"Pretension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... course to exist amongst the positive objects of every boarding-school. Yet so far are the laws and arrangements of existing schools from at all aiding and promoting this object, that their very utmost pretension is—that they do not injure it. Much injustice and oppression, for example, take place in the intercourse of all boys with each other; and in most schools 'the stern edict against bearing tales,' causes this to go unredressed (p. 78): on the other ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... and nothing else. Something he had not known in his life before. Previously there had been always some personal quality, some sort of personal tenderness. But here, none. She did not seem to want it. She seemed to hate it, indeed. No, all he felt was stark, naked desire, without a single pretension. True enough, his last experience had been a warning to him. His desire and himself likewise had broken rather disastrously under the proving. But not finally broken. He was ready again. And with all the sheer powerful insolence of desire he looked forward to the evening. For ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... "I make no pretension to eloquence, Mr. Townsend. I was merely recalling to Miss Hamlyn's attention the beautiful lines of our immortal poet, Owen Meredith, which run, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... downwards into the temperate latitudes, that the desire for aggrandizement raged. The Portuguese considered that the natural southern frontier of their great colony was the River Plate. The Spaniards, having already possession of the northern bank, fiercely resented any such pretension, with the result that the Banda Oriental, by which name the Republic of Uruguay is still locally known, as well as the southern part of the Province of Paraguay, became the scene of many battles. It may be said that the warfare between the two nations continued ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... been impartial and scientific, this trifling difference might easily have been overcome and the dangers of reckless breeding insisted upon. But beneath all this wordy pretension and economic jargon, we detect another aim. That is the unconscious dramatization of human society into the "class conflict." Nothing was overlooked that might sharpen and accentuate this "conflict." Marx ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... fabric of civil authority in any independent form. Accordingly, we are satisfied that the claim to a spiritual jurisdiction, in collision with the claims of the state, would not probably have offered itself to the ambition of the agitators, otherwise than as a measure ancillary to their earlier pretension of appointing virtually all parish clergymen. The one claim was found to be the integration or sine qua non complement of the other. In order to sustain the power of appointment in their own courts, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... land on the top and wood upon the slope, as well as various 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 ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... only by the river Touques, is a place of greater pretension even than Trouville. It is, however, quite in its infancy; it was planned for a handsome and extensive watering-place, but the death of the Duc de Morny has stopped its growth,—large tracts of land, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... contentions, thou perhaps dost not dream that now a contest exists between—thee and—me! But it will infallibly be so, if thou, as often has happened before, wilt call that a Novel which I have called Sketches, and which have no pretension to the severe connexion and development of the novel; although, to be sure, they be connected. If thou wilt, on the contrary, regard them—for example—as blades of grass, or as flowers upon a meadow molehill, which wave in the wind upon their ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... knocked. It was opened 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 half hidden by ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... public matters. My father, a grave and serious man, regards little else than the latter; but I, a very ignorant young girl, may be permitted to follow the dictates of my fancy, and the capricious guidance of my imagination; at least there shall be neither pretension ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the middle size, a brunette with expressive blue eyes; and her face, though without pretension to beauty, was uncommonly interesting. She had a fine figure, a majestic and dignified air, rather attractive than intimidating, and united with such numberless graces, even in trifles, that I have never seen her equal ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... regarded as of purely Jewish origin; the ancient Egyptians likewise believed themselves to be "the peculiar people specially loved by the gods."[51] But in the hands of the Jews this belief became a pretension to the exclusive enjoyment of divine favour. According to the Zohar, "all Israelites will have a part in the future world,"[52] and on arrival there will not be handed over like the goyim (or non-Jewish races) to the hands of the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... equal to all this. He could make hard sacrifices for himself, and, in fact, did reduce his own comforts to those of a poor bachelor, but he could not find in his heart to refuse everything to his family; so that although they made no pretension now to anything like an aristocratic position, my uncle still found himself to be living rather beyond his means, and the expense of establishing his sons and daughters in England being now imminent, and avoidable only in one way, he spent days, and I fear ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Yet the time appears to be gone by when men of great original gifts could find satisfaction in reproducing the thoughts and words of others; and the work, if done at all, must now be done by writers of inferior pretension. Among these, however, there are still