"Pretentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sadly out of repair. Those pink tiles about the fireplace may be interesting to antiquaries; but I rather prefer the blue variety, as corresponding to the mental state in which their infinitely pretentious subjects and execrable drawing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cove, has blossomed into a hauteville, dating from the last dozen years. The ancient basseville, probably the site of many former settlements, is now used chiefly for shops and stores. Another and a more pretentious mosque has supplanted the little old Zwiyah ("chapel") with its barbarous minaret, whose finial, a series of inverted crescents, might be taken for a cross; while a Jmi' or "cathedral," begun ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... gracious falls from it on the paper. How noble his mind must have been! it seems but to receive, and his eye seems only to rest on, what is great, and generous, and lovely. You walk through crowded galleries, where are pictures ever so large and pretentious; and come upon a grey paper, or a little fresco, bearing his mark-and over all the brawl and the throng recognise his sweet presence. 'I would like to have you been Giulio Romano,' J. J. says (who does not care for Giulio's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is so rich. But the monuments of the church of Brou are not the noblest that one may see; the great tombs of Verona are finer, and various other early Italian work. These things are not insincere, as Ruskin would say; but they are pretentious, and they are not positively naifs. I should mention that the walls of the choir are embroidered in places with Margaret's tantalising device, which—partly perhaps because it is tantalising—is so very decorative, as they say in London. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... of actors belonging to the Duke of Orleans, who had only lately married, and was not yet twenty-one years old.] absolutely obliged me to dedicate to you the first work that I myself published. [Footnote: Sganarelle had been borrowed by Neufvillenaine; The Pretentious Ladies was only printed by Molire, because the copy of the play was stolen from him; Don Garcia of Navarre was not published till after his death, in 1682.] It is not a present I make you, it is a duty I discharge; and homages are never looked upon by ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... is remembered, that the simple form of Tannhaeuser was composed in the years 1843 and 45 in and near Dresden, at a time, when there were neither means nor taste in Germany for such scenes, as those, which excited Wagner's brain. Afterwards success has rendered Wagner bolder and more pretentious and so he endowed the person of Frau Venus with more dramatic power, and thereby threw a vivid light on the great attraction, she exercises on Tannhaeuser. The decorations are by far richer and a ballet of Sirens and Fauns was added, a concession, which ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... him running!" cried Barkins, as, with his tail flying, Ching ran from hut to hut, and finally stopped before the two more pretentious places, which ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... servants had always a comb about them to arrange the wigs of their masters, whilst the latter thought it fashionable to comb and arrange their hair in public (see The Pretentious Young Ladies).] ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... and proper to follow the camp as it grows until it develops into a somewhat pretentious log house, but this book must not be considered as competing in any manner with professional architects. The buildings here suggested require a woodsman more than an architect; the work demands more the skill of the axeman than that of the carpenter and joiner. The ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... Dejah Thoris in a search for new quarters, which we found in a building nearer the audience chamber and of far more pretentious architecture than our former habitation. We also found in this building real sleeping apartments with ancient beds of highly wrought metal swinging from enormous gold chains depending from the marble ceilings. The decoration of the walls was most elaborate, ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Clemenceaus—grandmother, daughter and granddaughter, and direct descendants of the Comte de Moran—were genteelly starving to death, to the soft, filthy, torn strips that finished off the parlor of the noisy, cheerful, irrepressible Daleys' once-pretentious home. Poverty walked visibly upon this block, the cold, forbidding poverty of pride and courage gone wrong, the idle, decorous, helpless poverty of fallen gentility. Poverty spoke through the unobtrusive little signs over every bell, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... a queer book to be found in this pretentious old coach-inn, with its silken bell-pulls and stately parlors; and I thought how the roisterers who came thundering over the road years ago, and chucked the bar-maids under the chin, must have turned up their noses, after their pint of crusted Port, at the "Clergyman's Recreation." Yet, for all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... places is, have recorded many a marvelous cure, ranging all the way from headache to hydrophobia. But still the town was of little importance save locally. The petty ruler, with a title longer than his income, lived in the pretentious castle, beguiling the time by smoking cheap cigars or ordering on banquets whose piece de resistance consisted of Gebratene Gans und Kartoffeln, the unlucky bird being tribute in kind from the farmyard of some peasant subject living in a ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... can point to them, as they will to me, and say, 'See, what a ghastly failure! See how feeble after all, are these pretentious women of the new order, who begin by denying the sufficiency of the life assigned them, by common consent, and end by failing in that and in the other which they aspire to. What has become of all the talent and all the theories and resolves?' ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... fact is this: That Dickens, whom so many considered to be at the best a vulgar enthusiast, saw the coming change in our society much more soberly and scientifically than did his better educated and more pretentious contemporaries. I give but one example out of many. Thackeray was a good Victorian radical, who seems to have gone to his grave quite contented with the early Victorian radical theory—the theory which Macaulay preached with unparalleled luminosity ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... the other—natives on beautiful horses, not needing whip or spur—natives on dromedaries so swift, sure-footed, and strong there was no occasion for fear. Men, and often women and children, on ragged saddle-cloths, others in pretentious boxes, and now and then a person whose wealth and rank were published by the magnificence of the litter in which he was borne, swinging luxuriously between long-stepping dromedaries ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... now rapidly arriving from every direction, and the road was full of people. There were men on horseback with their wives sitting on a pillion behind, and clasping the conjugal waistband for security, families in carts, and families trudging afoot, while here and there the more pretentious members of the congregation were seen ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... in the situation, the wishes of other individuals, for example. The desire for recognition is a permanent and universal trait of human nature, but in the case of an egocentric personality, this wish may take the form of an excessive humility or a pretentious boasting. The wish is the same but the attitudes in which it finds expression ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... enjoyment, are sadly conspicuous, the inevitable sequence of indolence and vice. The arts and sciences seldom disturb the thoughts of such people. Here, as in many European cities, Lazarus and Dives elbow each other, and an Oriental confusion of quarters prevails. The pretentious town-house is side by side with the humble quarters of the artisan, or even the negro hut, about which swarm the naked juveniles of color, a half-clad, slatternly mother appearing now and then. The father of this brood, if there be an acknowledged one, is probably at work upon some plantation ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... a long ride nor a long walk, though the sun was insufferable. The capital of Paraguay is not large. It is a sleepy, somnolent little town in which the most pretentious building was begun as the Presidential Palace and wound up as the home of a bank. But there are bullet marks on the facade of the Museo Nacional, and there is still an empty pedestal here and there throughout the city ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... Much better than Hail Columbia was the Star Spangled Banner, the words of which were composed by Francis Scott Key, a Marylander, during the bombardment by the British of Fort McHenry, near Baltimore, in 1812. More pretentious than these was the once celebrated ode of Robert Treat Paine, Jr., Adams and Liberty, recited at an anniversary of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society. The sale of this is said to have netted its author over $750, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... however, be accounted for by their sudden haste, caused by the occurrence of an unlooked-for incident. "The floors of a house where a crime has just been committed," said a famous detective, "burn the feet." M. Lecoq seemed exasperated, like a true artist, before the gross, pretentious, and ridiculous work of some green ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... results, but didn't give a fig to have anybody else know it. To his intimate friends, who were few, and to the many with whom he would pass the time of day, he was as common in word and manner as the average householder with nothing more pretentious in life than the ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... settled all his doubts; she wasted a lot of rice powder on her cheeks. Pshaw! When they were once married he would make her stop that easily enough; she had many wrinkles in her face, but his coat had more bare spots and patches; she was old, pretentious, and imperious, but hunger was more imperious, and still more pretentious; and then, too, he had a sweet disposition, and, who could tell?—love modifies character; she spoke Spanish very badly, but he himself did not speak it well; at least, the head of the Customs ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... of private intercourse with him, and bear their testimony to the fact that to know him better was to love and admire him more and more. The fact is easily explained. There was in this human being's character naught that was insincere, assumed, or pretentious. It was a great and massive soul—as gentle, too, and tender, as a woman's or a child's—that lay beneath the reserved exterior, and made the soldier more beloved as its qualities were better known. Other men reveal their weaknesses on nearer ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... old bear-hunter separates from the less pretentious votary of the chase; as he does so giving the latter a squeeze of the hand, which tells him he may go back in confidence to the negro quarter, and sit, or sleep, by the side of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... with much bowing, Craig and I guiding our horses through the crowded streets, being kept too busy avoiding accidents to exchange conversation. Howe's headquarters on High Street were not pretentious, and, except for a single sentinel posted at the door, were unguarded. I was admitted without delay, being ushered into a large room containing merely tables and chairs, the latter littered with papers. An aide took my name, and within a very few moments Sir William himself entered through a ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... were in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Conant, very