Social Pretence Quotes

The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.

Sports - especially the NBA - function as a place where American society pretends to discuss and pretends to solve questions and historical agonies that can't possibly be solved within the realm of sports.

Pretending is the basis of civilised society, and it is sometimes necessary for all of us. Without it we are nothing more than a pack of snarling dogs.

Fake relationships and fake people coming up to me and all of a sudden wanting to be my friend.

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

I've wasted a lot of time pretending to be interested in people who weren't terribly interesting.

Finally ... You have accomplished your mission in going there tonight - you were 'seen,' and you furnished your host and hostess with the sincerest proof of your great love and friendship for them - you endured their cocktail party.

A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.

The days and weeks of screwed-up smiles and laboured courtesy, the mock geniality, the hearty shake of the filthy hand, the chuckling reply that must be made to the coarse joke, the loathsome, choking compliment that must be paid to the grimy wife and sluttish daughter, the indispensable flattery of the vilest religious prejudices, the wholesale deglutition of hypocritical pledges.

There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile.

People who want to act rich when they're upper-middle class. They try too hard.

It's one of those places that are supposed to be very sophisticated and all, and the phonies are coming in the window.

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

I don't like it when people act extra-familiar and pretend that they are my best friends when they are actually not.

Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.

I'm a realist about who really reads books and who acts like they read books.

I had a lot of those fake friends. You just have to realize it's happening. You can't get caught up in the 'Oh, my God, they want to be my friend, finally' aspect.

In England, literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education.

Will you pretend you're my boyfriend?

She is probably by this time as tired of me, as I am of her; but as she is too Polite and I am too civil to say so, our letters are still as frequent and affectionate as ever, and our Attachment as firm and sincere as when it first commenced.