"Pretentiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conflicting tendencies of his age. He was an Aufklaerer in so far as he brought reason itself to the bar of reason and sat in judgment upon its claims, and, likewise, in so far as he insisted on the objective validity of physics and mathematics. But he was as much opposed to the pretentiousness of dogmatic metaphysics as to the pusillanimity of scepticism and the Schwaermerei of mysticism. He repudiated the shallow proofs of the existence of God, freedom, and immortality no less emphatically than he rejected materialism with its atheism, fatalism, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... whose dim recesses were the abode of the unknown God. If you went up to the great, heavy door, which was always closed you could read above the arch the one word Prison in large letters and below it a simple Latin verse that with no little pretentiousness proclaimed: ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the reverend fathers, who yet go up and down. And here is the little old Poe Cottage, about which such a flavor of romance lingers, though the place has been modernised into a "Terrace," and built about with city pretentiousness. It is still the same little low place, not a bit changed since she sat there on the door-sill and talked over her heroes with the poet. She can still see the tall spare figure of Mrs. Clemm in her rocking-chair doing her bit of mending and casting anxious glances at the son of her love, about whom ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... realms and realmlets. The history of these courts during the eighteenth century belongs to the ugliest chapters of history. Libraries are filled with the chronicles of the scandals of that era. One potentate sought to surpass the other in hollow pretentiousness, insane lavishness and expensive military fooleries. Above all, the most incredible was achieved in the way of female excesses. It is hard to determine which of the many German courts the palm should be assigned to for extravagance and for a life that vitiated ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... been something as relatively uncomplicated as literary parody he would have achieved some minor fame in a century which could boast any number of geniuses who had specialized in deriding the pretentiousness of the more established literary forms, particularly tragedy, the epic, and the pastoral. But Johnson of Cheshire lacked the aesthetic distance required of sustained irony and had a grander purpose in mind. His tradition was not that of the parodist but rather that of the visionary—the ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
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