pleasant people who seemed to be old friends of Mamma Bee and Gran'pa Jim. It was a cosy house, not big and pretentious, and Mary Louise liked it. Peter Conant and Gran'pa Jim had many long talks together, and it was here that the child first heard her grandfather called "Colonel." Others might have called him that before, but she had not heard them. Mrs. Conant was very deaf and wore big ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... coquette, prude, puritan. V. affect, act a part, put on; give oneself airs &c (arrogance) 885; boast &c 884; coquet; simper, mince, attitudinize, pose; flirt a fan; overact, overdo. Adj. affected, full of affectation, pretentious, pedantic, stilted, stagy, theatrical, big-sounding, ad captandum; canting, insincere. not natural, unnatural; self-conscious; maniere; artificial; overwrought, overdone, overacted; euphuist &c 577. stiff, starch, formal, prim, smug, demure, tire a quatre ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... contrast not disagreeably with the social amenities left behind in the city. I spent some very pleasant hours of sunshine and twilight at the "Colonel's"; (he has as good a right to the title as many more pretentious dignitaries), though the "flying" was indifferent on both my visits. On the first occasion, though several varieties of fowl were bagged, we only secured one canvas-back, which was courteous enough to tumble ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... wonder the war spared Tougaloo. Less pretentious houses within sight of it were fired and destroyed by roving squads. But the mansion, in the midst of a grand grove of oaks, stood intact. When the war was over, the American Missionary Association acquired 500 acres of the estate, ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... bandits stood on the edge of the precipice looking across and beyond the intervening gulch or ravine, here and there a light twinkled out from the cabins and, presently, a much stronger illumination shot forth from one of the larger and more pretentious buildings. Castro was quick to call his ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... disinterested, impersonal tone of the synoptics, the Gospel of John shows incessantly the preoccupation of the apologist—the mental reservation of the sectarian, the desire to prove a thesis, and to convince adversaries.[1] It was not by pretentious tirades, heavy, badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus founded his divine work. If even Papias had not taught us that Matthew wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the natural, ineffable truth, the charm beyond comparison of the discourses in the synoptics, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... guards his readers by the following: "In speaking of Christianity, reference is generally made to the Roman church, partly because its adherents compose the majority of Christendom, partly because its demands are the most pretentious, and partly because it has commonly sought to enforce those demands by the civil power. None of the protestant churches have ever occupied a position so imperious, none have ever had such widespread political influence. For the ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... talked, feeling himself thrill with a foreign and most suave deference. It was customary in our town to raise your hat to a lady on the street; but for a merchant, and a solid citizen at that, to do this thing in his own establishment, was a thing unheard of—and a thing of pretentious and sickening foppery when it was heard of, for that matter, though this ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... that it follows that when men say that this or that action of the body springs from the mind which has commanded over the body, they do not know what they say, and they do nothing but confess with pretentious words that they know nothing about the cause of the action, and see nothing in it to ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... thus frankly proffering friendship to the passer-by, were of wood painted in drabs and dusky reds, with bulging windows which marked the native yearning for the mediaeval, and shingles that strove to be accounted tiles. Others—a prouder, less pretentious sort—were of brick or stone, with terra-cotta mouldings set into the walls, and with real slates covering the riot of turrets and peaks and ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... whether you know them—with a false front that sticks up above its real height and gives it an air at once rectangular and imposing. It is a form of architecture much used in Mariposa and understood to be in keeping with the pretentious and artificial character of modern business. There is a red, white and blue post in front of the shop and the shop itself has a large square window out of proportion ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... up the book entitled 'Supernatural Religion,' I felt, whether rightly or wrongly, that its criticisms were too loose and pretentious, and too full of errors, to produce any permanent effect; and for the most part attacks of this kind on the records of the Divine Life are best left alone. But I found that a cruel and unjustifiable assault was made on a very dear friend to whom I was attached by the most sacred personal ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... furnished with a couple of tin pails. Humanity forbidding the incarceration of Captain Satterlee in such a hovel, the little consul passed on to Mulinuu, where the general Samoan Government held sway. The jail here was on a more pretentious scale. It consisted of a rectangular inclosure, perhaps sixty feet by forty, formed by four eight-foot walls of galvanized iron, and containing within five or six small huts of the kind that shipwrecked ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... Mrs. Oliver's house, as I had always seen it in my mind's eye—not a pretentious place at all, only a little humble cottage but very sweet and clean, covered with creepers and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... a