"Pretentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Crown Prince Danilo, which stands on the outskirts of the town, is a somewhat more pretentious building. It has a large garden completely walled in, which is at any rate an ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... ranch buildings. They were simple people, and rendered their new master a feudal loyalty. There were also several small ranchites located on the land, where, under the Mexican regime, there had been pretentious adobe buildings. A number of families still resided at these deserted ranches, content in cultivating small fields or looking after flocks of goats and a few head of cattle, paying no rental save a service tenure to ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... quickly chosen; 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 ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... seen many country homes of pretension and even luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was so unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic way. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide—great smooth floors of red concrete—bordered ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... conducted as to supply the necessary training in mathematics, dialectics, languages, and drawing, and the necessary knowledge of science, without either consuming all the leisure of the boy or destroying his individuality, as it is destroyed by the ignorant and pretentious blunderers of to-day; and there is an equally manifest need of a new type of University, something other than a happy fastness for those precociously brilliant creatures—creatures whose brilliance is too often the hectic indication of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... red and yellow worsted, and for its spreading fans, color-dashed with exciting pictures of bull-fights and spangled matadors. A hotel appears next, across the way, standing back from the street, with: a small, triangular park between; and then comes a pretentious bric-a-brac bazaar, and another cafe, and a confectioner's, and a tobacco-store,—each presided over by a buxom French matron, affable and vigilant, and clearly the animating spirit of ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... met by the boys was Camp Hyphen. This was quite a pretentious establishment with a smaller tent adjunct. The adjunct stood for the hyphen, and it now lay in a heap like a discarded potato sack, its store of supplies settled uncertainly ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... and cut square in the neck,—then Americans, in high-heeled patent-leather boots, a black dress-coat, and a black satin waistcoat,—and wasp-waisted French officers, with baggy trousers, a goat-beard, and a pretentious swagger. Nearer the altar are crowded together in pens a mass of women in black dresses and black veils, who are determined to see and hear all, treating the ceremony purely as a spectacle, and not as a religious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... journalists who bear a charmed reputation based exclusively upon their inebriety, and who take good care not to imperil it by too long a relapse into the mortifying self-revelations of soberness! And what wrong has been done to the honored name of humor by these pretentious rascals! We do not love Falstaff because he is drunk; we do not admire Becky Sharp because she is wicked. Drunkenness and wickedness are things easy of imitation; yet all the sack in Christendom could not beget us another Falstaff—though Seithenyn ap Seithyn comes very near to the incomparable ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... prevailing colour. Indeed it is stated on good authority that on one occasion Prempeh desired to stain the walls of his palace a darker red, and used the blood of a thousand victims for that purpose. Behind each of the pretentious buildings which fronted the streets were grouped the huts of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... them—in the still countrified suburbs of Hampstead and Edgware; there was the gathering at the Turk's Head, with its literary magnates, for his severer hours; and for his more pliant moments, the genial 'free-and-easy' or shilling whist-club of a less pretentious kind, where the student of mixed character might shine with something of the old supremacy of George Conway's inn at Ballymahon. And there must have been quieter and more chastened resting-places of memory, when, softening towards the home of his youth, with a sadness made more ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the part of the representative women of Clematis, it is certain that the deliberations of the body were not again side-tracked by the intrusion of personal matters. The business of the afternoon was transacted with a rapidity putting to shame some more pretentious conventions, the women wisely refusing to be hampered or restricted by the tangles of parliamentary law, in which, as every one knows, much really important ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... 1865 Uncle Tom built him a tolerably pretentious home on the top of the mountains—the house on one side of the road and the stables on the other and swung a gate across the road from the house to the stables. I believe some historians say that Uncle Dick Wooten continued to live at this place ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... the 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
... as soon as the boy went to school, his playmates decided that Fortunatus was far too long and pretentious a name for common use; so they peremptorily shortened it to "Tus"; then, adding it to the father's appellation, it became "Tailorkin-Fekli-Tus." The first word of this lengthy and awkward combination was soon dropped off, and the other two ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... near 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
... 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
... and unpretentious treatise a great deal of pith and acumen, brought to bear upon a most important subject—that of educational first principles. Mr. Sands has gone to the base of human teaching, discarding pretentious themes, in order to illustrate the simpler beauty of that eductive and inductive co-relationship which, beginning at the mother's breast, proceeds through all the quiet processes of mental development in infancy, childhood, and ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... of coffee was the first to be illustrated; and for all its air of pretentious grandeur and occasional bathos, it was not a bad rhyming advertisement for the persecuted drink. It was printed for Paul Greenwood and sold "at the sign of the coffee mill and tobacco-roll in Cloath-fair ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... successfully filmed and then, as Alice and Ruth had some shopping to do, to get their costumes ready for their appearance before the camera next day, they prepared to leave. They stopped for a moment, however, to watch their father in his play—"A Heart's Cavalier." This was rather a pretentious drama, and called for really good acting, the nature of which appealed ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... were installed in tents. That huge canvas erection was a mining exchange; that great log barn a dance-hall. Dwarfish log cabins impudently nestled up to pretentious three-story hotels. The effect was oddly staccato. All was grotesque, makeshift, haphazard. Back of the main street lay the red-light quarter, and behind it again a swamp of niggerheads, the breeding-place of fever ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two miners talking about a great school for colored people somewhere in Virginia. This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little colored school ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... Bouchet St. Nicholas was among the least pretentious I have ever visited; but I saw many more of the like upon my journey. Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands. Imagine a cottage of two stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine and I could hear each other ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little cabin that Willis found his greatest pleasure, and already Ham and himself were planning a new and more pretentious Lodge to take the place of Buffalo Roost, for the next Buffalo Roost was to be a memorial camp built in honor of Tad Kieser, gentleman, and Mr. ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... is the most pretentious kind of narrative poetry; it tells in serious verse of the great deeds of a popular hero. The Iliad, the Aeneid, Beowulf, Paradise Lost are important epics. The Idylls of the King is in ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Candidates Cannon and Fisher, and the high members of their party, were occupying the only slightly less pretentious Bridal Suite of a hotel within easy walking distance of ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... 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 ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... his thousands and thousands, is the survivor of that old-time group who used to travel about, dispensing wit and wisdom and philosophy and courage to the crowded benches of country lyceums, and the chairs of school-houses and town halls, or the larger and more pretentious gathering-places ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... wheat which he carried in a bag hanging conspicuously from his belt. He did not come into the dining room or take regular meals, claiming to be sufficiently nourished by the raw wheat he masticated so industriously. We had not noticed him especially—no one took much notice of pretentious faddists—but on going around to the back door for the chicken-feed one evening Bonico and I recognized the wheat-muncher bending over the salver eagerly picking up whatever bits and pieces he could find to eat. He was so engaged in this ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... authorities allowed an American ship (surprised in one of her ports by the declaration of war) to depart unharmed, the fact was magnified into an act of almost ideal generosity; on the other hand, when we decided not to permit privateering, that announcement was received with derisive laughter as a pretentious pose to cover hidden interests. There is reason to believe, however, that this feeling in favor of Spain goes little further than the press and the aristocratic circles so dear to the American “climber”; ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the woods near the shore where Pee-wee stood was a sizable village, or young town, big enough to have traffic signs and parking zones and a main street and a movie show and such like pretentious things. Between this town and the shore were a few outlying houses, but mostly sparse woodland. To the north ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... heap of ashes, though, as the days passed on, the heap was seen to be slowly melting. My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when you in the course of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have piled up a mountain of pretentious failure, you must off with your honourable coats for the removal of it, and fall to the work with the power of all the queen's horses and all the queen's men, or it will come rushing ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... 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 with three women, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... fate of this narrative, the man was not in St. Louis. He was one of those wealthy so-called "kings" which abound in America—in this case a "coal king." I was told that he possessed a really palatial residence in St. Louis—where he did not dwell; and a less pretentious dwelling directly in the coal-fields, where, for the most of his time, he did reside. I crossed the Mississippi River into Southern Illinois, and very soon found him. He was a plain, honest business man; we did not split hairs, and within a week I had ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... that many who made the pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg were obliged to return without satisfying their pious desires because the island was so crowded that there was no room for them to land. Chapels were opened in some of the less pretentious streets in Dublin; communities of religious orders took up fixed residences in the capital; and the Jesuits summoned home some of their ablest teachers to man a Catholic University which they opened in Back Lane (1627). The government stood in need of money to equip and support a new ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... forgetting to use a theme from the Euryanthe overture. Weber was to Wagner a veritable Golconda. From this diamond mine he dug out tons of precious stones; and some of them he used for The Flying Dutchman. We all saw then what a parody on Weber was this pretentious opera, with its patches of purple, its stale choruses, its tiresome recitatives. The latter Wagner fondly imagined were but prolonged melodies. Already in his active, but musically-barren brain, theories were seething. "How to compose operas without music" ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... and persistent devotion, rescued the old Bay Colony from the jaws of the certain death to which the narrow and mistaken policy of the bigoted and sometimes insincere founders had doomed it. They forced them to abandon pretentious claims, to admit strangers without insulting them, to tolerate religious differences, and to incorporate into their legislation the spirit of liberty which is now the life-blood of our institutions. The religion of the Society of Friends is still an active force, having its full ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... pretentious but extremely civilized house that stood alone in all its glory between the sea and the sixth hole was blazing with lights as they returned to it. The color had gone out of the sky and other twinkling eyes had appeared, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the air of quite pure intentions; while religion, itself the assumed ground of quarrel, seems appreciable all the while only by abstraction from the parties, the leaders, at once violent [17] and cunning, who are most pretentious in the assertion of its rival claims. What there was of religion was in hiding, perhaps, with the so-called "Political" party, professedly almost indifferent to it, but which had at least something of humanity on its side, and some chance of that placidity of mind in which alone the business of ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... almost in tears, was considering this doubtful reassurance when Bobby suddenly pointed again toward that pretentious estate on the hillside, and cried in quick excitement: "Look-ee, Mag, there's a autermobile a-comin' out from the castle, right now—see? She's a-goin' down the hill toward town. Who'll yer bet it is? Old Adam Ward ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... occasions than one to call attention to the fact of his humble birth, and to let it be known that, had he to begin life anew, he was so far from desiring a better ancestry that he would, like Andrew Marvell, have made "his destiny his choice." Nor is this done with the pretentious affectation of the parvenu, eager to bring under notice the contrast between what he is and what he has been, and to insinuate his personal deserts, while pretending to disclaim them. Horace has no such false humility. He was proud, and he makes no secret that he was so, of ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... than the tent in which E. A. Partridge and his brother slept through their first star-strewn winter nights on the open prairie—more pretentious than the tent and assuredly not so cold. The two boys were proud of it, even though they were fresh from civilization—from Simcoe County, Ontario, where holly-hocks topped the fences of old-fashioned flower gardens in summer and the houses had shingles ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... vastness of a plan which includes Society's history and criticism, the analysis of its evils, the discussion of its principles, justifies me, I think, in giving to my work the name under which it is appearing to-day—'The Human Comedy.' Pretentious, is it? Is it not rather true? That is a question for the public to decide ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Reville, Jesus de Nazareth (1897, 2 vols.), aims to bring the work of Renan up to date, and to supply some of the lacks which are felt in the earlier treatise. The book is pretentious and learned. In some parts, as in the treatment of the youth of Jesus, and of the sermon on the mount, it is helpfully suggestive. The Jesus whom the author admires, however, is the Jesus of Galilee. The journey to Jerusalem was ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... neat, red brick, two-story house, well in from the street, off the line of the more pretentious buildings on either side. As the old man opened the iron gate, the police officer on the beat passed; he peered into the faces of the men, and recognizing Sanders, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... quarantine, El-Wijh, the town on the northern bank of its 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 in the upper town, has stopped short through want of funds. Some of the best houses now extend ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... securely since she was skilful in such matters, to sit down and rest in another, belonging to a servant. This was slung at one end of a high, tropical porch, which was without the railing that surrounds the more pretentious verandahs of civilization, so that the hammock swung free, first over the rough flooring, then a little out over the yard itself. A rope slipped, the faulty knot gave way, and she fell backward—a seven-foot fall with no support of any kind by which she might save ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... a silk bandana of bright scarlet and with a large pair of silver spurs which had belonged to his uncle, and which he found in the saddle room of the barn. From the accoutrement in this room he also selected the most pretentious-looking saddle. It was a heavy stock saddle, with German silver mountings and saddle bags covered with black bear fur. A small red and black Navajo blanket served as a saddle pad and he found a fine Navajo bridle, too, woven of black ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... sentimentality and faulty scansion which marked most of the pieces was one simple little poem that struck a true note, said its little say, and quit—without a superfluous word. Its author set no store by it at all compared with his more pretentious and meretricious work; yet it was the one poem in the whole mass. It described the writing of a letter to his father; he had spent all he had in prospecting and working a small claim, and had just realised that a year's labour ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... been kicked out of a place and dare not set his foot there again, does that constitute him its dictator! There happened to be about that time a story going the round of London society concerning a vain and pretentious young fellow who had been kicked out of a country house for thrusting too much of his fatuous attentions on the daughter of the host and hostess. Soame Rivers at once nicknamed him 'The Dictator' 'Why "The Dictator"?' ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... place, as he soon discovered, was no more pretentious in appearance than the San Gorgonio. It also was a long, low frame building with some great cottonwood trees before it and a few palms with their infinite and ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... 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 ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... her tempered rule and succeed in its overthrow, will much more surely refuse and much more easily succeed in resisting the unequivocally arbitrary impositions of the Roman scheme." Here is the key-note of many of Mr. Gladstone's utterances in after years against the pretentious and aspirations of Rome. The defense of the English Church and its principles and opposition to the Church of Rome have been unchanging features in Mr. Gladstone's religious course. But, in the light of these early utterances, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... rheumatism is an illusion, what causes the same affection in a dog or a chimpanzee? And if an embrocation may be used with good effects in the latter case, why may it not be used in the former? We need not press these questions; they will serve as they stand to show once more how this whole pretentious philosophy about the unreality, the imaginary nature, of pain breaks down as soon as we subject it to simple tests. So also with the Christian Science attitude towards "drugs," the prescribing of which ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... productions of Art. Rome has no other statue of such sacred charm, none more inspired with Christian feeling. It lies in front of the high altar, disfigured by a silver crown and a costly necklace, the offerings of vulgar and pretentious adoration; but even thus it is at once a proof and prophecy of what Art is to accomplish under the influence of the Christian spirit. The inscription that Sfondrati placed before the statue still exists. It is as follows: "Behold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... following that trade so base and vile; And 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 as we seeme, Yee shall our ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... reflex of character. The pretentious, the illiterate, the impatient, the curious, will as inevitably betray their idiosyncrasies as the modest, the even tempered and the generous. Strive as we may, we cannot always be acting. Let us, therefore, cultivate a tone of mind, and a habit of life, the betrayal of which need ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... slight inclination of the head to the whole company at once, and passed on haughtily. I think, by the manner in which he received other ladies, that he would have shown more politeness to these if Madame la Duchesse had not been there, making her visit too pretentious. He affected even not to inquire which she was, or to ask the name of any of the others. I was nearly an hour without quitting him, and unceasingly regarding him. At last I saw he remarked it. This rendered me more discreet, lest he should ask who I was. As he was returning, I walked away ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in the garb of foes For many a year, and filled my heart with dread. Yet fickle joys, like false, pretentious friends, Have proved less worthy than ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Orientals, with whose writings he was familiar, he determined to buy a style. He took the step of engaging a person, at a price, to turn the matter which he had got together into ornamental English. Observe, he did not wish for mere grammatical English, but for an elaborate, pretentious style. An artist was found in the person of a country curate, and the job was carried out. His lectures remain to this day, in their own place in the protracted series of annual Discourses to which they belong, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Pretentious gardens are now gayly decorated with glowing masses of pelargoniums and vincas, belts of rich coleuses and fiery alternantheras, patchwork of feverfew and mesembryanthemum, and scroll-work of house leeks, but amid this gay checkering it is wonderful how ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... were very oppressive 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 blood of these so-called free ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... not at all like Keineth's old home in New York, nor like Aunt Josephine's pretentious house on Riverside Drive. Though it seemed right in the heart of the city and only a stone's throw from the business centre, it was on a quiet, broad street and had a little yard of its own all around it. The house was built of wood and needed painting, but ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... incalculable number of raw artichokes and radishes, when he had lost his illusions and ruined his stomach, chance sent him to give lessons in a young ladies' school kept by three sisters. The two eldest were over forty; the third was thirty,—small, sentimental, and pretentious. She saw little prospect of marriage, when Moronval ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... of carved work in chimney- piece and ceiling, and the outlook from its tall, narrow windows. A touch of old-world stateliness in its aspect satisfied his latent pride of race. To certain natures not obscurity or slender means, but the pretentious vulgarity which, in English-speaking countries, too often goes along with these constitutes the burden ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Forrester on the rest of that cool, delightful drive. Arrived at Waverly Center, however, they had to inquire the way to the Forrester house. They found it, a comfortable though not pretentious house. The owner was at home, ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... precarious living fishing and hunting, and lived at first in a miserable house of bark, under a tree, but later moved into quite a pretentious building back of the new Clemens home on Hill Street. It was really an old barn of a place—poor and ramshackle even then; but now, more than sixty years later, a part of it is still standing. The siding of the part that stands ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Allen 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 assured him by his position ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Jonathan sauntered in the direction of Metzar's inn. It lay on the front of the bluff, with its main doors looking into the road. A long, one-story log structure with two doors, answered as a bar-room. The inn proper was a building more pretentious, and joined the smaller one at its western end. Several horses were hitched outside, and two great oxen yoked to a cumbersome ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... sagging. There was a hitch-rail outside the gate, and Bud took the hint and left his horses there. From the wisps of fresh hay strewn along the road, Bud knew that haying had begun at Little Lost. There were at least four cabins and a somewhat pretentious, story-and-a-half log house with vines reaching vainly to the high window sills, and coarse lace curtains. One of these curtains moved slightly, and Bud's sharp eyes detected the movement and knew that his arrival was observed in spite of ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... and not too self-conscious, a woman may entertain two or three or four guests very adequately if she will plan her menu carefully and see, personally, that everything is in readiness. She should, however, avoid any overelaboration. Better a simple meal well prepared and served than a more pretentious one that fails ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... angling after the favor of La Pompadour,—a pretentious knave, as hollow as one of his own mortars. He suspected him of being a spy of hers upon himself. Le Mercier would be only too glad to send La Pompadour red-hot information of such an important secret as that of Caroline, and she would reward it as good service ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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
... Song. Chesterton had meanwhile discovered the wine-drinking peasants of France and Italy: he had discovered what were left of the old-fashioned inns of England where cider or beer are drunk by the sort of Englishmen he had come to love best—the poor. In his revolt against that dreary and pretentious element that he most hated in the middle classes he had come to feel that the life of the poor, as they themselves had shaped it when they were free men, was the ideal. And that ideal included moderate drinking, drinking to express joy in life and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Rooms on the first Floor, highly finished. Also two spacious lodging chambers in the second story—a capacious dry cellar with arches &c. &c. &c.' In Upper Canada, owing to the difficulty of obtaining building materials, the houses of the half-pay officers were even less pretentious. A traveller passing through the country about Johnstown in 1792 described Sir John Johnson's house as 'a small country lodge, neat, but as the grounds are only beginning to be cleared, there was ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... Chia Cheng remonstrated, "can be called by whatever name one chooses; anything is good enough; but who's it who has started this kind of pretentious name!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... after venting my righteous indignation on this subject. I have a good deal more respect for the thief who steals your money, or the gentlemanly swindler who plunders you of it by the polite tricks of his art, than for these pretentious knaves who lie without uttering a word, and steal without lifting ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... unfamiliar to us, is what fills our attention, so that we forget to look for the moving spirit behind. And indeed, in the work of the later classicists, there was too often no spirit to look for. The husk alone remained—a finicky pretentious framework, fluttering with the faded rags of ideals long outworn. Every great tradition has its own way of dying; and the classical tradition died of timidity. It grew afraid of the flesh and blood of life; it was too polite to face realities, too elevated to tread the common ground of fact ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... 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 pictures), 'because then I would have been Raphael's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is located in a basement in Nassau Street, 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
... Henry Harrod remarked that "If the view engraved by King correctly represents this house, it was by no means an ornamental feature; still it was as good as the far more pretentious structure which has replaced ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... an equally nauseating result, over the hard veal, the tough chicken, the "mousey" quails, and the tasteless beef and mutton, which are never roasted, but are baked or stewed in boiling fat—though shamelessly described as "rotis" in the pretentious and mendacious "menu" placed on the dinner-table. The consequence is that the tourist, who has been overfed at home, eats very little, and his health benefits. But in such an hotel the man who lives carefully when at home, and desires a simple but properly cooked meal, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... incredible what flocking of people there was to behold this old archbishop now a new convert; prelates and peers presented him with gifts of high valuation." Other writers of the period describe him as "old and corpulent," but of a "comely presence"; irascible and pretentious, gifted with an unlimited assurance and plenty of ready wit in writing and speaking; of a "jeering temper," and of a most grasping avarice. He was ridiculed on the stage in Middleton's play, The Game of Chess, as the "Fat Bishop." "He ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... she decided to make an early start and walk about on Hampstead Heath until a suitable hour for making her call. When she finally arrived before the house, a rather pretentious looking structure in South Hampstead, she was met at the gate by a middle-aged woman of unprepossessing appearance, who inquired rather sharply ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... before, the street-faades individually were too often bare and uninteresting in their correct formality. In the interiors of churches and large halls there appears a struggle between a cold and dignified simplicity and a growing tendency toward pretentious sham. But these pernicious tendencies did not fully mature till the latter part of the century, and the half-century after 1540 or 1550 was prolific of notable works in both ecclesiastical and secular architecture. The names of Michael Angelo and Vignola, whose careers began in ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... the largest and most pretentious of Sydney Town's "pubs," or taverns, was The Broken Bottle, kept by a former English pugilist from Botany Bay. He was known as Bruiser Jake, could neither read nor write and was shaped very much like a log, his neck being as large as his head. It was said that ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... down the steps of his own pretentious marble dwelling with an airy buoyancy that would have caused Sergt. McGinnis to turn mental back handsprings had he happened to be going by on his rounds. But, fortunately, McGinnis had passed on his inspection tour shortly before Michael Phelan had been summoned by Bateato. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... not popular; in fact, he is just the contrary. But his wife, the Princess Clothilde, would be exceedingly popular if she gave the Parisians a chance to see her oftener. She is so shy, so young, and the least pretentious of princesses, hates society, and never goes out if she can avoid it. Prince Jerome is, of all the Napoleonic family, the one who most resembles Napoleon I. in appearance, but not in character. There is nothing of the hero about him. Since he had the misfortune to be ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... parallelogram bounded by Oxford and Cambridge Terrace on 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
... wares, small tradespeople opening their shops, housemaids sweeping doorsteps, and occasionally a child. These Mr. Oakhurst regarded with a certain cold curiosity, perhaps quite free from the cynical disfavor with which he generally looked upon the more pretentious of his race whom he was in the habit of meeting. Indeed, I think he was not altogether displeased with the admiring glances which these humble women threw after his handsome face and figure, conspicuous even in a country of fine-looking men. While it ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... dare say the last he had in his pocket— to the steward, who waited upon him. I could not but feel a pity for him, especially when I saw him by the side of his fellow-passenger and townsman, a fat, coarse, vulgar, pretentious fellow of a Yankee trader, who had made money in San Diego, and was eating out the vitals of the Bandinis, fattening upon their extravagance, grinding them in their poverty; having mortgages on their lands, forestalling their cattle, and already making an ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... luxuries must obviously be acquired at the cost of stinting necessaries, often make one wonder whether it is possible for a man to go through a medical training and retain a spark of common sense. This sort of inconsiderateness gets cured only in the classes where poverty, pretentious as it is even at its worst, cannot pitch its pretences high enough to make it possible for the doctor (himself often no better off than the patient) to assume that the average income of an English family is about ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... willingness to play. Nothing tired her. Together they roamed to the quaint little restaurants of Bohemia; the Italian table d'hotes where Kenny was inclined to twinkle at the youthful art students who affected pretentious ties, the quiet old German restaurant that once had been a church, Chinatown where you ate unskillfully with chopsticks upon a table of onyx, and the Turkish restaurant where ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... BUILT UP.—It should be observed that each structure, however small, is usually built from the base up. Just the same as the more pretentious buildings are erected: First, the sill, then the floor supports, then the posts and top plates, with their connecting ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... a sentimental admiration of 'Imperialism' growing up now-a-days, under the pretentious titles of 'hero-worship,' and 'strong government;' and the British constitution is represented as a clumsy and artificial arrangement of the year 1688. 1688 after Christ? 1688 before Christ would be nearer the mark. It is as old, in its essentials, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... at length of the magnificent staircases of older countries and older times than our own, because somehow the subject is one that cannot be considered apart from its beginnings. All our halls and stairs, pretentious or not, have come to us from these superb efforts of masterly workmen, and perhaps that is why we feel instinctively that they must suggest a certain formality, and restraint. This feeling is indirectly a tribute to the architects who ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... mules. Towards evening groups of peasants, male and female, with farming tools in their hands, are seen winding their steps towards some hamlet after the day's labor. Arched stone bridges, old and moss-grown, come into view, spanning small watercourses on their way from the mountains to join more pretentious streams. Elevated spots show us the ruins of old stone towers, once a part of some feudal stronghold, but the eye seeks in vain for well-wooded slopes, thrifty groves, or cultivated fields with promising crops. While the more practical traveller realizes a sense of ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... pettifogging artists over here, and compare it with the corresponding English publication to realise how wretchedly flat, flabby, and insipid is the character of most of our productions. This supposed home of drawing shows really no trace of it, and our most pretentious pictures show as little as any. In these little English designs nearly every object is treated with the amount of interest it