Pretension

Examples

• There is no pretension whatever to any critical study of Das Kapital itself. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• The pretension to finality falls away. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• We may know that it's a base pretension by its having that effect. Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit.
• They held many aversions too in common, and could have the comfort of laughing together over works of false sentimentality and pompous pretension. Charlotte Bronte. Shirley.
• No, said Darcy, I have made no such pretension. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.
• I speak generally, and not with any pretension to exactness. Plato. The Republic.
• I make no pretension to be better than my fellows. Charlotte Bronte. Shirley.
• But I thought Werter himself a more divine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character contained no pretension, but it sunk deep. Mary Shelley. Frankenstein_Or_The Modern Prometheus.
• Upon what grounds this pretension is founded must now be the subject of our enquiry. David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature.
• You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.
• It very seldom happens that anybody--of any pretensions--any pretensions--comes here without being presented to me. Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit.
• We must not swing across from the repudiation of the extravagant pretensions of the faithful to an equally extravagant condemnation. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
• For they certainly do believe it, and generally the more parochial their outlook, the more cosmic their pretensions. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• I am not a moral sort of fellow,' he said, 'and I never make any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. Charles Dickens. Hard Times.
• Everybody went away having any pretensions to politeness, and of course, with them, Doctor von Glauber, the Court Doctor, and his Baroness. William Makepeace Thackeray. Vanity Fair.
• He never dreamed of disputing their pretensions, but did homage to the miserable Mumbo jumbo they paraded. Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit.
• I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.
• What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions! Charles Dickens. David Copperfield.
• The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections, or fortune. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.
• In the other corner was a bed of much humbler pretensions, and evidently designed for _use_. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin.
• Should he oppose any of their pretensions or usurpations, the danger is equally great. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
• Nobody believed in his pretensions any more. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
• What Nietzsche has done here is, in his swashbuckling fashion, to cut under the abstract and final pretensions of creeds. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• She is such a very nice girl--no airs, no pretensions, though on a level with the firSt. I don't mean with the titled aristocracy. George Eliot. Middlemarch.

Checked by Justin