Affectation

Affectation is attempt to assume or exhibit what is not natural or real.

Quotes

 * Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
 * Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect (New York: Harper, 1959), p. 168.


 * All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich.
 * Johann Kaspar Lavater, Aphorism 53, in Aphorisms on Man, translated by Henry Fuseli (London: J. Johnson, 1788).


 * Affectation is an awkward and forced Imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the Beauty that accompanies what is natural.
 * John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), Section 66.


 * Affectation hides three times as many virtues as Charity does sins.
 * Horace Mann, Thoughts (Boston: H. B. Fuller and Company, 1867), p. 214.


 * No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.
 * Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 42.


 * An English wit has well said that affectation displeases us because it has not too much, but too little, art.
 * Alice Meynell, Children of the Old Masters (Italian School) (London: Duckworth and Co., 1903), "The Venetians", p. 75.
 * The "English wit" Meynell refers to has not been identified. The sentence as she reports it may be her paraphrase or may have been uttered in conversation by someone in her literary circle.


 * There Affectation, with a sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen.
 * Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712), Canto 4.