degrees; and the experience which I have gained since I first adventured as a poetical translator has made me doubt whether I may not be ill-advised in resuming the experiment under any circumstances. Still, an experiment of this kind ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... and intersecting each other in the head, which is filled with nearly lozenge-shaped lights, but all without foliations,) is a stone bearing the date of 1640. In the south wall of the tower of the same church (which is low, heavy, and clumsily built, without any pretension to architectural design) is a stone to denote the period of its erection, which bears the date of 1655. Pulpits, communion-tables, church chests, poor-boxes, and pewing of the latter part of the sixteenth and of the seventeenth century, also very frequently exhibit, in figures carved on them, ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... carried the day. They went down to breakfast, and during the meal Hugh would speak to nobody. When the gloomy meal was over he took his pipe and walked out to the cottage. It was an untidy-looking, rickety place, small and desolate, with a pretension about it of the lowest order, a pretension that was evidently ashamed of itself. There was a porch. And the one sitting-room had what the late Mr. Soames had always called his bow window. But the porch looked as though it were tumbling down, and the bow window looked as though it were tumbling ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... get from that distant pinnacle of the mode, and the lower down they spread among the ranks of society. I thought, as I looked from one to another, I had never seen anything so ill in taste, so outraged in style, so unspeakable in ugliness as well as in pretension. I supposed then it was the fashion principally which was to blame. Since then, I have seen the same fashion on one of those heads that never wear anything but in good style. It gathered a great wealth of rich hair into ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mind it is evident, that nothing less than the ambitious and far-reaching pretension to compass these objects of vital concern, is either directly essayed or necessarily implied in the positions attempted in the argument for ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... nevertheless to meet him in the wood paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused about his presence like the garment of a Shining One; and he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alike as if expecting to receive more than he could impart. And in truth, the heart of many an ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... name of surgery, in times past, and now wrought by men called doctors and by cub-boys called students. The statesmen in politics are realizing this. The demagogues and opportunists in Legislatures are, too. So are the men of mercy, conscience, and vision in medicine itself. The impact of banded pretension in trade-unionized medical schools and societies is resented and resisted by teachers and practitioners, who are becoming ashamed not to be free, and who are abetting those who ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the subject under discussion, and partly from the strength of his emotions, "that any cavalier could have regarded it otherwise. It seems to me that to betray a friend's honor is a far blacker thing than to betray his life—and surely no man with one pretension to honor, would attempt to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... here to forestall detection, by conceding that this brief play has no pretension to "literary" quality. It is a piece in its inception designed for, and in its making swayed by, the requirements of the little theatre stage. The one virtue which anybody anywhere could claim for The Jewel Merchants is the fact that it "acts" easily ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... compulsory strain of an ulterior motive—declared or unjustifiably implied—into new contact with a royal maiden, whom a qualified judge described as possessing "a keen and quick apprehension, being straightforward, singularly pure-hearted, and free from all vanity and pretension." In the estimation of this sagacious well-wisher, she was fitted beforehand "to do ample justice both to the head and heart of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Ranny's father's eyes now. They turned to him for reassurance. As if in some final act of humility and contrition, he unbared and abased himself, he laid down the pretension of integrity. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... graces of his character:—"A pure and just man, he knew always how to appreciate those who dissented from him about forms of government, because he could discover in them the true love of nationality, to which Italy aspires. Wise without pretension, beneficent without ostentation, chaste in deed and word, exquisitely tender-hearted, he tempered the harsh lessons of experience by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... 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 collector of antiques has quite a peculiar way of handling ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... 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. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the Colonial houses of Philadelphia might perhaps be considered incomplete that failed to include the quaint little two and a half story building at Number 229 Arch Street, with its tiny store on the street floor and dwelling on the floors above. Devoid of all architectural pretension and showing the decay of passing years, it is nevertheless typical of the modest shop and house of its day, and it interests the visitor still more as the home of Betsy Ross, who for many years was popularly supposed to have made the first ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... staircase with bright brass bannisters led them to an ample landing-place, on which opened a door, now closed and by which sate a boy who collected the tickets of those who would enter it. The portal was of considerable dimensions and of architectural pretension; it was painted of a bright green colour, the panels gilt. Within the pediment, described in letters of flaming gas, you read, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... well-developed forehead announces the power of his intellect. His voice is full and sonorous. His attitude is dignified, and his gesticulation is full of noble simplicity. He is a man of lofty reason, natural, and without pretension, always master of himself, brilliant in the art of exposing and of abstracting. Few persons can handle a subject with which they are familiar better than Mr. Douglass. There is a kind of eloquence issuing from the depth of the soul, as from a spring, rolling along its copious floods, sweeping all ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... itself in a position conveniently close to the General, to whom, moreover, we had the honor of an introduction; and he bowed, on his horseback, with a good deal of dignity and martial courtesy, but no airs nor fuss nor pretension beyond what his character ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... incident to that kind of duty, and also as an indemnification for the consequent loss of fees at the Irish Bar. Yet now, in 1843, having ceased to attend his duty in Parliament, Mr. O'Connell could no longer claim in that senatorial character. Such a pretension would be too gross for the understanding even of a Connaught peasant. And in that there was a great loss. For the allegation of a Parliamentary warfare, under the vague idea of pushing forward good bills for Ireland, or retarding bad ones, had been a pleasant and easy ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... window in the red-tiled roof of an old house of the Sheraton period, immediately opposite the famous "Chequers Inn." The house itself is very interesting; it has evidently been, in its early days, of considerable pretension, but has been an ironmonger's shop since 1804. On going within to make inquiries about the vane, I gathered that it is at least 120 years old, probably much more, the oldest part of the house being contemporary with the "Chequers." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... thing in which many a man still seems to delight! How admirably did these bands of rich lace contrast with the silken coats or the polished cuirasses of their wearers! how truly aristocratic was their appearance! how entirely without effort, without pretension, and yet how very distinctive of the type of their wearer! But you will say, if we fail in the matter of white cravats, surely we excel in that of black-silk ones and brocaded stocks! We might excel, we allow; but we do not know how to wear these things. We ought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Gloria come in. Mrs. Clandon is between forty and fifty, with a slight tendency to soft, sedentary fat, and a fair remainder of good looks, none the worse preserved because she has evidently followed the old tribal matronly fashion of making no pretension in that direction after her marriage, and might almost be suspected of wearing a cap at home. She carries herself artificially well, as women were taught to do as a part of good manners by dancing ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... movements, a stranger would have been disposed to call her at a distance a woman of commanding presence; but never, after he had approached near enough to behold her face. Every thought of artifice, of practised effect, or of haughty pretension, fled before the childlike innocence, the sweet feminine timidity, and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst its expression was purely gentle and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the old graveyard, in the midst of which stands the kirk. The edifice is wholly roofless, but the side-walls and gable-ends are quite entire, tho portions of them are evidently modern restorations. Never was there a plainer little church, or one with smaller architectural pretension; no New England meetinghouse has more simplicity in its very self, tho poetry and fun have clambered and clustered so wildly over Kirk Alloway that it is difficult to see it as it actually exists. By the by, I do not understand why ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... excitements of one sort or other, to make it pleasurable to them. The spirit of the Gospel is a meek, humble, gentle, unobtrusive spirit. It doth not cry nor lift up its voice in the streets, unless called upon by duty so to do, and then it does it with pain. Display, pretension, conflict, are unpleasant to it. What then is to be thought of persons who are ever on the search after novelties to make religion interesting to them; who seem to find that Christian activity cannot be kept up without unchristian party-spirit, or ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... such a connection—had known the ludicrous surprise, the convulsion of inward disgust and contempt, that seized upon many of the persons who were present,—had guessed what a sudden flash of light it threw on the Dutch gilding, the pinchbeck, the shabby, perking pretension belonging to certain social layers,—so inherent in their whole mode of being, that the holiest offices of religion cannot exclude its impertinences,—the good man would have given his marriage-fee twice ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... I disclaim all pretension of right on the part of the President officially to inquire into or call in question the reasons of the Senate for rejecting any nomination whatsoever. As the President is not responsible to them for the reasons which induce him to make a nomination, so they ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... anything remains to be done. There is one point to which attention must be directed. No effort should be spared to castigate and blast the whole idea of property in man, which is the corner-stone of the rebel pretension and the constant assumption of the partisans of slavery, or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out and there will be no sympathy with the rebellion, and there will be no such abomination as slave-hunting, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... 