Best 21 quotes in «pretentiousness quotes» category

If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.

Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.

He had an air of magnificent melancholy sophistication, as if his proper place were elsewhere, somewhere infinitely more compelling even than Brakebills, and he'd been confined to his present setting by a grotesque divine oversight, which he tolerated with as much good humor as could be expected.

Arrogant men with knowledge make more noise from their mouth than making a sense from their mind.

A wise man's goal shouldn't be to say something profound, but to say something useful.

don’t be like so many writers, don’t be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don’t be dull and boring and pretentious, don’t be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don’t add to that. don’t do it.

I'm tired of 'pretentious' just being used as an excuse to dismiss anything that fucking expects you to have a brain.

I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.

There can be no such thing as “philosophical horror”, at least as a premeditated genre. Why? Because philosophy implies enquiry, reflection and an open mind, whereas the genre of horror demands certain conclusions in advance.

In my defense, I love the book in a postmodern kind of way where I've always sensed that it contains something that I relate to. I think it's the kind of book that echoes my beliefs and my sentiments and I've always related well to people who have read the book and I've written about the book. You know, I majored in comp lit and it's possible, it's very possible to read a book without reading it in the traditional straightforward manner. You can read about a book, Joe. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand?

I pick up the list of Benji's five favorite books because we've got work to do: "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. He's a pretentious fuck and a liar. "Underworld" by Don DeLillo. He's a snob. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He's a spoiled passport-carrying fuck stunted in eighth grade. "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace. Enough already. "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane. He's got Mayflowers in his blood.

Pretentiousness isn't always just big words and meaningless jargon, but also pretty words that either when put into action don't mean beans or hurt you in the long run. Oftentimes, the former appeals to the intellect whereas the latter appeals to the heart.

Pseudo-artists think that being an artist means opposing whatever seems to be an establishment. That is not creative at all. True creativity is the ability to gain perspective wherever you may have missed it before.

My conception stands opposed to social science as a set of bureaucratic techniques which inhibit social inquiry by ‘methodolocigal’ pretentions, which congest such work by obscurantist conceptions, or which trivialize it by concern with minor problems unconnected with publicly relevant issues.

Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle —

Such are the inconsistences of humans in uniform, that the same endothermic vertebrates, which were believed a blessing, an aid to nostalgia, a sign from God, could also be shot for food (see p281-88) and employed as tools.

We're very familiar with the idea that some things are so complex they're beyond our comprehension. This not only keeps us solving and experimenting but also distracted. Many things are really so simple we can't see them under our big noses.

These were wannabe elites who, once they popped on big-boy pants, would be infiltrating New York with their pretentiousness.

The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it.

To be full of yourself is to make a fool of yourself.

You shattered the remainder of my heart, yet you expect me to be okay with it day after day.