new edition of his verses, on a more pretentious scale than the old red books, in a fine bound volume, exquisitely "printed," with the poems dated. This new energy seems to have been roused by the gift from his Croydon cousin Charles, a clerk in the publishing ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... and yellow poppies with red hearts spring out of the graves. Many of the headstones are boards, naturally; and one poor fellow, whose estate at death was probably a minus quantity, is commemorated by a strip of tin with his name pricked into it. There is a fair proportion of pretentious monuments, which were drawn by ten-horse teams from ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... compel a change in the unchanging character of the people. He built a handsome Mosque—but before he was driven out he wired and mined it for destruction. He built a seat of government, a hospital, and a barracks, all of them pretentious buildings for such a town, well designed, constructed of stone with red-tiled roofs, and the gardens were nicely laid out. There were a railway station and storehouses on a scale which would not yield a return on capital expenditure for many years, and the water tower and engine ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... implements, weapons, and ornaments. Following after the trade would be found the smelter with his tools, and, where the conditions were favorable, local manufactories would be set up. But this home industry would not prevent importation of more pretentious articles from abroad. This would account for the rich collections of shields, swords, and golden cups found in Denmark that ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... pretentious toad!" she exclaimed sharply. "He was always talking to every one he could get hold of about his family and his swell friends and Oxford. But I don't believe any of his stories. He was just worse than nobody at all; and East I've met real nice Englishmen who had a lovely accent, and wouldn't be ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... only from those who have lived a life amid particular surroundings, which they breathe and which colors them—dyes them in the wool. However skilless, they cannot help reproducing, any more than water poured from an old ink-bottle can help coming out more or less black; although, if sufficiently pretentious, they can monstrously caricature, especially if they begin with the modest time-worn admission that they are more familiar with the marling-spike than with the pen. But even the caricature born of pretentiousness ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... slave of Washington Greenlee Foley and his grandson, John Woods. The Foley plantation consisted of several square leagues, each league containing 4,428.4 acres. Adeline is tall, spare and primly erect, with fiery brown eyes, which snap when she recalls the slave days. The house is somewhat pretentious and well furnished. The day was hot and the granddaughter prepared ice water for her grandmother and the interviewer. House ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Paradise Lost to see what Idylls of the King lacks. Victor Hugo, however, did better in La Legende des Siecles. "La figure, c'est l'homme"; there, at any rate, is the intention of epic symbolism. And, however pretentious the poem may be, it undoubtedly does make a passionate effort to develop the significance which Milton had achieved; chiefly to enlarge the scope of this significance.[14] Browning's The Ring and the Book also uses this notion of an idyllic sequence; but without ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... memory. His company had so long been his pride, his reliance, his solace, and almost his gospel that he had grown to think of it as a sort of fixed star, whose light perhaps might be exceeded by some larger and more pretentious luminary, but which would nevertheless shine steadily on, beyond the fear ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... love for nature, would have chosen. The interment was very private, none being present but the family. Others were in the cemetery making preparations for the observance of Decoration Day. Of this number were many Germans, and these, attracted by the appearance of the pretentious German casket in which our boy's body lay, gathered around wonderingly. They were curious to know the story of that casket, for they had not seen one like it for many years. But the ceremony, however painful, was beautiful—beautiful ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Paris there are quantities of chateaux—some just on the border of the highroad, separated from it by high iron gates, through which one sees long winding alleys with stone benches and vases with red geraniums planted in them, a sun-dial and stiff formal rows of trees—some less pretentious with merely an ordinary wooden gate, generally open, and always flowers of the simplest kind, geraniums, sunflowers, pinks, dahlias, and chrysanthemums—what we call a jardin de cure, (curate's garden)—but in great abundance. With very rare exceptions ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... Jansoulet, if she had arrived at the mansion in Faubourg Saint-Honore about four o'clock, might have seen before the lofty arched gateway, beside the Princesse de Dions' quiet livery of the color of dead leaves, and many genuine coats of arms, the showy, pretentious crests, the multi-colored wheels of a multitude of financiers' equipages and the tall powdered lackeys of ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... a flourish of his delicate cambric handkerchief, and the exhibition at the same time of a slender, sickly, and peculiarly-shaped hand, decorated with an onyx seal-ring. He looked the gentleman, however, unmistakably plain and peculiar as his appearance was, and pompous and pretentious as ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... of Anne's London, but Queen Anne's Gate, some few houses in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and here and there a house in the City preserve the ordinary architecture of the age of Anne. Marlborough House bears witness to what it did in the way of more pretentious buildings. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... frenzy. She talked and stormed ideas, she corrected and nagged at the children, she turned her back in silent contempt on her breeding mother, who treated her with supercilious indifference, as if she were a pretentious child not to be ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... men, women, and children standing stationary amid the ever-surging tides of Broadway, before the windows of Williams & Stevens, gazing with eager interest upon the statuettes and groups of John Rogers, the sculptor. These works appeal to a deep popular sentiment. They are not pretentious displays of gods, goddesses, ideal characters, or stupendous, world-compelling heroes. They are illustrations of American domestic and especially of American military life—not of our great generals or our bold admirals, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... dwelling was a most pretentious affair, judged by the surrounding homes. It had a large interior court, without a roof, but the immediate dwelling had four or more rooms. The Chief walked through one room, and entered the court, where George was embarrassed to see two girls, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... replaced by dwellings of the humbler sort, then they, in turn, by more pretentious residences—with here and there a new one of the Queen Anne type. Croyden did not need the information, later vouchsafed, that they belong to new people. It was as ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... popular in his manners; the true old House of Commons manner, which was very like that of a gentleman-like public school. Lady Selina, as has been said before, in her own family circle was natural and genial. Young Carr, there, without his wife, more pretentious than his father,—being a Lord of the Admiralty,—felt a certain awe of Darrell, and spoke little, which was much to his own credit and to the general conviviality. The other members of the symposium, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the road Harry saw approaching him an open buggy of rather a pretentious character, driven by a schoolmate, Philip Ross, the son of Colonel Ross, a wealthy resident ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... The most pretentious building owned by the Institute is the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building, the new home of the Academic Department, which is the gift of Mrs. Huntington as a memorial to her husband, who was one of Tuskegee's stanchest supporters. It is built near the ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... the syndicate, who made large fortunes out of the profits of their contract with the State. The comedy of Lesage, Turcaret, turns upon the intrigues and swindles of one of these traitants or partisans, as they were also called. Dancourt, in his Chevalier a la mode, introduces a pretentious widow, Mme. Patin, of whom her maid says: "Mme. Patin, la veuve d'un honnete partisan, qui a gagne deux millions de bien au service du roi!" ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... something,—some deficiency felt but not yet defined,—which had hitherto been fatal. The young men said it was because no old stager who knew the way of pulling the wires would come forward and put the club in the proper groove. The old men said it was because the young men were pretentious puppies. It was, however, not to be doubted that the party of Progress had become slack, and that the Liberal politicians of the country, although a special new club had been opened for the furtherance of their views, were not at present making much way. "What we want ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... experiment, and literary work was not in vain. To have been or to have posed as being indifferent to popular success, would have required a man of less vivid sympathy with his fellow-men: to have been puffed up and pretentious would have needed one less gifted with a sense of humor, less conscious of the littleness of one man, however talented, in the vast procession of life on the earth's surface. His delight in his work and its success was of the perfect and natural kind, which he could communicate ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the Master, all unseeing, Fought desperate hosts of striking clan with clan, Their primal purpose, meant for labour's freeing, Sunk in vindictive hate of man for man. Pretentious Wealth, in unearned robes of beauty, Flung Want a pittance from her bulging purse, While ill-paid Toil went on dull rounds of duty, Hell in her heart, and on her ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to the workers. The hours of work at that period were from sunrise to sunset. Usually this rule, especially in the seasons of long days, required twelve, and very often fourteen and sixteen, hours a day. Yet the so-called statesmen and the pretentious cultured and refined classes of the day, saw nothing wrong in this exploitation. The reason was obvious. Their power, their elegant mansions, their silks and satins, their equipage and superior opportunities for enjoyment all were based upon the sweat and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... prided itself that it was not "new-fangled." It was not nearly so pretentious in appearance as was the Presbyterian church. Missy, in her heart, preferred stained-glass windows and their glorious reflections, as an asset to religion; but at night services you were not apt to note ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... a general direction she kept her course. "The Boulevard", known on the tax books of Hot Springs as Boulevard Addition, sprawls over a wide area. Houses vary in size and construction with startling frequency. Few of them are pretentious. Many appear well planned, are in excellent state of repair and front on yards, scrupulously neat, sometimes patterned with flower beds. Occasionally a building leans with age, roof caving and windows and doors yawning voids—long since abandoned by owners ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... woman, a little house called "Chopp'd Straw Hall" which he converted into the baronial splendors of Strawberry Hill; and how Scott transmitted a mean Tweedside farm, called Clarty Hole, into the less pretentious glories ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... far before Reuben himself, with the inconsistency of more pretentious moralists, felt an impulse to indulge in that benign beverage of which he had just deplored the effects. Drawing up with this object at a public house that stood on the road, he called for a glass of hot spirits. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the E. extremity of the town, in East Reach, bearing on the wall Abbot Bere's monogram and arms. A visit should be paid to Vivary Park at the end of High Street, a tastefully laid-out public recreation ground on the site of the old monastic fishponds. The Shire Hall, in Shuttern, a somewhat pretentious modern building, contains a number of busts of Somerset worthies. A rough lane striking off to the R. from the Trull road leads to an old Roman causeway crossing a narrow, one-arched bridge locally ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... a pretentious word, which, with its derivatives, many persons—especially those who like to be grandiloquent—use, when homely English would ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... where he caught glimpses of buildings, evidently belonging to a mine. A tall shaft-house was surrounded by various shops and a cluster of dwellings, most of them very humble in appearance, though one was large and pretentious. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... it...."Comedy is the fountain of sound sense," and again, "the use of the true comedy is to awaken thoughtful laughter." "Men's future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... as the reader of "Mark, the Match Boy," will remember. It is, of coarse, a cheap restaurant, and is considerably frequented by the street boys, who here find themselves more welcome guests than at some of the more pretentious eating-houses. ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... wheeled conveyance in California as late as 1840. Other Indians did the woodwork in buildings, made fences, etc. Some were carvers, and there are not a few specimens of their work that will bear comparison with the work of far more pretentious artisans. ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... no means the least beautiful. It is too much the fashion to underrate the artistic value of the less pretentious forms of needlework, and especially of flat ornament, which has, nevertheless, its own very important place in decoration. As for geometric pattern, that is quite beneath consideration—it is so ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... climbed the steps. The manservant came down two steps and took the little bag. Then he ushered Aaron and the big bag into a large, pillared hall, with thick Turkish carpet on the floor, and handsome appointments. It was spacious, comfortable and warm; but somewhat pretentious; rather like the imposing hall into which the heroine suddenly enters ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... drinking-water everybody crosses the river to a spring on the other side. A considerable part of the labor of the town is fetching water over the bridge. On a hill overlooking the village is a big, pretentious brick house, with a tower, the furniture of which is an object of wonder to those who have seen it. It belonged to the late Mrs. Stover, daughter of Andrew Johnson. The whole family of the ex-President have departed this world, but his memory is still green in this region, where he was almost ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of an autumn trip to an unhackneyed land is much better worth reading than many more pretentious volumes.... The authoress has an eye for what is worth seeing, a happy knack of graphic description, and a literary style which is commendably free from ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the south, Praed Street on the north, and by Edgware Road on the east and Spring Street on the west, lies an assemblage of mean streets, the drab dulness of which forms a remarkable contrast to the pretentious architectural grandeurs of Sussex Square and Lancaster Gate, close by. In these streets the observant will always find all those evidences of depressing semi-poverty which are more evident in London than in any other English city. The houses look as if laughter ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... used to expose the folly of the pretentious. Much of the stock in trade of the humorist lies in his attack on the pedant, the pompous, the great, the new-rich, the over-important of one kind or another. To find them less than they pretend to be gives two especial ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... their work perfect. Such poets seldom attempt long poems; if they should imprudently do so, we find but little sequence, and nothing of that clear order, of that marvellous unity, which mark the works of the masters. Everything is sought to flatter that pretentious vanity of the limited understanding which piques itself on its stereotyped knowledge, always striving to usurp the higher empire of the divining soul. Such writing certainly requires subtlety of intellect, for talent is required to discover ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... florid girl of twenty, or, perhaps, of twenty-one or two. Her eyes were the obtrusive feature of her face, and she used them with a freedom which held callow youth spellbound. Her gown was more pretentious than that of her more elderly companion. This, of course, was justified by the difference between their ages; but there seemed to be, beyond this, a flaunting gayety about it and her manner which were not, in the eyes of the older and wiser men ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... however, but turn sharply to the right (opposite a rather pretentious-looking house) for two hundred yards or so, when you will come to a park. A little before entering the park you will see, lying not far from the road on the left, a remarkable old monastery church, much restored. This contains some fine old painted glass, some tombs and monumental ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... General Office of the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad. Large though it was, it nevertheless, was not pretentious, and during his visits to the city, Presley must have ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... breakers below, reached the ear as a soft musical ring of metal. The only prominently ugly features in the charming picture were the few villas on the neighboring heights, built by retired Paris grocers and haberdashers; liliputian, pretentious, with blatant, highly-colored facades, ludicrous imitations of baronial fortresses, Venetian ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... magnificent situation—without pausing, a thing which no one would do who had not visited that quaint old town some time before. In Leamington, three miles farther on, we found a modern city of forty thousand inhabitants, noted as a resort and full of pretentious hotels. After we were located at the Manor House there was still time for a drive to Kenilworth Castle, five miles away, to which a second visit was even more delightful than our previous one. For the next day we had planned a ...
— 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
... sketch of him. Had Patching dreamed how capitally his long hair, peaked beard, thin nose, and bony forehead would be taken off, in a rough but faithful character portrait, he would have sunk in confusion. Happily, the newspaper artist was sitting almost behind his more pretentious brother of the canvas, and the latter knew not what had been done, until, the following week, he saw a striking intensification of himself staring into the street from numerous bulletin boards ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Mr. Johnson that New Bedford was a safe place, the comparatively unimportant matter, as to what should be my name, came up for considertion(sic). It was necessary to have a name in my new relations. The name given me by my beloved mother was no less pretentious than "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey." I had, however, before leaving Maryland, dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained the name Frederick Bailey. Between Baltimore and New Bedford, however, I had several different names, the better to avoid being overhauled by the ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... of its solitude is changed into a straight, and evenly macadamised carriage drive, between new houses of extreme respectability, with good attached gardens and offices—most of these tenements being larger—all more pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly higher rent than my father's, tenanted for twenty years at Herne Hill. And it became matter of curious meditation to me what must here become of children resembling my poor little ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... resistance,—seemed, as each political phase developed, to have been actually made for Minard, whose talk was a paraphrase on the ideas of his newspaper. Julien Minard, the young lawyer, suffered from his father as much as his father suffered from his wife. Zelie had grown pretentious with wealth, without, at the same time, learning to speak French. She was now very fat, and gave the idea, in her rich surroundings, of a cook married ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... who favoured me with theirs. I always wrote on the fly-leaf a quotation from the 'Iliad,' about giving copper in exchange for gold; and the few poets who could read Greek were gratified, while the others, probably, thought a compliment was intended. Nothing could be less culpable or pretentious, but, through some mistake on the part of Charon, I was drafted off to the Paradise ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the disease and suffering around them, and the monuments of their high endurance and beautiful devotion are to be found to-day in the ivy-clad cloisters in Garden Street, where the gentle Ursulines still minister to the maidens of French Canada; and in the pretentious hospital on Palace Hill where nuns still care tenderly for the sick and dying, and read the inspiring history of their order back ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... blocks were passed, and they stopped at a pretentious, many-windowed, Queen Anne house. Ruth ran lightly up the steps, her cousin ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... Shivernock, who seemed to be in an unusual humor on this occasion, for the pretentious manners of his visitor appeared to amuse rather ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... color was a nauseous green and blue, and it was altogether the sort of thing to grace the chill and funereal best room in a Wisconsin farmhouse. Ferdinand Brandeis marked it at six dollars and stood it up for the Christmas trade. That had been ten years before. It was too expensive; or too pretentious, or perhaps even too horrible for the bucolic purse. At any rate, it had been taken out, brushed, dusted, and placed on its stand every holiday season for ten years. On the day after Christmas it was always there, its lightning-struck plush face staring wildly out upon the ravaged ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Americans who go abroad ninety-nine return with what they have lost in narrowness of experience completely offset by what they have gained in pretentious affectation. So far from being improved in any way are they that their well-wishers are inclined to think it would have been far better had they never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... from a long line of heroic and patriotic ancestors, he had not a particle of pretentious pride, but to all men, privates in the ranks as well as officers, so that they were but brave and good soldiers, he always found "time enough for courtesy." He never tried to appropriate another man's laurels, but he possessed in a high degree that quality of courage which ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... hedges of linden closely trimmed in, and you will gain an idea of the landscape, full of tranquil chastity, modest cheerfulness, but commonplace withal, which surrounded the venerable edifice of the Cormon family. What peace! what tranquillity! nothing pretentious, but nothing transitory; all ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... irritated him, and moved him to the depths of his soul. And now it was she who made conversation, but there was nothing childish in what she said; she talked gravely, and quoted the poets in a pedantic and pretentious way. He hardly ever replied; he was ill at ease. This new Minna that he did not know astonished ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Hotel," answered Hadley, shading his eyes and reading from a distance of fifty rods the pretentious sign of the ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... a gaming-table, where, alongside of the discontented citizen offering his stakes, sits, bold, blustering, and with fermenting brain, the pretentious subaltern rattling his dice-box... At the sight of a public official rising from nowhere, even the soul of a bootblack will bound with emulation."—He has merely to push himself ahead and elbow his way to secure a ticket "in this immense lottery of popular ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... upon this pretentious and absurd Italian. He was appointed to the place of master-gardener, and lodgings in a house in St. James's Park, to be afterwards known as Carlton House, were set apart for his use. Here he was visited by Evelyn, who records that 'the famous Italian painter' was 'settled in His ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... shoddy of shoddys. Purse-proud, affected, pretentious and ambitious, and even less fit for her position than her husband for his.—George William Curtis, Potiphar ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... fair, wavy hair, which he wore rather longer than was the mode, brown eyes, and a face which, without being handsome, was yet more than ordinarily engaging by virtue of its strength and frank ingenuousness. His dress was his worst feature. It was flamboyant and showy; cheap, and tawdrily pretentious. Yet he bore himself with the easy dignity of a man who ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Sanford called his home in New York, though constantly referred to by him as his "two by twice hall bedroom," was considerably more pretentious and expensive than a young man receiving his modest income would ordinarily have selected; yet when he decided upon it, the chief point in question was whether or not it suited his tastes. The fact that the rent alone exceeded the salary ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... gateway in front of his house, and making lavish use of white paint in decorating his buildings and grounds. He succeeded, but I cannot help thinking that if he had put the money that useless concrete work cost into shrubbery and vines, it would have made his place twice as attractive. I dislike pretentious adornments to the farm, especially where the rest of the place doesn't measure up to them. Like Senator Blaine, who, at the time the Queen Anne style of architecture became popular, on being asked why ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... "metaphysical jargon," "pretentious and empty language," "puerile and superannuated personifications." Mr. Darwin has many and hot opponents on this side of the Channel and in Germany, but we do not recollect to have found precisely these sins in the long catalogue of those hitherto ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of the human intellect is one of the commonest assumptions in the world. Although when you state the belief as I have, it sounds absurdly pretentious, yet the boastfulness is closer to the child's who stretches out its hand for the moon than the romantic egotist's who thinks he has created the moon and all the stars. Whole systems of philosophy have claimed such an eternal and absolute validity; the nineteenth ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... solidity than elegance or symmetry of proportions. The churches, religious and educational establishments, official buildings and residences—notably the intendant's palace at Quebec—were built of stone. The most pretentious edifice was the chateau of St. Louis—the residence of the governor-general—which was rebuilt by Count de Frontenac within the limits of the fort of St. Louis, first erected by Champlain on the historic height always associated with his name. The best buildings in the towns ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... moral, vindictive, and at times cruel. He possesses the quality which friends call wisdom and enemies call craft. According to those who like him he is courteous, polished, thoughtful and dignified; according to those who dislike him he is insincere, pretentious, vain and arrogant. Both admit him to be genial, generous, self-sacrificing, popular and capable in the administration of affairs. If the opinion of his foes be accepted he is one of the greatest Malays on the ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... it is little, so specialism is only dangerous when it forgets that it is special. When it encroaches on its betters, when it claims exceptional certainty or honor, it is impertinent, and should be rebuked; but it has its own honor in its own province, and is, in any case, to be preferred to pretentious and ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... occasion, Janey was attired in her blue-sprigged muslin and allowed to wear the turquoises. David drove her to Maplewood, the pretentious home of the Randalls, intending to call for her later. When they came to the entrance of the grounds at the end of a long avenue of maples a very tiny girl, immaculate in white, with hair of gold and eyes darkly blue, came out ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates |
