Pompously Antonyms Quotes

Life itself is too great a miracle for us to make so much fuss about potty little reversals of what we pompously assume to be the natural order. ~ Robertson Davies

Valdivia's actions symbolize man's indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile. If, in the moment the conquistador was facing death at the hands of tht invincible Araucanian Caupolican, he had not been overwhelmed with fury, like a hunted animal, I do not doubt that judging his life, Valdivia would have felt death was fully justified. He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural, and he had become the omnipotent ruler of a warrior nation. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

I will conduct myself with all due decorum." Mr. Crepsley said pompously, then added beneath his breath, "but I will miss her. With all my heart and soul, I miss her. ~ Darren Shan

All known great religions have had an exoteric aspect, that is, exterior, profane, for the masses of believers, and another esoteric, for a restricted select minority of initiates. So it was with the Egyptian and Greek cults. Those ignorant people who pompously speak to us about Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and the 'rational thought of the Greeks' ignore the fact that behind their ideas one finds the Eleusinian Mysteries of Delphi and elsewhere, in which these same philosophers, above all Plato, Aeschylus, Euripides took part, though they could not speak of it in public. The Orphic cults and mythology are the foundation of the philosophical thought of Ancient Greece. The word esoteric itself comes from the Greek work eisoteo and means 'to enter into' and 'to open a door' (towards the Gods: Theo, eiso-theo). ~ Miguel Serrano

Is this the highest point of reason, to realize that the soil beneath our feet is shifting, to pompously name 'interrogation' what is only a persistent state of stupor, to call 'research' or 'quest' what is only trudging in a circle, to call 'Being' that which never fully is? ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Hebrew is the most wonderful of languages, a language of a thousand antonyms, hard and strong as steel, while soft and gleaming as gold. ~ Ze'ev Jabotinsky

I never prophesy," he declared pompously. "It is true that I have the habit of being always right - but I do not boast of it. ~ Agatha Christie

I know nothing that I may say can influence you," he said. "You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. ~ Jack London

In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. ~ Azar Nafisi

The stubborn of a captive mentality can be clearly seen in the formulation of national development plans in most developing nations where the fundamental meaning and criteria of knowledge and development, modernization and reform, progress and change, happiness, tolerance, pluralism and their respective antonyms - such as under-development and corruption - are all derived from Western frameworks. Sometimes the strangest phenomenon surfaces - such as when the methodology of understanding and teaching indigenous religions is regarded as being uncritical and less objective if it does not utilize the methods developed by Western scholars in the understanding and teaching Western religions and religious texts. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning; or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words - in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought. A ~ George Orwell

The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain. ~ Thomas Paine

We live in an age of progress," announced Professor Wogglebug, pompously. "It is easier to swallow knowledge than to acquire it laboriously from books. Is it not so, my friends?" "Some ~ L. Frank Baum

In the domain of primitive spirituality, that is, supernatural spirituality, the mind loses all its sanity in the name of non-conformity and takes nonsense to be a form of higher sense and supernatural insanity and fallacy to be spiritual sanity and truth. In an attempt to break free from the chains of religious orthodoxy as well as radical rationalism, these mysticism-obsessed beings, who pompously prefer to call themselves "lightworkers", "yogis", "mystics" and so on, end up bound in yet another form of orthodoxy or extremism, replete with the primal psychological germs of supernaturalism. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Many of the wonderful achievements of the 20th century were the result of the pursuit of profits. Unfortunately, demagoguery has led to profits becoming a dirty word. Nonprofit is seen as more righteous, particularly when people pompously stand before us and declare, 'We're a nonprofit organization.' ~ Walter E. Williams

Levity and sincerity are not antonyms. We take pleasure in playing chess, but that does not mean we make wasteful moves. You ~ Claire North

The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Everything that is ponderous, vicious and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying kinds of style, are developed in great variety among Germans. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

He'd had a real talent, but what was talent without confidence, self-possession, "ownership," as people said, pompously but maybe accurately. ~ Meg Wolitzer

In all its myriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non-sequiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and inconsistency. ~ Paul Johnson