"Pretentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all, of 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
... contemporary affairs, the two former being concerned with the abuses of the church, while the last is a panegyric of the 'present age,' and especially of English maritime adventure. This is certainly the most pleasing of the three, though the style is at times pretentious and over-charged with far-fetched allusions. There are, however, fine passages, as for instance the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... one sees, Our bridges long neglected rot, And at the stages bugs and fleas One moment's slumber suffer not. Inns there are none. Pretentious but Meagre, within a draughty hut, A bill of fare hangs full in sight And irritates the appetite. Meantime a Cyclops of those parts Before a fire which feebly glows Mends with the Russian hammer's blows The flimsy wares of ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... not be supposed from this description that M. Sainte-Beuve is wanting in acuteness, that his enthusiasm predominates over his sagacity. On the contrary, there is no keener eye than his for whatever is false, pretentious, or unsound. His sure instinct quickly separates the gold from the alloy. Unlike the critics of the nil admirari school, whose reluctance to trust themselves to their emotions proceeds in great part from the absence of this instinct, he is proof against the approaches of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... in beside her and she led the way. The small restaurant to which she piloted him wasn't pretentious, but it was, as she had said, clean, and the ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... askt what license or what pas they had. "Ah!" said the Ape, as sighing wondrous sad, "Its an hard case, when men of good deserving Must either driven be perforce to sterving, 370 Or asked for their pas by everie squib, [Squib, flashy, pretentious fellow] That list at will them to revile or snib. [Snib, snub] And yet (God wote) small oddes I often see Twixt them that aske, and them that asked bee. Natheles because you shall not us misdeeme, 375 But that we are as honest ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... I need not fear recapture in that city, a comparatively unimportant question arose as to the name by which I should be known thereafter in my new relation as a free man. The name given me by my dear mother was no less pretentious and long than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in Maryland, dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey. Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... 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 betray ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... was made at the little golf club of our summer town on the veranda where we sit in the evening. Oh, it's just a little place, nothing pretentious: the links are not much good for golf; in fact we don't play much golf there, so far as golf goes, and of course, we don't serve meals at the club, it's not like that—and no, we've nothing to drink there ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... 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
... 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 things they bring. ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... societies of Boston on July 4th, at the Park Street Church, and took for his theme "Dangers to the Nation." The poet John Pierpont was present and wrote a hymn for the occasion. The address was a stirring denunciation of slavery and a rebuke to the nation for its pretentious devotion to liberty. The speaker was accused by a Boston paper of slandering his country and blaspheming ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... elsewhere mistress of the situation. The furniture, in its ornamental aspect, betrays the style of the advertised "drawing-room suite" of the pushing suburban furniture dealer; but there is nothing useless or pretentious in the room. The paper and panelling are dark, throwing the big cheery window and the park outside ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... ever before. That mob of hungry Neapolitans, which usually seizes violent hold of the stranger and his effects, was thin and spiritless. Naples was almost quiet. The Santa Lucia was deserted; the line of pretentious hotels with drawn shutters had the air of a summer resort out of season. The war had cut off Italy's greatest source of ready money—the idler. Naples was living to itself a subdued, zestless life. Cook's was ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... tired and with no reason whatever for going anywhere in particular, we sat down to rest on the projecting base-course of a pretentious tomb of great size but much neglected. It was so dilapidated, in fact, that Agathemer, feeling about by where he sat, found an aperture big enough for us to crawl into. It began to rain and we investigated the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the occasional bitterness in which Engels indulges is to be deplored, in a work of so essentially intellectual a character, but it is little to be wondered at. His contempt for university professors and the pretentious cultivated classes, who claim so much upon such slight grounds, is not strange, when we consider the honest labors of himself and his colleagues and the superficial place-hunting of the recognized savants. He loves learning for its own sake, ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... the biographical notes appended to selections, there are not a few more pretentious sketches that have been given prominent titles in the body of the books. These have been prepared expressly for this work, either by the editor or by some one fully acquainted with the subject and accustomed to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... through the open sides of most of the houses not enough to flicker the steady light, as the head of the family seated himself (or herself) close to the fire, and, hymn-book in hand, led off the singing. Quite near us was a more pretentious-looking structure than the others, and looking down upon it we saw that the gravelled floor was covered with fine, clean mats, and arranged all round the sides of the house were a number of camphorwood boxes, always—in a Samoan house—the ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... cancer in me stomick is no more nor liss than a pain in me left shoulder, which any domn fool of a docther wud know was the rheumatics. To the divil wid yer domned impostorousness and highfalutin hombuggery! Good day, Docther, darlint; good day. May the divil transmogrify you into a less pretentious individual, wid more brains and ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... again, and the awful pageant that rolls past our view under the direction of the aristocrat of literature made my late life seem poor and mean. How low we were! The darkened costers are interesting as studies in animal life; but the more pretentious persons whose humour reaches its highest flight in an indecent story, and whose wit consists in calling someone else a liar—how petty they are, and how fruitless is their friendship! I began to feel like a patrician who surveys the mob from his ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... His father had compelled him to marry her, the richest heiress in the world, whose dowry had been larger than the collected treasure of a dozen queens; and as he thought of the sharp features of that insignificant, sour-faced, and unspeakably pretentious creature, he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... carried many varying reports to the cities North and South. The name of this new man, Grant, spelled trouble. People were beginning to talk much about him, and already some suspected that there was more in the back of his head than in those of far better known and far more pretentious northern generals in the east. None at least could dispute the fact that he was now the one ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... new airs taken from his Italian operas, sung by Mme. Piccinni, with a voice that age had rendered more grave and less light, without making it less beautiful or touching, and with a method as wise as it was learned, and well opposed to these pretentious displays, these eternal embroideries which disfigure Italian song to-day, and which Piccinni never admitted into his school, but which he always detested." So says Ginguene of the theories of Piccinni, which are not, as we see, so opposed to the theories of Gluck as we are sometimes urged to ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... in a very typical building representing Bolivia. It is evident that it was not a costly building, but its dignified Spanish faade and the court effect inside are far more agreeable than the pretentious palace erected ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... her, and so persistently, that anyone who saw her might think that she was suffering from something like the itch. The only adornments that she allowed herself were silk ribbons, which she had in great profusion, and of various colors mixed together, in the pretentious caps which she ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... data used by the authors of more pretentious works are second-hand or hearsay; the author of this treatise, however, has no confidence in the accuracy of such material, therefore he has not made use of any such data. His material has been thoroughly sifted, and the reader may depend upon the absolute truth ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... development. However far we may be from such a consummation, and reluctant to indulge in the magniloquent language which it suggests, I imagine that a literary history is so far satisfactory as it takes the facts into consideration and regards literature, in the perhaps too pretentious phrase, as a particular function of the whole social organism. But I gladly descend from such lofty speculations to come to a few relevant details; and especially, to notice some of the obvious limitations which have in any case to ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... right to these pretentious claims at every point. Especially did they challenge his authority over the Church, and testify against his blasphemous presumption. They looked with horror upon his attempt to grasp the crown of Christ, that he himself might wear it. This they resented and resisted as ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... seemed to him, frowning with a stern and magnificent serenity amongst the tawdry evidences of later days and the irresistible march of modernity. The wine-shops of a hundred years ago flourished still side by side with the more pretentious cafes, half French, half Russian, which had sprung up like mushrooms about the city. The country-made homespuns, the glassware and metal work, heritage of generations of craftsmen, survived still the ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... up their parasols and turned into the side path. After going down several turnings, and going through a little gate, Darya Alexandrovna saw standing on rising ground before her a large pretentious-looking red building, almost finished. The iron roof, which was not yet painted, shone with dazzling brightness in the sunshine. Beside the finished building another had been begun, surrounded by scaffolding. Workmen in aprons, standing on scaffolds, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... must be those scoundrels, who, lost to all sense of decency and honour, boldly assume the outward semblance of worthy citizens, and, by the pretentious nature of their appearance, not only seek the better to impose upon the noble incredulity of Puddin'-owners, but, with dastardly cunning, strike a blow at Society's most sacred ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... seen him earlier and followed him? The facts were these: about an hour before the time when Richling omitted to apply for employment in the ill-smelling store in Tchoupitoulas street, Mr. Raphael Ristofalo halted in front of the same place,—which appeared small and slovenly among its more pretentious neighbors,—and stepped just inside the door to where stood a single barrel of apples,—a fruit only the earliest varieties of which were beginning to appear in market. These were very small, round, and smooth, and with a rather wan blush confessed to more than one of the senses that they had ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... almost at the end of his financial resources, which fact occasioned him to turn away from a pretentious hotel and to ask his guide for a cheaper lodging-house. When this was found, a sight of the loungers in the office, and also a desire for comfort, persuaded Gale to change his traveling-clothes for ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... able to forego,—in that her mother was right,—and in this ability to forego there was a certain amount of unpretentiousness. But when, by way of exception, it became a question of really possessing a thing, it always had to be something out of the ordinary. In this regard she was pretentious. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... to the monastery we left the automobile and dipped into the labyrinth of narrow alleyways until at last we were before the greatest temple of Urga with the Tibetan walls and windows and its pretentious Chinese roof. A single lantern burned at the entrance. The heavy gate with the bronze and iron trimmings was shut. When the General struck the big brass gong hanging by the gate, frightened monks began running up from all directions and, seeing the "General ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... he quietly observed, "without meaning to put forward any pretentious claims to originality, but by simply turning to account some advantages that have never before befallen contemplative mortal eye, why not construct a little hypothesis of our own regarding the nature of these grooves and the causes that gave them birth? Look at that great chasm just below us, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... them your people, show them your France, and then ask them to tell you what shall be done. Cry out to all the world, as I know you will, that this was the fault of an unknown adventurer, of a Scotch gambler, of one John Law, who brought forth some pretentious schemes to the detriment of the realm. Saddle upon me the blame for all this ruin which is coming. Malign me, misrepresent me, imprison me, exile me, behead me if you like, and blame John Law for the discomfiture of France! But when you come to seek your remedies, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... football game from the upper tier of seats in the Yale Bowl. They were using a considerable number of guns of various calibers and the crash of the bursting shells was almost incessant. A shell struck a rather pretentious building, which was evidently the town hall; there was a burst of flame, and a torrent of bricks and beams and tiles shot skyward amid a geyser of green-brown smoke. Another projectile chose as its target the tall white campanile, ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... deal at the suggestion, for he had more than once cast a crestfallen look at his pretentious ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... When pretended worshipers of God are free from persecutions for Christ's sake it is because they are worshipers in form only, but in spirit they are worldly. In truth these people are usually foremost in persecuting the true children of God. Jesus was persecuted and hated by the very pretentious Pharisees and Sadducees. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." John 1:11. Those who professed to be children of Abraham sought to take the Savior's life. John 8:39, 40. Because Jesus by a pure, holy life rebuked sin, because he in burning words of Heaven's ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... ephemeral matter, that fact does not discredit the meritorious ones. Counterfeit currency does not diminish the value of the true coin; it is very sure to find its own just level at last; and so the wretched or the sensational periodical, however pretentious, will fall into inevitable neglect and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... him a young man of about thirty, dressed in somewhat pretentious style and wearing eyeglasses. He was tall and thin, ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... this being the more laughable because he was such a little chap. Potts did not pay the least attention to the jeers, and finally the jeerers were constrained to admit that if he did have an absurdly pretentious way of talking, his talk was unusually well worth listening to, and the result was that they took him at his own valuation, and, for the sake of hearing what he had to say, quietly submitted to his assumption of authority as court of appeal. So when he coolly declared ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Chief's 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, and several boys, together ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... succeed. I can speak from experience for the pulpit, that the position of authority, the claim of a divine mission, is often turned into the excuse for the airing of a man's individual fads, and is naught but a cloak for pretentious ignorance. [Applause.] And for the Bar, I wonder if I might venture to quote the definition of legal practice which was given me the other night, apropos of this toast, by a distinguished representative of the New York Bar Association, that it was "a clever device for frustrating justice, and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... sequestered domain of some country hotel he would admit me into the wonderland of his inner hopes, his plans for the future, his ideas of life and people and happiness. Once we were staying in one of these country hotels obviously pretentious, but very uncomfortable—the sort of hotel where the walls of the room oppress you, and the furniture astonishes you, and there are no private baths. He sat down in the largest chair, literally ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... very quick, very friendly. But I don't truly think they were interested in the real thing at all—only interested in the words of the wise, and in the unconsidered trifles of the Major Prophets, so to speak. I didn't think it exactly pretentious—but they obviously only cared for people of established reputation. They didn't admire the ideas behind, only the reputations of the people who said the things. They had undoubtedly seen and heard the great people—I confess it amazed me to think how easily the men of mark ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... too, the house of the "overseer" standing apart; or, as in the case of the plantation Besancon, at the end of the double row, and fronting the main avenue. This, of course, is of a more pretentious style of architecture; can boast of Venetian blinds to the windows, two stories of height, and a "porch." It is enclosed with a paling to keep off the intrusion of the children, but the dread of the painted cowhide ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the rest of the world with equanimity, and by the Englishman, as a connoisseur in such matters, with admiration as well. A man may buy a motor-car which his friends and neighbours think must be costly and pretentious beyond his means; but that is his business; and if the man finds that, owing to good management and industry and skill, his business is growing and that a motor-car is, though in some not absolutely clear and definite way, of advantage to him in business and satisfying to his legitimate pride—why ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... because Garofalo had been associated with Lombroso and Ferri in founding the modern school of criminology. As Garofalo's book is practically unknown in this country, I have felt justified in making many and large omissions from this appendix. Gabriel Deville exposed the emptiness of Garofalo's pretentious book in a most brilliant open letter to the Baron, which appeared in Le Socialiste for the ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... Thanks to the Hitchcocks' introduction, and also to the receptive attitude of a society that was still very largely fluid, he had gone hither and thither pretty widely during this past year. There were quieter, less pretentious circles than this in which the Carsons aspired to move, but he had not yet found them. Anything that had a retiring disposition disappeared from sight in Chicago. Society was still a collection of heterogeneous names that appeared daily in print. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Katherine felt that her case would stand as good a chance with any one selection of twelve men as with any other. Kennedy then stepped forward. With an air that was a blend of his pretentious—if rather raw-boned—dignity as a coming statesman, of extreme deference toward Katherine's sex, and of the sense of his personal belittlement in being pitted against such a legal weakling, he outlined to the jury what he expected ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... is a log hut, built by the wayside, and the "schoolmarm" is not a pretentious person. But, what the school cannot supply, a long line of intelligent, independent ancestors have supplied, robust, common ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... Philadelphia, in New York, and even in Puritanic Boston. 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, but it is, notwithstanding, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... judgment his contemporaries might come to, or the niggardly reward they might confer; nor content with the prospects of a laurel wreath which grateful Posterity lays on the marble heads of departed eminent men, this pretentious disciple of the Muse importunately claimed his full recompense during his own life. For the applause of the great mass, the dramatist, after all, has to contend. Jonson strove hard for it; but in vain. A more towering ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... little prairie town, and quite unlike anything the Easterners had ever seen before. Broad, dusty streets led seemingly nowhere. Low, straggling houses stretched out lazy lengths of untidiness, except where a group of taller, more pretentious buildings indicated the stores, a hotel or two, several boarding houses, and numerous saloons and ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... sea, the wide fireplace was open, filled with boughs of fragrant hemlock; the smooth yellow floor with its coolness and sweet cleanliness invited you to enter; there were round braided mats spread before the bureau and rude washstand, and more pretentious ones in size and beauty were laid in front of the red, high-posted bedstead and over the brick hearth. There were, beside, in the apartment, two tables, an easy-chair with arms, its cushions covered with ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... believe that there are any cruel people outside Germany and Russia. Not one but all the Ten Commandments will be broken, and turkeys will be eaten on Christmas Day. Men will die of disease, violence, famine and old age, and others will be born to take their place. Intellectuals will be pretentious—mules solemnly trying to look like Derby winners. There will be a considerable amount of lying, injustice, and self-righteousness. Dogs will be fairly decent, but some of them will bite. Above all, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... 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 ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... employees resumed their work indicated that the extraordinary character of this welcome was not lost upon them. The office was on the ground-floor of one of the more pretentious buildings of Lattimore's main street. The post-office was on one side of it, and the First National Bank on the other. Over it were the offices of lawyers and physicians. It was quite expensively fitted up; and the plate-glass front glittered with gold-and-black sign-lettering. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... /n./ [from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV series] A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... recording. In the massive stone hotels and stores of that period, as well as in the careful construction of dwelling houses, they exhibited a true perception of "the eternal fitness of things." The buildings of the fifties, in their extreme simplicity, are far more imposing than the nondescript, pretentious structures of today, and will, beyond ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... elephant into a beast of burden that should help him along the stony road of his finances. "The Limes," which had come to him by inheritance without any accompanying provision for its upkeep, was one of those pretentious, unaccommodating mansions which none but a man of wealth could afford to live in, and which not one wealthy man in a hundred would choose on its merits. It might easily languish in the estate market for years, set round with noticeboards proclaiming ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Ginini was known as a castello, it was more in the nature of a comfortable and pretentious villa. It had dignity, however, and drowsed upon a commanding eminence fronted by a splendid terraced lawn which one beheld through clumps of flowering shrubs and well-tended trees. Here and there among the foliage gleamed statuary, and ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... perhaps the first man who made the profession respectable. The principal habitat of authors, in his age, was Grub Street—a region which, in later years, has ceased to be ashamed of itself, and has adopted the more pretentious name Bohemia. The original Grub Street, it is said, first became associated with authorship during the increase of pamphlet literature, produced by the civil wars. Fox, the martyrologist, was one of its original inhabitants. Another of its heroes was a certain Mr. Welby, of whom the sole record ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... heavily loaded—he could gauge the weight by the "feel" of the car as he drove yet it made the grade at twenty-five miles an hour and reached the top without boiling the radiator; which is better than many a more pretentious car could do. ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... for 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 ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... humiliation. Commercial people and professional people in a small way were odious to her. She ran after painters and novelists; but she did not charm them; and her bold attempts to pick up and practise artistic and literary talk irritated them. She was, in short, an utter failure, an ignorant, incompetent, pretentious, unwelcome, penniless, useless little snob; and though she did not admit these disqualifications (for nobody ever faces unpleasant truths of this kind until the possibility of a way out dawns on them) she felt their effects too keenly to ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... pretentious brag seemed to have exhausted even the lob- worm's ingenuity, for, soon after he had uttered it, he shuffled away out of the meadow in the best fashion that he could, leaving the 'SOMETHING' in the field in a state of wondering regret. But it recovered its spirits again when ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... rigid uniformity of setting, their endless duologues, their immense harangues, their spectral confidants, their strict exclusion of all visible action, give one at first the same sort of impression as a pretentious pseudo-classical summer-house appearing suddenly at the end of a vista, after one has been rambling through an open forest. 'La scene est a Buthrote, ville d'Epire, dans une salle du palais de Pyrrhus'—could anything ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the most extravagant compliments; her senseless chatting I described as unrestraint tempered by finesse, her pretentious exaggerations as a natural desire to please; was it her fault that she was poor? At least, she thought of nothing but pleasure and confessed it freely; she did not preach sermons herself, nor did she listen to them from others; ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... intelligent conception of every topic upon which they touched, as they ranged at will in their conversation, evincing such acumen of intellect and such practical comprehension of subjects of which many of her sex, who made much greater pretentious, were entirely ignorant, that Ashton, concluded she was a treasure, indeed, which he would make his own, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... In his eminently careful essays the author has furnished material for study such as might be vainly looked for in a more pretentious book."—Morning Post. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... disguised now. Neither Dr. Sprague nor Dr. Minchin said that he disliked Lydgate's knowledge, or his disposition to improve treatment: what they disliked was his arrogance, which nobody felt to be altogether deniable. They implied that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless innovation for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Columbus had no superior; as a colonist and governor he proved himself a failure. Had he been less pretentious and grasping, his latter days would have been more peaceful. Discovery was his infatuation; but he lacked practical judgment, and he brought upon himself a series ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... was in the corner room of the Palazzo Santonini, a dim and beautiful old library with faded furnishings whose west arch of doorway looked into the pretentious reception room where the fiances were amusing themselves with their music and their whisperings. It was quite advanced, this allowing them to be so alone, but the Contessa Santonini was an American and, moreover, the wedding was not ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of Matazaemon; later that of O'Iwa San. It was pretentious enough to make display with a large household. But the master of Tamiya was as close-fisted and hard and bitter as an unripe biwa (medlar). His wealth was the large and unprofitable stone which lay within; the acid pulp, a shallow ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... this monument just noted, the kind old gardener will show you another that stands amid others much more pretentious—a small gray-granite column, and on it, carved ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... an old man utterly undone, Hull abandoned his pretentious invasion of Canada and retreated across the river to shelter his troops behind the log barricades of Detroit. He sent six hundred men to try to open a line to Ohio, but, after a sharp encounter with ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... of foes For many a year, and filled my heart with dread. Yet fickle joys, like false, pretentious friends, Have proved less ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of the St. Dunstan was the Gold Nugget Hotel, a five story brick building and not at all pretentious as a hostelry. I knew the place mildly, and my police training, even better than such acquaintance as I had with this particular dump, told me what it was. Through the windows we could see guests, Sunday papers littered about them, half smoked cigars in their faces, and hats which had a general ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... by no means luxuriously furnished, and a very fair table is kept. The servants wear full livery. There is a small library, all the usual appurtenances of a London club, and a racquet-court. The other clubs, though less pretentious, are all comfortable. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... garden of Eden. Why, oh! why had not the sentence of death been carried out at once, and a new start made with more prudent people? The school in which as a day scholar I passed nine years of my life was more literary than many which were more pretentious. Needlework was of supreme importance, certainly, but during the hour and a half every day, Saturday's half-holiday not excepted, which was given to it by the whole school at once (odd half-hours were also put in), the best readers took turns about to read some book selected by ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... from it at all. Talk, except as the preparation for work, is worth almost nothing;—sometimes it is worth infinitely less than nothing; and becomes, little conscious of playing such a fatal part, the general summary of pretentious nothingnesses, and the chief of all the curses the Posterity of Adam are liable to in this sublunary world! Would you discover the Atropos of Human Virtue; the sure Destroyer, "by painless extinction," of Human Veracities, Performances, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... best little books on Carlyle yet written, far outweighing in value some more pretentious works with ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... know how to wait. We descended to the showy table, with its floral decorations of paper, muslin, and gay paint, the ladies in the evening dress of flowers, trains, and decolletee bodices which is the absurd custom of pretentious London pensions. We glanced along the table to note the new-comers. They were there, neatly and stylishly dressed in walking-costumes. They were three quiet gentlemanly and lady-like persons, but their faces were Medusa-like to almost every American ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... conversant with his subject, and everything is 'ben trovato', if not actually true. A perusal of these cheerfully-written pages will probably give a better idea of realities of Australian life than could be obtained from many more pretentious works." ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... our White House looks like that," Bab said, after half a moment's pause. "I was so afraid it would be pretentious. But it is just big and simple and dignified as our President's home ought to be. It makes me feel so glad to be an American," Barbara ended with a flush. She was afraid the other girls were ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... village are the little smithy of the Hudson's Bay Company and the pretentious buildings of their establishment. At the other gibbous horn of this Athens of the Athabasca rise the steeples and convent-school of the Roman Church, with the free-trading-post of Colin Fraser. Midway between is the little Church of England, and higher up and farther back the Barracks ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... relations in Mesopotamia who were of Sumerian stock and kindred of Abraham.[291] It is not surprising to find traces of Sumerian pride among the descendants of the evicted citizens of ancient Ur, especially when brought into association with the pretentious Hittites. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... word, brethren, it is far better to live in less pretentious dwellings, dress more soberly and eat more sparingly than to owe any man anything. Pay what thou owest, and then you may ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... must be off! The horses are at the door,—can't keep them standing! Miss Vancourt doesn't want to hear anything about the parson. She'll find him out soon enough for herself. He's an upstart, my dear lady—take my word for it!—a pretentious University prig and upstart! You'll never meet HIM at Badsworth!—ha-ha-ha! Never! Sorry you can't dine on Thursday! Never mind, never mind! Another ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... tower in the meadow, from which a windmill pumped water to the house. The iron frame was not wholly covered with stone, but material for the remainder of the work lay scattered at the base. I went on through the wood to the lake and inspected the boat-house. It was far more pretentious than I had imagined from my visit in the dark. It was of two stories, the upper half being a cozy lounging-room, with wide windows and a fine outlook over the water. The unplastered walls were hung with Indian blankets; lounging-chairs and a broad seat under the windows, colored ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... camp's single short street, flanked on each side with the woodsmen's shanties, Bryce went. Dogs barked at him, for he was a stranger in his own camp; children, playing in the dust, gazed upon him owlishly. At the most pretentious shanty on the street Bryce turned in. He had never seen it before, but he knew it to be the woods-boss's home, for unlike its neighbours the house was painted with the coarse red paint that is used on box-cars, while ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... more or less pretentious hotels in Gastein, but perhaps the most reliable for feeding purposes is the Badeschloss; it is rather old-fashioned, but good of its kind. It was formerly the palace of the Cardinal Bishops. The hot-water springs, discovered in A.D. 680, ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... to Mr. Shippen's father," she boasted. "This house, you know, was the home of Edward Shippen, who was Mayor of the city over an hundred years ago. It was then, if I do say it, the most pretentious home in the city. My husband was for disposing of it and removing to less fashionable quarters, but I would not hear of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... 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 he did not have his old fashioned house Queen Anned, replied that ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... 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 ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... ghosts," the Corsican merchant said. "In my country, we are less pretentious. Frankly, we are afraid. You, too, are afraid, and so you laugh! A difference, it seems to me, which lies, not in the essence but in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Lewiston tied the horse to the iron railing in front of the Odd Fellows' Hall, the ground floor of which was occupied by the post-office, and went across the street and up the stairway of a building of brick and granite—quite the most pretentious structure of the town—and knocked at a door upon the first landing. The door was furnished with a pane of frosted glass, on which, in gold letters, was inscribed, "Bridges ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... letters who appeared from time to time at the Hotel de Rambouillet would include the most noted names of the century, besides many which were famous in their day, but at present are little more than historical shadows. The conversations were often learned, doubtless sometimes pretentious. One is inclined to wonder if these noble cavaliers and high-born woman did not yawn occasionally over the scholarly discourse of Corneille and Balzac upon the Romans, the endless disputes about rival sonnets, and the long discussions on the value of a word. "Doubtless ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason |
