Pompous Quotes

Women always think that if they tell a man not to be pompous that will shut him up, but I am an old hand at that game. I know that if a man bides his time his moment will come.

The moment where you know the thing you want is ridiculous and pompous and a terrible thing to want anyway. The direction in which you're headed is not the direction you want to go, yet you're going to head that way a while longer cause that's just the kind of person you are.

... with Voodoo Child somebody was filming when we started doing that. We did that about three times because they wanted to film us in the studio, to make us (imitates a pompous voice) 'make it look like you're recording boys' - one of them scenes, you know, so okey, let's play this and then we went into Voodoo Child

I don't want to sound pompous, but I think it is important that when one makes arguments of consequence that he go and see what those consequences are. Having championed the war, I wanted to see the products of my own argument.

I first think of intelligence. You need it for surviving in Italy because Italy is so pompous.

You need philosophy. It sounds a little pompous but I think when you direct a film, the only way to find a response to the questions you keep asking yourself is to have a philosophy.

If there's anything I'm not pompous about, it's myself or my work. But I seem to be able to play it.

I make a living out of being pompous! Why should I change?

At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.

I don't want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them.

What I don't like are pompous, pretentious movies.

Take your work seriously, but don't take yourself seriously

My job is to find the politicians and the presidents and the pompous people who are telling other people how to live, powerful, visible creatures and ... go at them.

For me to be pompous is the most horrible thing in the world. It's like putting a wall around you. It screws you up. You'd better be willing to change your views or adapt and be modern.

There are so few people who can really take hold of art and sort of eat and chew it up. Somehow it's got to be held special, sacred in a corner, and if you don't do the same thing with it, if you're not equally reverential, serious, and pompous about it, well, then you're not a great artist. Who needs that?

Humor and laughter are not necessarily the same thing. Humor permits us to see into life from a fresh and gracious perspective. We learn to take ourselves more lightly in the presence of good humor. Humor gives us the strength to bear what cannot be changed, and the sight to see the human under the pompous.

Some of my favorite characters that I've played have been very pompous because I love making fun of pompous people.

There is a type of snobbish, pompous journalist who thinks that the only news that has any validity is war, famine, pestilence or politics. I don’t come from that school.

I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.

Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and ‘the public’s right to know’; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.

A man sufficiently gifted with humor is in small danger of succumbing to flattering delusions about himself, because he cannot help perceiving what a pompous ass he would become if he did.

Dancers aren't pompous; they're too tired.

Funeral expenses are the curse of the poor everywhere on earth, they are wasteful and unnecessary, they are the price of foolish ostentation and a display that is less an evidence of grief than a vulgar travesty of those pompous obsequies where no grief is.

Some of us, I think, us small, pompous arty ones probably read too much George Steiner and kind of got the idea that we were entering to this kind of post-culture age and that we'd better do something postmodernist - quickly, before somebody else did.

Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools-guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus-THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!

With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Those who bequeath unto themselves a pompous funeral, are at just so much expense to inform the world of something that had much better be concealed; namely, that their vanity has survived themselves.

In college I was one of six males who auditioned for five male roles in a comedy play. I was the one rejected. At that moment I made up my mind never to place myself at the mercy of some pompous, goateed, black-turtleneck-shirted "should I yay him or nay him?" pantywaist ever again.

The lifestyle of many of our colleagues has been very pompous. They conduct weddings and birthdays in such an ostentatious manner that it pains me a lot. It appears that they are making fun of our commitment to the poor.

The nice thing about us lot is that what we do is of no consequence. We don't do things that are important; we spend our lives doing things which are not important. That's what's nice about us, we're not pompous. We never do anything very bad that's gonna change the world. We're not serious, we're butterflies. We live for a day.

Letterwriting is the natural outlet of the "odds." The busy-bodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties ... Also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd, as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they write!

We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else.

No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.

That's what's so great about the Internet. It allows pompous blow-hards to connect with other pompous blow-hards in a vast circle-jerk of pomposity.

March is the month of expectation, The things we do not know, The Persons of Prognostication Are coming now. We try to sham becoming firmness, But pompous joy Betrays us, as his first betrothal Betrays a boy.

Astronomy is a cold, desert science, with all its pompous figures,-depends a little too much on the glass-grinder, too little on the mind. 'T is of no use to show us more planets and systems. We know already what matter is, and more or less of it does not signify.

Always take yourself seriously... it's not the same as being pompous, or overly self-assured, but it is important to understand that the small little ideas that creep up in your mind, often contain the germ of a much larger project. All great art wasn't born as great art. It first needed to be recognized by the artist him/herself. Through his or her belief in it, it became true.

Pompous asses knows how to put the moan in sanctimonious.

I still audition a lot - it depends on the medium. For film, I audition just like everyone else, because it's a different set of casting directors. For television and theatre - well, for theater, there's some auditioning that has to happen, just for them to know that you can sing it, and how you'd take on the part. But for TV, things are getting a little better with, "Would you like to be a part of this?" But that's really for one - night things. It sounds like a pompous answer, if I say people are calling me to ask me to do things.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.

Words mean what they're generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral for the first time, he called it "awful, pompous, and artificial." Meaning roughly: Awesome, majestic, and ingenious.

The reason people hate America is because they don't like being treated like garbage by arrogant, pompous, hypocritical, self-righteous, duplicitous, imperialist political and bureaucratic hacks.

War is something Arafat sends others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton's mediation.

Hidden behind the facade of pompous jargon and noble affections, there is more sheer larceny per square foot on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than any place else in the world.

Take events in your life seriously, take work seriously, but don't take yourself seriously, or you'll become affected, pompous and boring.

Clergymen tend to be unreliable and pompous figures. Seldom Jewish rabbis, less often Catholic priests, but Protestant ministers tend to be... not really very admirable. Not necessarily evil, but silly. And wrong, of course.

These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.

I don't mind being accused of being a bad comedian and I don't even mind being accused of being a bad talk-show host, but I never want to be accused of being an arrogant, pompous showbiz asshole.

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I’d always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.

One thing is certain: the humility of faith, if it is followed by the proper consequences-by the acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our providential task-will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalizations of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history.