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 ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... no proof. Man can never, therefore, from natural incompetency, possess an absolutely complete science. . . . But geometry, while inferior in its aims, is absolutely certain within its limits. It neither defines everything, nor attempts to prove everything, and must, so far, yield its pretension to be an absolute science; but it sets out from things universally admitted as clear and constant, and is therefore perfectly true, because in consonance with nature. Its function is not to define things universally clear and understood, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... made to prop its crumbling walls or to stay the green ruin creeping over it. The fragment of its great eastern window, still standing, was its most imposing feature and showed that it had been a church of no mean architectural pretension. The locality, it would seem, was well supplied with abbeys, for Rievaulx is less than ten miles away, but we learned that Bylands was founded by monks from the former brotherhood and also from Furness Abbey in Lancashire. In the good ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... not laugh at me, you can put them into the Paris paper, even with my name. I shall honor myself in rendering this homage to Franklin, but on condition that you find the verses printable. As I make no pretension on account of them, I shall be perfectly content, if you reject ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... also some smaller, some greater, some more, some less famous Places where those 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 Art to reconcile Events to the Prediction, even after things ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... essential element in any attempt to reconstruct the broken and scattered annals of our planet. It would not be just to find fault with Dr. Trench's books for lacking a scientific treatment to which they make no pretension, but they may fairly be charged with smelling a little too much of the shop. There is a faint odor of the sermon-case about every page, and we learn to dread, sometimes to skip, the inevitable homily, as we do the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... is my pretension that I know him very well!' I replied. 'I must speak to Ronald first—not ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proper to enter now upon any prolonged account of the origin, of alphabetic writing. There is, however, propriety, if not necessity, for the present writer, when making any remarks under this heading and under some others in this paper indicating special lines of research, to disclaim all pretension to being a Sinologue or Egyptologist, or even profoundly versed in Mexican antiquities. His partial and recently commenced studies only enable him to present suggestions for the examination of scholars. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... best-informed people in Europe are our competitors; on the west, an energetic offshoot of our own stock, grown bigger than its parent, enters upon the struggle possessed of natural resources to which we can make no pretension, and with every prospect of soon possessing that cheap labour by which they may be effectually utilised. Many circumstances tend to justify the hope that we may hold our own if we are careful to "organise victory." But to those who reflect seriously on the prospects of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... slave of interest, but with him whom a wild opinion of the dignity of perseverance, in whatever cause, disposes to pursue every injury with unwearied and perpetual resentment; with him whose vanity inclines him to consider every man as a rival in every pretension; with him whose airy negligence puts his friend's affairs or secrets in continual hazard, and who thinks his forgetfulness of others excused by his inattention to himself; and with him whose inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of choice through varieties of friendship, and who ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... speech, men of science or men of handicraft, subjects of a monarchy or citizens of a republic; to them all it says, Hearken and obey—walk by faith—lead holy lives—fulfil all righteousness. Even if this be called by the unbeliever the pretension or the arrogance of Christianity, he must admit that the claim which it sets up is as broad as human existence. Wherever the religion of the New Testament can reach a man, over him it asserts its authority. ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... have been very good to her. She was not only a really beautiful girl, she was, for her age, a distinguished girl,—one of the sort who seemed to do everything better than any one else, and with a lack of self-consciousness or pretension. Every one admired her. Some of her comrades would have loved her if she had given them the chance. But no one could ever get intimate with her. She came and went from school quite alone, in the habit of the American girl of those days before the chaperon became the correct thing. She was ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... most populous city in New Jersey, is separated from New York, of which it is practically a part, only by the Hudson River; has no pretension to beauty, but is a busy railway centre; has very varied manufactures, including sugar, flour, machinery, and chemicals, extensive shipping interests, and great trade in iron, coal, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... maid, slept across the hall from Susan, in a closet so dirty that no one could have risked in it any article of clothing with the least pretension to cleanness. It was no better, no worse than the lodgings of more than two hundred thousand New Yorkers. Its one narrow opening, beside the door, gave upon a shaft whose odors were so foul that she kept ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... went to M. de Voltaire's. He was not to be seen, but Madame Denis consoled me for his absence. She had wit, learning without pretension, taste, and