sententiousness

• “And, lateish, Craik, who improves in sententiousness and that universal forgiveness which springs from universal understanding.”

  Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle

• “It's easy to make fun of all this sententiousness, which is compounded by the movie's 133-minute length, or to forget what a formidable actress Ms. Roberts can be with the right material.”

  The Wall Street Journal: 'Eat Pray' Preach Preen

• “Were the people who made this film—among them the writer and first-time director George Nolfi—governed by such unseen forces as knee-jerk sententiousness, studio imperatives, marketing experts and focus groups?”

  The Wall Street Journal: Lizard Tale 'Rango': Clever, Coldblooded

• “Enjoyably plotted, sometimes dextrously turned, but groaning with moral sententiousness, This Happy Breed is peppered with moments in which characters proclaim the importance of using their own words, of not slipping into jargon, in particular the second-hand vocabulary of 1930s socialism.”

  The Guardian: This Happy Breed; Henry IV, Parts One and Two – review

• “Unfortunately, Tom Guise, the author of the Labour List post, combines sententiousness with the sort of prefabricated phrases that George Orwell complained about to say:”

  Labour List visits my Farm

• “I assume his attack (on the ugly thread) is for the purposes of getting some attention and as a kindly soul I shall not deny the poor lonely chap. I have looked at his blog and it has the unintentional comic sententiousness of youth.”

  Archive 2007-03-25

• “Moral beauty has tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.”

  Fictionaut: There's Something Wrong with Sven

• “No doubt they are meant to represent popular culture, but they are characteristic of the cheerlessness and sententiousness of municipal Labourism.”

  The New Art Gallery, Walsall

• “Surrounded by sententiousness and self-preening, Marisa Tomei manages to play a skeptical journalist with easy charm, but her efforts are doomed by the movie's ceaseless barrage of dumb bombs.”

  The Wall Street Journal: Perfect Waves,

• “Not so the second act, in which Mr. Sondheim and James Lapine tell a parallel tale of the modern-day art world that lapses into the same cloying sententiousness that mars the second act of "Into the Woods," their 1987 fairy-tale musical: Anything you do,/Let it come from you.”

  The Wall Street Journal: The Politics of Love and Hate

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