We are going to write about business and finance and politics and precedence and pretentiousness and decorum and indecorum, until a thousand pretences and ten thousand impostures shrivel in the cold, clear air of our elucidations.
That is, she had no intellectual humor; no power to enjoy the absurdities of people, no relish of their pretentiousness and inconsistencies--which only depressed her.
Probably a good deal of his pretentiousness was due to the fact that he habitually expressed himself in a book learned language, wholly remote from anything personal, native, or homely.
I cannot have his mediocrity and pretentiousness displayed to the people there are in the world who would see him as he was, and whose opinion counts.
Her husband's pretentiousness and mediocrity would not be apparent to the ingenuous and uncomplex mind beside her.
It was only in the intellectual domain that she evinced pretentiousnessand grew grandiloquent; talking of her private affairs, she was very direct and simple, with no inclination to unhealthy ways of thought.
This sort of pretentiousness often happens during "booms," when some author is talked of as though he were the only man who had ever written well.
Whether Meredith himself was more ashamed of their tailoring or their pretentiousness it is not easy to decide.
He knewpretentiousness for the mask of worthlessness and weakness.
The novelty of the thing, and the pretentiousness in which he had swaddled it, had deceived them finely.
There is no doubt that we need to go back in some degree to the simpler way of life in vogue in the days of our grandmothers; that pretentiousness and extravagance have reached a point which is almost unendurable.
Yet the snobbish half of the middle-classes holds housewifely work as degrading, save in the trumpery pretentiousness of 'giving orders.
All colloquial expressions are little foxes that spoil the grapes of perfect diction, but they are very little foxes; it is the false elegance of stupid pretentiousness that is an annihilating blight which destroys root and vine.
No red tape is required apparently to penetrate into this president's private office, whereas many "small" men are guarded with pretentiousness that is often an effort to give an impression of "importance.
The offense of pretentiousnessis committed oftener perhaps by women than by men, who are usually more natural and direct.
For flagrant examples ofpretentiousness (which is the infallible sign of lack of breeding), see page 61.
The pretentiousness of his style is partly due to the declining taste of the period, partly to an idea of his own that he could write in the manner of Sallust.