a great hatred for the King of Prussia, whom she called a villain. She asked about my beautiful housekeeper, and congratulated me on having married her to a respectable man. Although I feel now that she was quite right, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... account him a mean dishonoured poltroon, who gave to the fear of meeting Captain M'Intyre the explanation he had refused to the calm and handsome expostulations of Mr. Lesley. M'Intyre's insolent behaviour to himself personally, the air of pretension which he assumed towards Miss Wardour, and the extreme injustice, arrogance, and incivility of his demands upon a perfect stranger, seemed to justify him in repelling his rude investigation. In short, he formed the resolution which might have been ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... France could 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 and securities as Her Majesty thought she had a right ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... 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. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... instantly promise to drop 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 ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... his desire to prevent anything like angry feeling arising between Okiok and the wizard. Of course the company, as well as Rooney, greeted the proposal with pleasure, for although Simek did not often tell of his own exploits, and made no pretension to be a graphic story-teller, they all knew that whatever he undertook he did passably well, while his irrepressible good-humour and hilarity threw a sort of halo round ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... looked steadfastly at me. Few men have appeared to me to possess in the same degree the art of reading at the first glance the thought of other men. He saw in an instant that, notwithstanding my celebrity, I was simple in my manners and void of pretension, and as he seemed desirous of making a favourable impression on me, he assumed the tone most likely to attain his end. I have never beheld anyone more calm, more simple, more mild, or less ostentatious in appearance; nothing about him indicated the feeling of ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... conversation seems to have been taken by Mackenzie, who, as we know from Scott, was always "the life of company with anecdotes and fun," and related on this occasion many stories of second sight in the Highlands, and especially of the eccentric Caithness laird, who used the pretension as a very effectual instrument for maintaining authority and discipline among his tenantry. They spoke much too about the poetesses,—Hannah More, and Mrs. Charlotte Smith, and Mrs. John Hunter, the great surgeon's wife; but it appears to have still been Mackenzie who bore ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... manner in which it had been performed. No one knew better than he that, with the single exception of Sir Samuel Baker, who was far too prudent to take up a thankless task, and to remove the mountain of blunders others had committed, there was no man living who had the smallest pretension to say that he could cope with the Soudan difficulty, save Charles Gordon. Yet, when his name is suggested, he treats the matter as one that cannot be entertained. There is not a word as to the obvious propriety of suggesting Gordon's name, but the objection of a puppet-prince ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... subservience to the highest. His books are wholesome, full of sweetness and charm, of humor without any sting, of amusement without any stain; and their more solid qualities are marred by neither pedantry nor pretension." ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... strawberries and cream, he suggested that the port wine should be taken out into the garden. In the farther corner of Mr. Neefit's grounds, at a distance of about twenty yards from the house, was a little recess called "the arbour," admonitory of earwigs, and without much pretension to comfort. It might hold three persons, but on this occasion Mr. Neefit was minded that two only should enjoy the retreat. Polly carried out the decanter and glasses, but did not presume to stay there for a moment. She followed her mother into the gorgeous drawing-room, where Mrs. Neefit ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... 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 them, and to work ourselves back to them, and to fight ourselves back to them, and to strip ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... their costume as the peasants themselves. About a dozen of them wore the republican jacket known by the name of "la carmagnole." Others, well-to-do mechanics, no doubt, were clothed from head to foot in one color. Those who had most pretension to their dress wore swallow-tail coats or surtouts of blue or green cloth, more or less defaced. These last, evidently characters, marched in boots of various kinds, swinging heavy canes with the air and manner of those who take heart under misfortune. A few heads carefully powdered, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... turned on the two spies. He tongue-lashed them in Arabic. I could not follow it word for word. I gathered that they had hinted some suspicion as to the genuineness of Grim's pretension to be Staff-Captain Ali Mirza. He was rebuking them for it. They slunk away. One went and sat near the door we had entered ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... lords, and a thousand others, will be avoided by an easy tax; in favour of which I cannot but wonder, that it should be necessary to plead so long, since every nation, which has any pretension to civility or a regular government, will agree, that heavy imposts are not to be wantonly inflicted, and that severity is never to be practised till lenity ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... German principality. Now, having changed all that, and having forced the Knickerbockers from their old places of vantage, the plutocrats reign supreme. To a mind capable of being saddened by human