of Deerham Court. A very unpretending entrance admitted him into a spacious hall, the hall being the largest and best part of the house. Those great iron gates and the hall would have done honour to a large mansion; and they gave an appearance of pretension to Deerham Court ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... escaped being torn in pieces by the people," cried he; "and without the assistance of the national guard, who displayed so much attachment for me—." At these words which indicated the pretension to personal popularity lurking in the mind of the royalist orator, the Assembly gave marked signs of disapprobation, and the cote gauche murmured loudly. "I do not speak for myself," returned Cazales, "but ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Quite without ethical pretension at all the school is of course bound to influence the moral development of the child. That most important matter, the habit and disposition towards industry, should be acquired there, the sense of thoroughness ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... device through which it became possible to turn the low-grade sulphuric coal of Nova Scotia into coke without sacrificing either the valuable by-products, such as ammonia, tar, etc., or illuminating gas. This was a very remarkable pretension, for we had long ago eliminated these low-grade coals from consideration as material for gas-making; but if Whitney's device actually was what he claimed, undoubtedly he would be a dangerous competitor. Whitney's petition set forth further, that because of the exceedingly low ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... by a person who stood back in the shadow, and a hurried conversation took place. Satisfied apparently with what he heard, Robeccal bade his men follow him. They went to Belleville, which at that time was an excessively pretty place, as almost all the houses of any pretension had gardens and grounds. Robeccal had been extremely adroit in diverting suspicion and the observation of the people they encountered. He now knocked at a door in a wall ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... believe it had something to do with my Lord's decision. The imposition deserved to have its head blown off. Orchan is a dotard. His son's ears are still impaired. In the fall the ground caught him crown first. He will never ride again. The pretension is over.... I rode from the Princess' house directly to Blacherne. The Grand Council was in session: yet the Prefect of the Palace admitted me.... O my Lord, this Constantine is a man, a warrior, an Emperor, surrounded by old women afraid of their shadows. The subject ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... nothing else but a sorry gloss. Yet Tischendorf degrades [Greek: pygme] and promotes [Greek: pykna] to honour,—happily standing alone in his infatuation. Strange, that the most industrious of modern accumulators of evidence should not have been aware that by such extravagances he marred his pretension to critical discernment! Origen and Epiphanius—the only Fathers who quote the place—both read [Greek: pygme]. It ought to be universally admitted that it is a mere waste of time that we should argue out a point ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... have written at all upon trees; but with full gratitude to the botanical explorers whose labors have made such superficial observations as mine possible, I venture to send forth these sketches, without pretension as to the statement of ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... be considered presumption in me, to speak of the diseases of children, as this more properly belongs to the faculty; but let it be observed, that my pretension is not to cure the diseases that children are subject to, but only to prevent those which are infectious from spreading. I have found that children between the ages of two and seven years, are subject to the ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... means, there was less talking among the society Madame assembled together than elsewhere. Madame hated people who talked much, and took a remarkably cruel revenge upon them, for she allowed them to talk. She disliked pretension, too, and never overlooked that defect, even in the king himself. It was more than a weakness of Monsieur, and the princess had undertaken the amazing task of curing him of it. As for the rest, poets, wits, beautiful women, all were ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... him of declaiming against good works, and they should learn from it, that though he has preached against "good works," it was against such as are falsely so called and as contribute toward the confusion of consciences, because they are self-elected, do not flow from faith, and are done with the pretension of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... camp-fire and pine-top, yet had many advantages over the majority of successful novels, then engineered by northern publishers. Marion Harland, as her nom de plume went, was, however, the most popular of southern writers. Her stories of Virginia home-life had little pretension to the higher flights of romance; but they were pure, graphic and not unnatural scenes from every-day life. They introduced us to persons we knew, or might have known; and the people read them generally and liked them. Mrs. Ritchie (Anna Cora ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... and here the old saying is aptly introduced, 'A pound of good luck is worth a ton of merit.' Thou, who, in comparison to me, art doubtless an ignorant dunce, without rising early or sitting up late, or, indeed, exerting the least industry: without any pretension more or less than that of being breathed upon by knight-errantry, seest thyself created governor of an island as if it was a ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... raise France above the nations. The opportunity was afforded by the Thirty Years' War. All Europe was involved, the Protestant Powers uniting against the House of Habsburg, which, by tradition, by pretension, and by its actual position and power, was the one constant obstacle to the desired supremacy of the French king. Richelieu assisted them, and ended by openly joining them. Once he said, "I will prove to the world ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... honour with your hand—thus you meet him, who has loved you—suffered for you?—Yet what do I say? Pardon me, pardon me, mademoiselle St. Aubert, I know not what I utter. I have no longer any claim upon your remembrance—I have forfeited every pretension to your esteem, your love. Yes! let me not forget, that I once possessed your affections, though to know that I have lost them, is my severest affliction. Affliction—do I call it!