demands; landscapes, sea-pieces, costumes, incidents of war, all these ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... coachmen, etc., for the best families at the Russian capitol. I had one assistant who taught singing to the nobility, and another who was a master at arms and gave lessons in the science of handling all kinds of weapons. In the less pretentious quarters of the city I had proprietors of fourth rate cafes on my list; also loungers, loafers, seeming drunkards, laborers. But more important than these I succeeded in securing for one of my best men—an American—the ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... though, however, without the least thought of evil. She was exhausting her mocking verve upon a little boy of eight or ten—the son of the Marchioness de Boisfresnay—who had annoyed her extremely the night before, by parading through the ball his own pretentious little person, and by throwing himself pleasantly like a top between the legs of the gentlemen and through the dresses of the ladies. The marchioness went into ecstasies at these charming pranks. Clotilde defended her mildly, ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... perilously near the edge, stood a small cabin. It had once been far removed from the river, which had now, however, eaten its way close up to it—leaving no space for the road-way. The house was somewhat more pretentious than others of its class, being fashioned of planed painted boards, and having a brick chimney that stood fully exposed at one end. A great rose tree climbed and spread generously over one side, and the big red roses grew by hundreds amid the dark green ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... to the south 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 ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... 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 human conscience will ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... running!" cried Barkins, as, with his tail flying, Ching ran from hut to hut, and finally stopped before the two more pretentious places, which were ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... development was the debating club, so inevitable in an American village. Its discussions were sometimes pretentious and always crude, but something was gained thereby. I remember that one of the subjects was stated as follows: "Which has done most harm, intemperance or fanaticism.'' The debate was without any striking feature until my schoolmate, W. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Gray Seal!" sounding in his ears; with the newspapers screaming their diatribes, arousing the people against him, nagging the authorities into sleepless, frenzied efforts to trap him; with a price upon his head that was large enough to make a man, not too pretentious, rich for life—but in the underworld, until then, the name of the Gray Seal had been one to conjure with, for the underworld had sworn by the unknown master criminal, and had spoken his name with a reverence that was none the less genuine even if ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... opportunity for further attempts at communication, for their boat swept round the bend, and it was plain enough whence the fishers had come, for, beautifully situated in a lake-like curve of the stream, they could see quite a pretentious-looking village with what was evidently a mosque, and just beyond it, a strong-looking stockade. The houses were of exactly the same type as those they had before passed, but in addition there were several of considerable size, whose sides were woven in striking ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... and under her cheaply pretentious lace blouse a heart, as rebellious as the pink in her cheeks and the stars in her eyes, beat a rapid fantasia; and, try as she would, her lips ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... wealth. The chronicler notes that even those who were not noble, including some who had made their money by fortune-telling or by the practice of medicine, were sometimes able to make such display, to live in pretentious houses and have many servants. So could the provincial nobles, who it seems did not in other periods make much of a showing at ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... very alert, very French, these plays of the Theatre de Madame. They have aged less than many pretentious works that have aimed at immortality. There is hardly one of them without its ingenious idea, something truly scenic. We often see amateurs seeking pieces to play in the salons; let them draw from this repertory; they will ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Mr. Chester, as the machine was trundled into its shed—a pretentious affair built of corrugated iron and ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... roofs of whale ribs, covered thick with earth. A little later they would be buried beneath warm, shapeless mounds of snow. To most of them outside light and air could only be admitted through the low doorways, but one, more pretentious than the others, was provided with an old window sash, in which the place of missing panes was filled by dried intestines tightly stretched. In every hovel a stone lamp filled with seal oil burned night and day, furnishing light, warmth, and the heat for melting ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... the lord of the manor, the arrogant and pretentious Hetfalusy, was not calculated to reconcile him with his destiny. Hetfalusy regarded as a profitless loafer every man who did not seek his bread with spade and hoe, unless, of course, he happened to be a gentleman by birth. He applied this theory to the schoolmaster race especially, whom ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... remembering a pretentious lady who had called on her a few days earlier—the wife of a newly rich man who had taken Ardnavalley, a place in the neighbourhood, for the shooting. Sir Robert Smith, the multi-millionaire, was very ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... original proprietor. Here one can get the finest Italian peasant meal in the city, and many of the Italian merchants and bankers still go there for their luncheons every day, preferring it to the more pretentious establishments. ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... to 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 ...
