Affectation quotes:

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Affectation is the product of falsehood. -- Thomas Carlyle
Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins. -- Horace Mann
Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body. -- William Hazlitt
Affectation discovers sooner what one is than it makes known what one would fain appear to be. -- StanisÅ?aw I LeszczyÅ?ski
Affectation is an awkward and forced imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the beauty that accompanies what is natural. -- John Locke
Affectation is certain deformity; by forming themselves on fantastic models, the young begin with being ridiculous, and often end in being vicious. -- Robert Blair
Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself. -- Fanny Brice
Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself. -- Fanny Brice
Some are Atheists by Neglect; others are so by Affectation; they, that think there is no God at some times; do not think so at all times. -- Benjamin Whichcote
Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence. -- Samuel Johnson
Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as 'good' and other sorts as 'bad' is fearful behavior. -- Stephen King
How majestic is naturalness. I have never met a man whom I really considered a great man who was not always natural and simple. Affectation is inevitably the mark of one not sure of himself. -- Charles G. Dawes
Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly. -- Samuel Johnson
Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes,--vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues. -- Henry Fielding
I don't like affectation. -- Martin Freeman
I have no affectation when I speak. -- Lisa Kudrow
The characteristic of coquettes is affectation governed by whim. -- Henry Fielding
Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine. -- Jacques Barzun
Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding. -- Philip Stanhope
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops. -- Maya Angelou
One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs. -- Josh Billings
Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors. -- Jean Baudrillard
What used to be called 'good manners' is now regarded as mere affectation. Open a door for a young woman, and she's likely to call security. -- Terry Wogan
I'm trying to learn to smoke, which is rather weird when everyone is trying to stop. I'm not a smoker. But my character only smokes as an affectation. -- Francesca Annis
More men are ruined by underestimating the value of money than by overestimating it. Let us, then, abandon the affectation of despising money, and frankly own its value. -- Orison Swett Marden
There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation. -- John Ruskin
I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever. -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I'm developing more stuff in my voice, more Nick Swardson. It's me as myself in a sense and kind of in my voice, no accent no affectation. I'm growing into my own persona. -- Nick Swardson
My life is black and white and mixed. My mother's a Rastafarian, my dad was a short white guy - it's not an affectation. It's also the lives of millions of people throughout the world. -- Zadie Smith
I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even afraid of it - it's a learned affectation and it's just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out. -- Maya Angelou
Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation. -- Jacques Barzun
There is a pleasure in affecting affectation. -- Charles Lamb
I have no affectation when I speak -- Lisa Kudrow
A coxcomb is four-fifths affectation and one-fifth vanity. -- Thomas Chandler Haliburton
No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. -- W. Somerset Maugham
Pessimism is the affectation of youth, the reality of age. -- Ellen Glasgow
External reality is sort of an affectation of the nervous system. -- Jaron Lanier
All affectation; 'tis my perfect scorn; Object of my implacable disgust. -- William Cowper
The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety. -- Johann Kaspar Lavater
Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar. -- Richard Whately
Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves. -- Dave Eggers
All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich -- Johann Kaspar Lavater
The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation -- Henry Fielding
Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding. -- Philip Stanhope
Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom, which some display, by universal incredulity. -- Oliver Goldsmith
Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed. -- Oscar Wilde
He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation. -- Owen Feltham
I wear glasses myself. As an affectation, as a badge of high intellect and to see with. -- Simon Munnery
There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. -- Samuel Johnson
I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's like decal stuck up on a person. -- Maya Angelou
A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art. -- Lord Chesterfield
We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours. -- John Lancaster Spalding
Nothing is so tiresome to one's self, as well as so odious to others, as disguise and affectation. -- Benjamin Franklin
Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. -- William Shakespeare
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it--else it is none. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox. -- Richard Steele
The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault. -- Voltaire
Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of themAvoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation. -- Jacques Barzun
affectation hath always had a greater share both in the action and discourse of men than truth and judgment have ... -- Aphra Behn
The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language. -- Jonathan Swift
Chopin's rubato possessed an unshakeable emotional logic. It always justified itself by a strengthening or weakening melodic line, by exaggeration or affectation. -- Karol Mikuli
If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much. -- Maria Edgeworth
Our sex bears the disgrace not only of a great deal of genuine poltroonery, but also of much which is mere affectation. -- Frances Power Cobbe
I have sometimes thought--that under the affectation of independent views you are as enslaved to the social code as any woman I know! -- Thomas Hardy
affectation is fond of making a greater show than reality. ... Nature and truth have never learned to blow the trumpet, and never will. -- Lydia M. Child
It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease. -- Samuel Johnson
Modesty is a learned affectation. It's no good. Humility is great, because humility says, 'There was someone before me. I'm following in somebody's footsteps.' -- Maya Angelou
Great vices are the proper objects of our detestation, smaller faults of our pity, but affectation appears to be the only true source of the ridiculous. -- Henry Fielding
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly; the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop. -- Samuel Johnson
As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now? -- Abraham Lincoln
All actions and attitudes of children are graceful because they are the luxuriant and immediate offspring of the moment - divested of affectation and free from all pretense. -- Henry Fuseli
Avoid all affectation and singularity. What is according to nature is best, and what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own. -- Jeremy Collier
Through care taken over trends, the desire to be novel and affectation knowledge, we repudiate our art, our instinct, our own way of doing things; it is absurd and stupid -- Giuseppe Verdi
I don't think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. It's a learned affectation. -- Maya Angelou
Much like the French (or like ourselves, their apes),Who with strange habit do disguise their shapes;Who loving novels, full of affectation,Receive the manners of each other nation. -- Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas
Let us shun self-analyzation, self-consciousness, morbidness, affectation, attitudinizing. Let us look ahead as little as possible, keeping our eyes on our brushes and on the world of beauty around us. -- Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer
The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In oratory affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn. -- Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury
The constant desire of pleasing which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this that it rarely fails of attaining its end when not disgraced by affectation. -- Henry Fielding
Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please. -- Oliver Goldsmith
Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances. -- Samuel Johnson

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