—that is a term ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... varied and profound learning, eminently versed in mathematics and natural sciences, abounding in classical lore, endowed with a vast memory, and gifted with a concise, clear, and graceful style; rich and fluent in conversation, but without the least pretension to oratory and wholly incapable of extempore speaking. He was removed from the presidency of St. John's by a board of democratic trustees because of his federal politics; and, years afterward, he gave his son his only lesson in politics at the end of a letter, addressed ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... By pretension to Second Sight, no profit was ever sought or gained. It is an involuntary affection, in which neither hope nor fear are known to have any part. Those who profess to feel it, do not boast of it as a privilege, nor are considered by others as advantageously distinguished. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... head in at the door to answer their questions and converse with his wife. The explanation afforded was, that a Circassian officer cannot, consistently with honour, enter his wife's apartment during the day, and it seems that in all families with the slightest pretension to distinction ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... night that Horace met the two sisters, he refused to be introduced to them: having heard so much of them that he concluded they would be 'all pretension.' The second night that he met them, he sat next Mary, and found her an 'angel both inside and out.' He did not know which he liked best; but Mary's face, which was formed for a sentimental novel, or, still more, for genteel comedy, riveted him, he owned. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... as you will see presently, a peculiar-looking dwelling, just such a one as you might well suppose the chosen of Andrew Marvel—exquisitely situated, enjoying abundant natural advantages; and yet altogether devoid of pretension; sufficiently beautiful for a poet, sufficiently humble ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Church should propound a formulary of her faith, enlarge this formulary from time to time, as further interpretation is wanted, and enforce acquiscence in it by spiritual censures, is consistent with her principles. Whether such a pretension can be avowed, without inconsistency, by any Protestant Church, has been a subject of much discussion. In point of fact, however, no Protestant Church is without her formulary, or abstains from enforcing it by temporal provisions and spiritual censures. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... formidable force. She was younger and would have "seen nothing," but she had quite as much her own resources and was beautiful enough to have made Nick compare her with the lady of Harsh even if he had been in love with that benefactress—a pretension as to which her brother, as we ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... the actual settlers denounced in the Senate as squatters, as if that were a term of reproach. Our glorious Anglo-Saxon ancestry, the pilgrims who landed on Plymouth rock, the early settlers at Jamestown, were squatters. They settled this continent with less pretension to title than the settlers on the public lands. Daniel Boone was a squatter; ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess of passion animating the creations ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... be a soft boy—that is to say, I was said to be soft. I'm a man now, but, of course, I was a boy once. I merely mention this to prove that I make no pretension whatever to unusual wisdom; quite the reverse. I hate sailing under false colours—not that I ever did sail under any colours, never having become a sailor—and yet I shouldn't say that, either, for that's the very point round which all the mystery hangs. I did go to ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... on the newest model of modern improvements, with the best intentions of cleanliness, comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the public that patronizes them, are with astounding rapidity transformed into filthy taverns with a pretension of modern improvement that only makes them worse than the old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached that stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... in some subtile way, as a richer man, than the merchant or banker who may be worth his hundred thousand or half million of dollars, provided he has no slaves. To come to be the owner of negroes, and of more and more negroes, is the social ambition, the aristocratic purpose and pretension of the whole Southern people. It is by virtue of this mystical prestige of the institution itself; which couples the charms of wealth with the exercise of authority, or a certain show of official supremacy on the part of the master; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... beautiful hands, and he was very proud of them; while conversing he would often look at them with an air of self-complacency. He also fancied he had fine teeth, but his pretension to that advantage was not so well founded as his vanity on the score of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... timely help which saves the exhausted brain and restores the broken nerve. I stand to-night in a place which has been occupied by many distinguished advocates of this fund—advocates who have spoken with eloquence to which I can make no pretension. But I would earnestly impress upon you this thought, than which no plea can be more eloquent—remember that whatever you may give out of goodness of heart, from the memories of old comradeship, from the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... appointed to vacant bishoprics two friars of the Orders obnoxious to the people, and it is inconceivable that such a step would have been so speedily taken if there were any truth in the rebels' pretension that the expulsion of the friars had been promised to them. Rafael Comenge, the President of the Military Club, was rewarded with the Grand Cross of Military Merit for the famous speech which he had delivered at ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... South Sea. Nothing we can say will remove this impression until the world shall be familiarized with the idea of considering the continent of North America to be our proper dominion. From the time we became an independent people, it was as much a law of nature that this should become our pretension, as that the Mississippi should flow to the sea. Spain had pretensions on our southern, Great Britain on our northern borders. It was impossible that centuries should elapse without finding them annexed to the United States; not from any spirit of encroachment or of ambition on our part, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... it took place; when real devotion to all arts, sciences, and amenities of a higher civilisation went hand in hand with crime of the vilest and treachery of the basest description. Well might Barbarossa, and such as he, laugh to scorn the pretension that his Christian enemies were one whit better than were they, when they could point to the fact that, to serve a private revenge, a great Christian king could betray his co-religionists to their Moslem foes. Shamelessly did the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... upon the fisherman's arm. He stood the smaller in stature, though of strong build. His clean-shaved face had burned much darker than John's; he was indeed coffee-brown and might have been mistaken for an Indian but for his eyes of ordinary slate-grey. Without any pretension to good looks, Martin Grimbal displayed what was better—an expression of such frank benignity and goodness that his kind trusted him and relied upon him by intuition. Honest and true to the verge of quixotism was this man in all dealings with his fellows, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... than there actually is. We should be best pleased of all if the castle hill of Tillieres was still crowned with an ancient donjon; next to that we should like to see it in the same case as Exmes or rather as Almeneches. But the height is taken possession of by a house of much more pretension than the harmless farm at Almeneches, and the passing wayfarer can do little more than follow the outer wall of the castle—a wall with work of endless dates—round a good part of its compass. Looking ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... alone," said Rose, smiling, "is, I admit, an irresistible pretension to favour, and Dame Gillian shall presently attend you.—But take my advice, lady—keep her to her bales and her mails, and let her not prate to you on what ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... previously assured that all and every part of the Old and New Testament is the voice of the divine Word. But, except by the Spirit, whence are we to ascertain this? Not from the books themselves; for not one of them makes the pretension for itself, and the two or three texts, which seem to assert it, refer only to the Law and the Prophets, and no where enumerate the books that were given by inspiration: and how obscure the history of the formation ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... muscular frame, without fullness of covering, well formed and straight. He was a man of most extraordinary physical strength. In his own house, his action was calm, deliberate, and dignified, without pretension to gracefulness or peculiar manner, but merely natural, and such as one would think it should be in such a man. His habitual motions had been formed before he took command of the American armies, in the wars of the interior, and in ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... prepared them, those who had made a symphony of conversation and those who made of it a monologue and had no flashes of silence. They did not follow fashion there—they rather made it; in art and literature as in toilets, smallness follows the fashion, pretension exaggerates it, taste ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... being an Atheist, or an Infidel of any other Distinction. It may be doubted, with good Reason, whether there ever was in Nature a more abject, slavish, and bigotted Generation than the Tribe of Beaux Esprits, at present so prevailing in this Island. Their Pretension to be Free-thinkers, is no other than Rakes have to be Free-livers, and Savages to be Free-men, that is, they can think whatever they have a Mind to, and give themselves up to whatever Conceit the Extravagancy of their Inclination, or their ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... country stile. The rigours of winter only enable them to appear even yet more charming in furs and sealskin. In all this the Grange people have not laid themselves open to any reproach as to the extravagance or pretension of their doings. With them it is genuine, real, unaffected: in brief, they have money, and have a right to what ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... not take hers off. In spite of her pleasure and surprise, she made a good supper. The cardinal was a man of much talent, and from his great knowledge of the world and of women, he was a man difficult to contend with, and he thought that this country girl, full of pretension, but who, in spite of her pride, could not conceal her greediness, would be an easy conquest, worth undertaking on account of her beauty, and of a something piquant about her, very pleasing to a man "blase" like him. He therefore never took pains to be much on his guard with her; ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and thoroughly impressed with but one important fact, which was, that he, Alfred Bourdon, was the most gifted and the most ill-used of all God's creatures. To genius, in any intelligible sense of the term, he has in truth no pretension. He is endowed, however, with a kind of reflective talent, which is often mistaken by fools for creative power. The morbid fancies and melancholy scorn of a Byron, for instance, such gentry reflect back from ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... in the beginning constitutes a preventive. Fear that they are not truly loved usually paves the way for "spats." Let all who make any pretension guard against all beginnings of this reversal, and strangle these "hate-spats" the moment they arise. "Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath," not even an hour, but let the next sentence after they begin quench them forever. And let those who cannot court without "spats," stop; ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... I could not believe him, as I would believe a real Christian, but I wished to hear his worldly arguments. On the following day, I asked him how it can he said, that the pope was infallible if there were no proofs of the fact to be brought. I asked him if this pretension of the pope was that of an apostle, or a prophet? if an apostle, or a prophet, he could not be believed without miracles, and that we christians were not to believe any one, though he were to bring down fire from Heaven.[H] ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... placed the war which she has waged upon the ground that our Army occupied the intermediate territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Her refuted pretension that Texas was not in fact an independent state, but a rebellious province, was obstinately persevered in, and her avowed purpose in commencing a war with the United States was to reconquer Texas and to restore Mexican authority over the whole territory—not to the Nueces only, but to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... believe, to account for the conduct of the Swedish and American country girls; for I am led to conclude, from all the observations I have made, that there is always a mixture of sentiment and imagination in voluptuousness, to which neither of them have much pretension. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... hope of accomplishing a negotiation in which the whole of the smaller provincial city had felt itself deeply interested. He had gone thither for the purpose of engaging the celebrated prima donna, Bianca Lalli, to sing at Ravenna during the coming Carnival. The pretension was a very ambitious one on the part of the impresario—or, as it may be more properly said, on the part of the city—for the step was by no means the result of his own independent and unaided enterprise. Such matters were not done in that way in the good old times in the smaller cities ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... few pages of Will D'Avenant, who was fond of having it supposed that Shakespeare intrigued with his mother. I think the pretension can only be treated as Phaeton's ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... this record, penned by my own hand, of the events of my life, and of my participation in our great struggle for national existence, human liberty, and political equality, I make no pretension to literary merit; the importance of the subject-matter of my narrative is my only claim ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... liberals of Bavaria. They assume an influence and an importance in the ecclesiastical profession, or rather an authority, equal to that ever asserted by the Church in its strongest days. Perhaps you will get an idea of the height of this pretension if I translate a passage which the liberal journal here takes from a sermon preached in the parish church of Ebersburg, in Ober-Dorfen, by a priest, Herr Kooperator Anton Hiring, no longer ago than August ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the 11th instant, acknowledging the appreciation by yourself and the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, of the merits of my lamented son in the Burke and Wills Exploring Expedition in Australia. That he, and he alone, was the only one who had the least pretension to the title of geographer, is manifest; —therefore it is not strange that Dr. Mueller and my friends in Australia should feel somewhat annoyed in the matter ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the vast equipage of Shakspeare is advancing in an accelerated ratio. There is, in fact, a great delusion current upon this subject. Innumerable references to Homer, and brief critical remarks on this or that pretension of Homer, this or that scene, this or that passage, lie scattered over literature ancient and modern; but the express works dedicated to the separate service of Homer are, after all, not many. In Greek we have only the large Commentary of Eustathius, and the Scholia of Didymus, &c.; in ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... it," said Vesta. "The sense and courage of that gentleman—he is a gentleman, for I have seen him, and a gentleman of many gifts—will compel respect even where false pride and family pretension appear to put him down. Who that underrates him will make any considerable sacrifice to assist us? Your sons,—will they do it? Then by what right do they decide my marriage choice? No, father, I only do my part to support our house in its extremity, as these gentlemen and others ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... civilized portions of the globe, those incidents in our Dog's life which he has been too modest to relate himself, in order that after-generations may fully appreciate all the goodness of his character. To greatness, he had no pretension, although few animals are aware how close is the relation ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... the women outnumbered their less attractive companions by at least a third: these were all in holiday trim, of course; invariably well dressed, but commonly having a pretension to taste and style I have never elsewhere observed so universally prevalent amongst the same class. The men, both in air and dress, were inferior to their female friends; so much so that it was difficult to imagine them belonging to the same order: and this remark, I think, will be found ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... first appeared in year XIII of Binet's 1908 scale. The terms used were "happiness and honor"; "evolution and revolution"; "event and advent"; "poverty and misery"; "pride and pretension." In the 1911 revision, "happiness and honor" and "pride and pretension" were dropped, and the other three pairs were moved up to the adult group, two out of three successes being required for a pass. Kuhlmann places it in year XV, using ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... a high tone, and talks big of his "fellow-dignity" and independence: what fellow-dignity may mean, we know not; perhaps the dignity of a fellow; but this we will say, that Mr. Hunt is not more unlucky in his pompous pretension to versification and good language, than he is in that which he makes, in this dedication, to proper spirit, as he calls it, and fellow-dignity; for we never, in so few lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... sojourning at a favourite watering-place—always crowded during the season—and where Mr Combermere, a rich citizen, could join his family every week, and inhale a breath of pure air. Charles did not particularly like the Combermeres. Mrs Combermere was a fussy woman, full of absurd pretension, and with a weakness for forming aristocratic acquaintance, which had more than once led her into extravagance, ending in disappointment and mortification. The Misses Combermere inherited their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... Christian can harbour a money-getting spirit, or be concerned in an extensive accumulation of wealth? If a Quaker therefore should go into the common road, and fall down before the idol mammon, like any other ordinary person, how can the world give him any pretension but ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the correspondence." "Else what follows?" answered Ferdinand, with a cool and temperate voice. "My resentment and immediate defiance," replied the other; "for the only alternative I propose is, to forego your design upon that lady, or to decide our pretension by ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... white brick castle, with its paltry half-dozen acres, entered by lodges of the utmost pretension, and his coach-houses full of flashy carriages, with the family coat-of-arms(!) upon each, I thought the whole place one of the most contemptible patches of snobbery on this fair earth; and I was glad my father's toil-bleared eyes were hid in the grave, so that they ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... was relieved; voice, look, and manner, all showed that the knightly soul was in him, and that he had every quality of the gentleman, especially the hatred of pretension, which made him retain the title of English ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Antipodes, heretofore unknown, and for having thus enlarged for writers the field of study. I am proud to have shown them the way by collecting these facts which, as you will see, are without pretension; not only because I am unable to adorn my subject more ornately, but also because I have never thought to write as a professional historian. I tell a simple story by means of letters, written freely to give pleasure to certain persons whose invitations it would have been difficult for me to ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... action by Slipper, Rohan's son, who plays the part of clown. It is not strange that the impartial critic summed up the review with the remark that "the atmosphere of history was evidently too pure and cool for Greene's taste." The play is a romance from beginning to end; it has no pretension to the character of an historical drama. Mr. Dyce says of it: "From what source our author derived the materials of this strange fiction I have not been able to discover; nor could Mr. David Laing of Edinburg, who is so profoundly versed in the ancient literature of ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... summoned to defend themselves in the Papal Court. From that moment the supremacy of the Papal law over the law of the land became a great question in which the lesser question of provisors merged. The pretension of the Court of Avignon was met in 1353 by a statute which forbade any questioning of judgements rendered in the King's Courts or any prosecution of a suit in foreign courts under pain of outlawry, perpetual imprisonment, or banishment from the land. It was this act of Praemunire—as it ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... be rich or poor, or whatever position or pretension be attributed to you, the fees of the universal triumvirate are put down specifically in black and white among the other charges on your bill. As I hope these notes may convey some useful information to Americans who may be about to visit England for the first time, it may be of some use to them ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Pretension is a kind of velvet cloak I wear to hide my real self from view, And yet where'er I meet with other folk I always find they wear ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... of interest is the darga, or tomb of a famous Mahommedan saint named Mayud-uddin. It is situated at the foot of the Taragarh mountain, and consists of a block of white marble buildings without much pretension to architectural beauty. To this place the emperor Akbar, with his empress, performed a pilgrimage on foot from Agra in accordance with the terms of a vow he had made when praying for a son. The large pillars erected at intervals of two miles the whole way, to mark the daily ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... history run backwards, to raze to its foundations the whole social and intellectual structure that has been erected by generations of corrupt and selfish men. Everything by which the civilised man differs from some theoretical pretension is tainted with a kind of original sin. Political institutions, as they exist, are conveniences for enabling the rich to rob the poor, and churches contrivances by which priests make ignorance and superstition play into the hands of selfish ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... discovery was disputed by Hadr. Valesius, the historiographer to the French Court, who was of course jealous that any one else should know more about the origins of the French monarchy than he did. His pretension, however, was easily refuted by Henschenius, who showed that he had himself discovered this derelict king twelve years before Valesius turned his thoughts to the subject, having published in 1654 a dissertation upon him distinct ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst E'en the Giver in one gift.—Behold, I could love if I durst! But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake God's own speed in the one way of love: I ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... ratification. I communicate at the same time such papers as bear any material relation to the subject, together with a map on which is sketched the northern limit of the cession, rather to give a general idea than with any pretension to exactness, which our present knowledge of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... takes credit to himself for not having attempted to do so. These are James Payn, William Black, and Sir Walter Besant. Mr. Payn was an extremely agreeable person with a great talent for amusing, the measure of which he perhaps took pretty early—consoling himself for a total absence of high pretension by a perhaps not quite genuine affectation of good-natured but distinctly Philistine cynicism, and a half serious, half affected belief that other men's delight in their schools, their universities, the great classics ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... meadows and plough lands. The manor house, still bearing the name of the Moat House, was near the old church in the meadows, and entirely surrounded with its own moat. It must have been a house of some pretension in the sixteenth century, for there is a handsome double staircase, a rough fresco in one room, and in the lowest there was a panel over the fireplace, with a painting representing apparently a battle between Turks and Austrians. The ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... preacher and his orderly congregation; while tortoises, a dodo, and other animals, wander about, heedless of the presence of man. This is the first engraving of the dodo, and, judging from more pictures of greater pretension, by no means a bad likeness; indeed, the whole sketch bears strong evidence of its having been taken from nature. In the letter-press, the walghvogel is described as a large bird, the size of a swan, with a huge head furnished with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... p. 90. The subsequent quotations are from the same source but I have sometimes slightly modified them and compared them with the original, though I have no pretension to be ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... O man! in whatever station thou findest thyself, the routine I have described for thee, to obtain that happiness to which thou hast an indispensable right to challenge pretension. Let the sensations of humanity interest thee for the condition of other men, who are thy fellow creatures; let thine heart have commisseration for their misfortunes: let thy generous hand spontaneously ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... rules for the behavior of any man who has the faintest pretension to being a gentleman, is that never by word or gesture must he compromise a woman; he never, therefore, writes a letter that can be construed, even by a lawyer, as damaging to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... actors are understood to provide their own attire. Moreover, there is now little varying of the programme, and, in consequence, little demand upon the stock wardrobe of the playhouse. Still, when in theatres of any pretension, entertainments in the nature of spectacles or pantomimes are in course of preparation, there is much stir in the wardrobe department. There are bales of cloth to be converted into apparel for the supernumeraries, yards and yards of gauze and muslin for the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... built in the form of a cross, as is, I believe, invariably the case with every Catholic church of any pretension. At its northern end are two towers, and at its southern is the celebrated chapel of Henry VII. This chapel is an addition, which, allowing for a vast difference in the scale, resembles, in its general appearance, a school, or vestry-room, attached to the end of one of our own churches. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the same thing. Upon becoming thoroughly familiar with the matter, I confirmed the said governmental acts, enacted by the Audiencia and by Don Juan Nino de Tavora. Nevertheless, from this they have stirred up this pretension, trying the subterfuge of having recourse to the Audiencia for an affair of justice—where they are admitted without these same auditors heeding that they have [already] cast their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... gentleman commenced an address to me in French. It has always been to me a source of sorrow that my parents did not teach me the French language, and this deficiency on my part has given rise to an incredible amount of supercilious overbearing pretension on the part of Judkins—who after all can hardly do more than translate a correspondent's letter. I do not believe that he could have understood that Arab's oration, but at any rate I did not. He went on to the end, however, speaking for some three or four minutes, and then again he bowed. ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... an absence of pretension about him. Nothing of the born-to-command air, but insensibly you find yourself believing in him, following him. I believe even Fielding finds that as well. When Drake first came back I used to stand up for him—well, because, perhaps, I had a reason of my own. I am ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... some secret aperture, he returns as quickly through another equally unseen passage. Upon an average, I set his bibliomaniacal peregrinations down at the rate of a full French league per day. It is the absence of all pretension and quackery—the quiet, unobtrusive manner in which he opens his well-charged battery of information upon you—but, more than all, the glorious honours which are due to him, for having assisted to rescue the book treasures of the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... became thereby entitled to the immunity which belongs to American vessels, they might well be reproached with assuming a position which would go far towards shielding crimes upon the ocean from punishment; but they advance no such pretension, while they concede that, if in the honest examination of a vessel sailing under American colours, but accompanied by strongly-marked suspicious circumstances, a mistake is made, and she is found to be entitled to the flag she bears, ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... 'Proposals for Christian Union' is sure to be distinguished by an excellent spirit. The 'Greek Church,' a Sketch, is well put together; and, though slight, will be found to contain as much real information as many a book of greater size and more pretension."—The Guardian. ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... and adopted in connection with the other. If the power necessary to this system of improvement is included under either branch of this grant, I should suppose that it was the first rather than the second. The pretension to it, however, under that branch has never been set up. In support of the claim under the second no reason has been assigned which appears to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of the outdoors, E. W. Redfield holds an enviable position in the field of American art. He is the painter par excellence, without making any pretension at being anything else. The joy of putting paint on canvas to suggest a relatively small number of things which make up the great outdoor country, like skies, distance, land foregrounds, is his chosen task. He is the most direct painter we have. With a heavily loaded brush, without ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... petulantly, "and am I to be kept waiting forever? You were a thought quicker in obeying my caprices yesterday. Get up, you muddy lout, and let us kill each other with some pretension of adroitness." ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... allowable, as an improvement on them all. Although evidently designed in one sense for a denomination, they have also intended that it shall answer in some measure the demands of a liberal and progressive Christianity—a Christianity, under whatever name or pretension found, that would diffuse Christ's spirit and do his works of truth and ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... further I ask not from you.' 'And do you think, sir,' cried my lord, almost screaming with passion, 'that upon that beggarly pittance you shall go forth to dishonour more than it is yet dishonoured the name of my ancient house? Do you think, sir, that that name to which you have no pretension, though the law iniquitously grants it you, shall be sullied either with trade or robbery? for to one or the other you must necessarily be driven.' 'I foresaw your speech, my lord, and am prepared with an answer. Far be it from me to thrust myself into any family, the head of which thinks proper ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... way unjust. The nothings, or somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and they are presented without the semblance of pomp or pretension. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... in the absence of all control over the subject of African slavery, are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaical pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for other men's sins. [Laughter.] Who gave them a right to decide that it is a sin? By what standard do they measure ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... Proem. p.3 Dr. Middleton (Free Inquiry, p. 96, &c.) observes, that as this pretension of all others was the most difficult to support by art, it was the soonest given up. The observation suits his hypothesis. * Note: This passage of Irenaeus contains no allusion to the gift of tongues; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... school register as Honore Balzac, and that his parents at that time called themselves M. and Mme. Balzac. Occasionally, however, as early as 1822, in letters to his sister Honore insists on the particle "de," and all his life he claimed to be a member of a very old Gaulish family—a pretension which gave his enemies a famous opportunity for ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... toy-temple a happy production, the service would be rendered by the second-rate boulevard that conducts to it, adorned with inferior cafs and tobacco-shops. Here, in a respectable recess, surrounded by vulgar habitations, and with the theater, of a classic pretension, opposite, stands the small "square house," so called because it is much longer than it is broad. I saw it first in the evening, in the vague moonlight, which made it look as if it were cast in bronze. Stendhal says, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... old heresy of human merit. It clad its proud self in the silver robe of humility, by professing to possess only an imperfect degree of qualification for the reception of God's grace. Grace of condignity, on the other hand, put itself on an equality with the Divine gift, by its pretension to possess that qualification ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... would soon be realized, were it not that the secret proceedings of this dangerous man have long been as secretly watched?—Ah!" sneered Father d'Aigrigny, with a smile of irony and triumph, "you wish to be a second Sixtus V., do you? And, not content with this audacious pretension, you mean, if successful, to absorb our Company in the Papacy, even as the Sultan has absorbed the Janissaries. Ah! You would make us your stepping-stone to power! And you have thought to humiliate and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... deeply wooded spot on a side road stood the little house to which John and James Zabel had removed when their business on the docks had terminated. There was no other dwelling of greater or lesser pretension on the road, which may account for the fact that none of the persons now approaching it had been in that neighbourhood for years, though it was by no means a long walk from the village in which they ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... insinuates itself. In certain circumstances, ungodly men take credit for the distinct avowal of their ungodliness, and count on it as a merit. They are not, indeed, submissive in heart and life to the will of God; but they do not tell a lie about the matter; they make no pretension. The frank confession, that they are not good, seems to serve some men as a substitute for goodness. By comparing themselves complacently with fellow-sinners of a different class, they contrive to rivet the fatal error more firmly on their own hearts. Observing among their neighbours ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... especially desperate attempts at truces or compromises, such as always appear when the victory of any science has become absolutely sure. Typical among the earliest of these may be mentioned the effort of Carl von Raumer in 1819. With much pretension to scientific knowledge, but with aspirations bounded by the limits of Prussian orthodoxy, he made a laboured attempt to produce a statement which, by its vagueness, haziness, and "depth," should obscure the real ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Foretdechene were rich in monster sheets of looking-glass; and in wandering discontentedly about the room Diana Paget saw herself reflected many times in all her shabbiness. It was only very lately she had discovered that she had some pretension to good looks; for her father, who could not or would not educate her decently or clothe her creditably, took a very high tone of morality in his paternal teaching, and, in the fear that she might one day grow vain of her beauty, had taken care ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... father, the Marshal, was famous for it at the Court of Louis Philippe; and it was something to be thought stingy at the Court of Louis Philippe! These great Corsican families are all alike; nothing but meanness and pretension! They will eat chestnuts, such as the pigs would not touch, off plate with their arms on it. And as for the Duchess—why, she makes her steward account to her in person! They take the meat up to her every morning; and every evening (this is from a person ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... reputed a stranger despite his pretension to the title of a citizen, could only have a strange god for his patron ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... aristocracy is to be desired, "the rule of the best," at American entertainments, all aspirants for social distinction should try to propitiate those men who are being driven from the ballroom by the insolence and pretension of the lower elements of fashionable society. In Europe, the very qualities which make a man great in the senate, the field, or the chamber of commerce, give him a corresponding eminence in the social world. Many a gray-mustached veteran in ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... courteous, he is proud to a most sublime excess, and thinks every person to whom he speaks honoured beyond measure by his notice, nay, he does not even look at anybody without evidently displaying that such notice is more the effect of his benign condescension, than of any pretension on their part to deserve such a mark of his perceiving their existence. But you will think me mad about ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the conditions of success; and encouragement to be gained from a reliance on the ultimate victory of true principles. More than this can hardly be expected from me, even on the supposition that I have ascertained the real conditions. No one, it is to be presumed, will imagine that I can have any pretension of giving recipes for Literature, or of furnishing power and talent where nature has withheld them. I must assume the presence of the talent, and then assign the conditions under which that talent can alone achieve real success, no man is made a discoverer by learning the principles of scientific ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Ahasuerus and Esther. This time Luciana had done better for herself. As the fainting, sinking queen she had put out all her charms, and for the attendant maidens who were supporting her, she had cunningly selected pretty, well-shaped figures, not one among whom, however, had the slightest pretension to be compared with herself. From this picture, as from all the rest, Ottilie remained excluded. To sit on the golden throne and represent the Zeus-like monarch, Luciana had picked out the finest and handsomest man of the party, so ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... difficulties will do no longer. They shake their sage heads at such men as Clarke, Paley, Butler, and declare that such arguments as theirs will not satisfy them.,—We are glad to admit that all this vague pretension is now but rarely displayed with the scurrilous spirit of that elder unbelief against which the long series of British apologists for Christianity arose between 1700 and 1750; But there is often in it an arrogance as real, though not in so offensive a form. Sometimes the ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... a beauty, how charming! How delicious when one meets with effusion de coeur: a young lady, too, who speaks pure English, not a leash of languages at once; and cultivated, too, your friend is, for one does not like ignorance, if one could have knowledge without pretension—so hard to find the golden mean!—and if one could find it, one ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... here alone together, as poor as Job and merely a man and a woman—let me conjure you to forgive the weakness and to repose in the love. Do not mistake me!" he cried, seeing her about to speak, and imposing silence with uplifted hand. "My love is changed; it is purged of any conjugal pretension; it does not ask, does not hope, does not wish for a return in kind. You may forget for ever that part in which you found me so distasteful, and accept without embarrassment the affection of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brilliancy unheard of in the old carnivorous days. Unhappily snobbery still prevails, "every class pretending to be richer and better than they are—small officials, officers, landowners, all pretending to be millionaires, and doing their pretension shabbily."] ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... wrote that the husband would recover, and that she would die before him; and she did die not long after. In short, this dummy was a regular prophet, and his predictions were implicitly believed by all who attended upon him. In his case there was no pretension to visions, the form which he allowed his gift to assume was that of intuition. Some few men in the village suspected the dummy's honesty, and thought that he heard and assiduously and cunningly picked up knowledge of the parties; but ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... people, a national government possessing unity and power. The confederation had been merely an agreement "between the States," styled, "a league of firm friendship." Found to be feeble and inoperative through the pretension of State rights, it gave way to the constitution which, instead of a "league," created a "union," in the name of the people of the United States. Beginning with these inspiring and enacting words, "We, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... came to an end, I had made Clara acquainted with my knowledge of Cumberland's former delinquencies, as well as the reputation in which he was now held by such of his associates as had any pretension to the title of gentlemen, and added my conviction, that, when once these facts were placed before Mr. Vernor, he must see that he could not, consistently with his duty as guardian, allow his ward to marry a man of such character. Cumberland had no doubt contrived to keep his uncle in ignorance ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... parties of Indians who ventured upon it, and made them give up game killed in "his territory." They came to the mission and complained about it, but they never withstood the usurper. It ought to be added that it always appeared more as the making good of a practical joke than as a serious pretension, but the point is—the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... sovereigns, as well as in the mutual interests of our own and of the governments with which our relations are most intimate, a pleasing guaranty that the harmony so important to the interests of their subjects as well as of our citizens will not be interrupted by the advancement of any claim or pretension upon their part to which our honor would not permit us to yield. Long the defender of my country's rights in the field, I trust that my fellow-citizens will not see in my earnest desire to preserve peace with foreign powers any indication that their rights will ever be sacrificed or the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... my Happiness (return'd Valentine) than what you shall please to set down to me: But is it necessary or convenient that I should know 'em first? It is, (answer'd Sir Philip) let us sit, and you shall understand 'em.—I am very sensible (continu'd he) of your sincere and honourable Affection and Pretension to my Niece, who, perhaps, is as dear to me as my own Child could be, had I one; nor am I ignorant how averse Sir George your Father is to your Marriage with her, insomuch that I am confident he would disinherit you immediately ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... with some pretension, in a doublet of purple velvet with sleeves of a lighter color. His short, full trousers were garnished at the knee with immense roses; his shrunken nether limbs were cased in silken hose of a pale lavender hue, and silver buckles fastened the tufted purple ribbons on his shoes. ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... general and vague—a species of pattern songs—being embodiments of some general feeling, or reflection, but lacking that sufficient reference to some season or occurrence which would justify their appearing, and take away from them the aspect of pretension and display. ...
— Poems • George P. Morris |