— 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
... Roche Corbon. The cliff is pierced with windows and doors, and niches for a pigeonry. This, till comparatively recently, was a truly Troglodyte village. But well-to-do inhabitants of Tours have taken a fancy to the site and have reared pretentious villas that mask the face of the cliff, and with the advent of these rich people the humble cave-dwellers have "flitted." One singular feature remains, however, unspoiled. A mass of the cretaceous tufa has slipped ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... any picture extant of Gibbon in the character of subaltern in the South Hampshire Militia? With his small frame, his huge head, his round, chubby face, and the pretentious uniform, he must have looked a most extraordinary figure. Never was there so round a peg in a square hole! His father, a man of a very different type, held a commission, and this led to poor Gibbon becoming a soldier in spite of himself. War had broken out, the regiment was mustered, and the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and is remarkable for the best analysis that I have yet seen of the causes that led to the disaster of Caporetto. The pages in which Mr. TREVELYAN paints the portrait of a typical Italian soldier, home sick and perplexed, are likely to be borrowed by many more pretentious historians of the War for ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... village, past the store and the meeting-house, and drew up before the dwelling of the Bishop. The houses of the village were for the most part small cabins of two or three rooms, but the Bishop's was more pretentious. It was a frame building and boasted paint and shutters. A tithing-office stood near, and back of the house we could see a large granary and long stacks of hay. A bunch of cattle was destroying one stack, and Mrs. O'Shaughnessy remarked that ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... of the highest artistic importance, I suppose I should have read ere now Bulwer Lytton's novel of that name. As it is, I must confess my utter inability to wade through that pretentious and dreary achievement. And it does not matter. Skimming over the novel, I have gathered enough of the plot to see that Wagner took only the plot and nothing else from Lytton. What else he could have ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... as a lubricant. This was the only 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
... his conduct has changed accordingly. You have only to reverse your attitude towards him—to lay hands on his property, revile him, assault him, and he will be a brigand again in a moment, as ready to crush you as you are to crush him, and quite as full of pretentious moral ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... banks over which Congress had no control, and which could issue money without limit so far as national laws affected it. That was the scheme presented to us by very intelligent gentlemen engaged in the banking business. They were honest and in earnest, but it appeared to me as pretentious ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... a Jew. Kolontai is not a Jewess. There are many other Gentile Commissars. How completely the London Morning Post and the Dearborn Independent misrepresent the essential facts I have already shown by my analysis of the pretentious list of fifty names published by the former. I have before me the official list of the members of the Sovnarkom—that is, the Council of the People's Commissars of the Soviet government. As is well known, the ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... you have what you call lots of fun with Ceccherelli. Would you mind giving me an idea of what the fun consists in? I wish to have light—that I may do the man justice. Left to myself, I should judge him to be the dullest, commonest, cheapest of inexpressibly vulgar, insignificant, pretentious, ugly, and probably dishonest, little men." The adjectives came ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... infinity. This was her idea of enjoying life in the Himalayas; but the June sun proved a little exhausting; and she was aware of an unusual weariness as she lay back in her canvas chair in the verandah of "The Deodars,"—a woodland cottage, owing its pretentious name to the magnificent cedars that stood sentinel on ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... were still together, still appearing in public, and still, in that mysterious way known only to their type, rushing about on motor parties, buying champagne, and entertaining after a fashion in their cramped but pretentious apartment. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris |
