You pretend the public but intend yourself. [ Proverb ]
You pretend to be a visitor but are really a spy. [ Proverb ]
I will never pretend esteem for a man whose principles I detest. [ Gustavus III. of Sweden ]
The higher the rank the less pretence, because there is less to pretend to. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
You converse daily with the devil, and pretend to be frighted with a mouse. [ Proverb ]
Quacks pretend to cure other men's disorders, but fail to find a remedy for their own. [ Cicero ]
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom. [ Montaigne ]
To forget, or pretend to do so, to return a borrowed article, is the meanest sort of petty theft. [ Dr. Johnson ]
If mankind were only just what they pretend to be, the problem of the millennium would be immediately solved. [ Henry Wheeler Shaw (pen name Josh Billings) ]
What a fool is he who says to a woman. Will you? Dost not know, simpleton, that they always pretend not to be willing? [ Alfred Bougeart ]
Figure-flingers and star-gazers pretend to foretell the fortunes of kingdoms, and have no foresight in what concerns themselves. [ L'Estrange ]
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
It is as absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always, as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to execute a piece of music. [ Balzac ]
If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open, and you friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform and make good what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be. [ Tillotson ]
It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious. [ Plutarch ]
How apt nature is, even in those who profess an eminence in holiness, to raise and maintain animosities against those whose calling or person they pretend to find cause to dislike! [ Bishop Hall ]
No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath. [ Swift ]
As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner; and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
If you're a Thanksgiving dinner, but you don't like the stuffing or the cranberry sauce or anything else, just pretend like you're eating it, but instead, put it all in your lap and form it into a big mushy ball. Then, later, when you're out back having cigars with the boys, let out a big fake cough and throw the ball to the ground. Then say, Boy, these are good cigars!
[ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]