materialism, pretension, braggadocio, it is all very much the same sort of affair. Our republic should be ashamed of an aristocracy founded on either money or birth, and that thousands of its citizens are not only unashamed of such systems, but really glory in them, is merely ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... gentlemen. One of the parties, however, when critically examined, did not seem, strictly speaking, to come under the species. He was a short, thick-set man, with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world. He was much over-dressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue neckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a flaunting tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His hands, large and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Asia could produce a better title to their possessions. Their right was founded in nature and Providence: it was the free and liberal gift of heaven to them, which no foreigner could claim any pretension to invade. Their lands they held by the first of all tenures, that of defending them with their lives. However, charters were granted to European intruders, from kings who claimed them on the foot of prior discovery; but neither the sovereigns ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... national culture, and are almost exclusively used at the present day; the first chiefly by writers not belonging to the Brahminical order, while those of the Urdu dialect follow Persian models. The writings in each, though numerous, and not without pretension, have little interest ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... over the 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 tell you: "Yass, de 'ouse is in'abit; ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... marries an heiress, he does not impale his arms with hers, as in the preceding examples, but bears them in an escutcheon of pretence in the centre of the shield, showing his pretension to her lands in consequence of his marriage with the lady who is legally entitled to them. The escutcheon of pretence is not used by the children of such marriage; they bear the arms of their father and mother quarterly, and so transmit them to posterity. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... Restigouche and St. John are not Atlantic rivers, because one flows into the Bay de Chaleurs and the other into the Bay of Fundy; yet neither falls into the river St. Lawrence. They would then find those highlands between the St. John and the Penobscot. There can not be a more arrogant pretension or palpable absurdity. Suppose the waters of both these rivers are excluded as flowing neither way, still the waters that flow each way are so far separated as to leave a tract of country which, if equally divided, would carry us far beyond the St. John. But ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... had come into possession of a patented 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 price ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the divine question which searches men and transpierces every false reputation. A fop may sit in any chair of the world nor be distinguished for his hour from Homer and Washington; but there need never be any doubt concerning the respective ability of human beings. Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to whom we are indebted for information on many of these points: 'teneva mal animo contra Spagna e pretension in Francia.' ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Lily, Purity of Heart Water Melon, Bulkiness Wax Plant, Susceptibility Wheat Stalks, Riches Whin, Anger Whortleberry, Treason Willow, creeping, Love forsaken Willow, Water, Freedom Willow, Weeping, Mourning Willow Herb, Pretension Woodbine, Fraternal Love Wormwood, Absence Xanthium, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... symbols indicate, deistic and anti-Christian. They openly shake off the control of all religion, and pretend to be in possession of a secret to make men better and happier than Christ, his apostles, and his Church have made them or can make them. "The pretension," says Professor Robertson, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... auxiliaries to the superior Estates in their contests with the Crown; and the new Parliament pursued the aims and the tactics of the old Great Council, with all the advantages conferred by an exclusive right to grant taxation. For more than two hundred years it was a popular assembly in form and in pretension alone. The most active members of the Lower House were drawn from the lower ranks of the territorial aristocracy; and the Commons were bold in their demands only when they could attack the prerogative behind the shield of a faction quartered in the House of Lords. But the alliance ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... a decisive authority, a judgment which may not be questioned, then the claim of authority in such a case, for any man, or set of men, is either a folly or a revelation. Such an authority is not human, but divine: if any man pretends to possess it, let him show God's clear warrant for his pretension, or he must be regarded as a ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... heath, with a few miserable hovels upon it, where they may worship God according to the root of the matter, and an old man with a blue bonnet, a fair-haired girl, and a little child would form the flower of his flock! Such is the pretension and the boast of this new Peter the Hermit, who would get rid of all we have done in the way of improvement on a state of barbarous ignorance, or still more barbarous prejudice, in order to begin again on a tabula rasa ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... name he found favor with the tailors, and bourgeoned forth a few days later in the best cloth the shops afforded, and strutted and plumed himself like a turkey-cock before Bertha, keeping up meanwhile a pretension of sympathy ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... surprise and variety, unsuited for the vocalist, but in perfect keeping with the character of the instrument. He invented the admirable harmonic progressions which have given a serious character to pages, which, in consequence of the lightness of their subject, made no pretension to any importance. But of what consequence is the subject? Is it not the idea which is developed through it, the emotion with which it vibrates, which expands, elevates and ennobles it? What tender melancholy, what ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... characterized by the rare mental and moral qualities which distinguish Jonathan Mayhew's, there can be little doubt that our politicians and statesmen would oppose the intrusion of parsons into affairs of state on the principle of self-preservation, and not on any arrogant pretension of superior sagacity, knowledge, and ability. In the power to inform the people of their rights and teach them their duties, we would be willing to pit one Mayhew against a score of Cushings and Rhetts, of Slidells and Yanceys. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... of Philip in the country, he had forfeited them by the violation of his oaths, by his tyrannical suppression of the charters of the land; while by his personal crimes he had lost all pretension to sit in judgment upon his fellow man. Was a people not justified in rising against authority when all their laws had been trodden under foot, "not once only, but a million of times?"—and was William of Orange, lawful husband of the virtuous ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and the last," i.e. Mohammed, who claimed (and claimed justly) to be the "Seal" or head and end of all Prophets and Prophecy. For note that whether the Arab be held inspired or a mere imposter, no man making the same pretension has moved the world since him. Mr. J. Smith the Mormon (to mention one in a myriad) made ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... woman could win from him; and looking back to their conversation at the Glacier House, she realised, night after night, in the silence of wakeful hours, the fulness of his confession, together with the strength of his recoil from any pretension ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Because the man himself was not sure of living seven days." "And why," asked Benaiah, "didst thou jeer when thou sawest the conjuror at his tricks?" "Because," said Ashmedai, "the man was at that very time sitting on a princely treasure, and he did not, with all his pretension, know ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... presently afterwards returned, ushering in a tall female very poorly dressed, yet with more pretension to decency and cleanliness than was usually combined with such coarse garments. The Lady of Avenel knew her figure the instant she presented herself. It was the fashion of the family, that upon every Sabbath, and on two evenings in the week besides, Henry Warden ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... ride, if riding it can be called, with their elbows uncouthly fastened to their sides as if by a rope, their hands at the pit of their stomachs, and both those hands, as heavy as a housemaid's, sawing the poor horse with curb and snaffle at once, while the whole body breathes pretension and affectation, and seems to say, "Look at me; I am on horseback! Be startled at that—as I am! and I have had lessons from a riding-master. He has taught me how a lady should ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... musician that ever delighted the ear of young or old in those days. I do not know that there was a piano in the Province. If there were any their number was so small that they could have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Now, every house in the land with any pretension to the ordinary comforts of life has either a piano or a melodeon, and every farmer's daughter of any position can run over the keys with as much ease and effect as a city belle. Passing along one of our streets not long since, I heard some one playing in a ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... charming," Lady de la Paule confessed. "Not the least pretension, and her clothes are marvellous. You are abominably severe, Etta. I am quite sure if she wanted to she could succeed in ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... of Reuilly consisted of two farms and of a house of some pretension, inhabited formerly by the maternal family of M. de Camors. He had never before seen this property when he reached it on the evening of a beautiful summer day. A long and gloomy avenue of elms, interlacing their thick branches, led to the dwelling-house, which was quite unequal to the imposing ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... confidence in herself she would be much less haughty. With this exception is there anywhere on earth a gentler, sweeter girl? Is there any who endures an affront with greater patience, any who is more afraid of annoying others? Is there any with less pretension, except in the matter of virtue? Moreover, she is not proud of her virtue, she is only proud in order to preserve her virtue, and if she can follow the guidance of her heart without danger, she caresses her lover himself. But her wise mother does not confide ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... walk—which is a good excuse for tired feet. The first prominent feature to meet the eye on land is a large square house, two stories high, located on a rocky eminence near the shore, and overlooking the entire town and harbor. Once it was a model dwelling of much pretension, with its spacious apartments, hard-wood six-inch plank floors, elaborately-carved decorations, stained-glass windows, and its amusement and refreshment halls. All betoken the former elegance of the Russian governor's home, which ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... interest, known as hysterical paralysis. It is usually only temporary, and is sometimes produced in singers whose nervous condition grows upon itself until the system passes into the trying disturbance diagnosed by the rudely critical public as "stage-fright." Artists of marked pretension have been compelled to abandon a public career because of this affliction. There are other examples of it even more difficult to understand. I have in mind a case of a singing-teacher in a conventual school, who was under a peculiar strain of preparation for the commencement ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... Physic of her boldness, Tell Skill it is pretension, Tell Charity of coldness, Tell Law it is contention; And as they do reply, So give them still ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and by the concentrated fires set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns[37] and pecuniary foundations,[38] though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit.[39] Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... parties—at which the conversation reaches heights of 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
... 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 doing works ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... they carefully reconnoitred the place from the cliff above it. There was a tower, and a small harbour with several small craft and boats at anchor in it, and two or three better sort of houses, besides numerous cottages and huts, and, at a little distance, a chateau of some pretension to architecture. They would have preferred a place where there were no gentlemen, who would naturally be less likely to believe their story. In other respects, they could not have desired to reach a more satisfactory locality. The cliffs appeared to be full of caves, in one of ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... Latin and English will allow;" and to be "printed for the use of schools, as well as of private gentlemen." A few moments' perusal of this work will satisfy the reader that it has not the slightest pretension to be considered a literal translation, while, by its departure from the strict letter of the author, it has gained nothing in elegance of diction. It is accompanied by "critical, historical, geographical, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of whom are Cino, da Pistoia and his friend, and the next, that its writers seem to adhere to, certain general rules of grammar, and in so doing give it, in the opinion of the intelligent, a very weighty pretension ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... foot struck even with the corner of a tall brick residence of more pretension than its fellows the front door popped open, and a bawling negress clattered down the steps to the pavement. Some medley of words came from her mouth, addressed, like as not, to herself—the recourse of her race when alone and beset ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Lord Byron, in which he assumes 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 ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Papal nominee in the name of the law were 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, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... the order we blindly took up, trusting foolishly to the force of our party, the unarmed condition of Too-wit and his men, the certain efficacy of our firearms (whose effect was yet a secret to the natives), and, more than all, to the long-sustained pretension of friendship kept up by these infamous wretches. Five or six of them went on before, as if to lead the way, ostentatiously busying themselves in removing the larger stones and rubbish from the path. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... watch-dog of our American literature, "The North American Review," always ready with lambent phrases in stately "Articles" for native talent of a certain pretension, and wagging its appendix of "Critical Notices" kindly at the advent of humbler merit, treated "Merry-Mount" with the distinction implied in a review of nearly twenty pages. This was a great contrast to the brief and slighting notice of "Morton's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mellow, and flowing, and softly-tinted style, all seem to bespeak his moral as well as his intellectual qualities, and make us love the man at the same time that we admire the author. While the productions of writers of loftier pretension and more sounding names are suffered to moulder on our shelves, those of Goldsmith are cherished and laid in our bosoms. We do not quote them with ostentation, but they mingle with our minds, sweeten our tempers, and harmonize our thoughts; they put us in good humor with ourselves ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... place the sultanate of Stambul had retained a vague but valuable prestige, based partly on past history, partly on its pretension to religious influence throughout a much larger area than its proper dominions; and the conservative population of the latter was in great measure very imperfectly informed of its ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the emergency. The manner in which she wrapped herself up in her own virtue, without the slightest pretension on the one hand, and without the slightest compromise on the other, was a ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... impossible task of serving two masters is never more palpably displayed than when the attempt attaches to a divided identity—when a man tries to be himself in two distinct parts in life, without the slightest misgiving of hypocrisy while doing so. Mathew Kearney not only did not assume any pretension to nobility amongst his equals, but he would have felt that any reference to his title from one of them would have been an impertinence, and an impertinence to be resented; while, at the same time, had a shopkeeper of Moate, or one of the tenants, addressed him as other than 'My lord,' he would ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... recognised as an honest word in both Australia and New Zealand as any other combination of letters in the English language. A swagger is the very antithesis then of a swaggerer, for, whereas, the one is full of pretension and abounds in unjust claims on our notice, the swagger is humility and civility itself. He knows, poor weary tramp, that on the favourable impression he makes upon the "boss," depends his night's lodging ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker |
