33 Quotes About Pretension

Just as hunters will mount the heads of the kills, white people need to let people know that they have made their way to hundreds or even thousands of books. After all, what's the point of reading a book if people don't know you've read it. It's like a tree falling in the forest.

What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's KingCheops erected the first pyramidAnd largest, thinking it was just the thingTo keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;But somebody or other rummaging,Burglariously broke his coffin's lid:Let not a monument give you or me hopes,Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.

Pretentious quotations [are] the surest road to tedium.

The paradox is that some of the most artistically valuable contemporary photographs are content with being photographs, are not under the same compulsion to pass themselves off - or pimp themselves out - as art. The simple truth is that the best exponents of the art of contemporary photography continue to produce work that fits broadly within the tradition of what Evans termed 'documentary style'.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

Don't you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that they were incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents.

What is the end of Fame? 't is but to fillA certain portion of uncertain paper:Some liken it to climbing up a hill,Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper,'To have, when the original is dust,A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

Popes, prophets, mystics, buddhas are all just actors playing a role.

Why do you pretend, when you can make it real? We like pretending to be someone else but the truth we just want to be ourselves.