"Ostentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hard, and straightforward reader—and learned, in Literary History, beyond all his contemporaries'; and in the preface to the sale catalogue we read that he was 'a person who collected books for use, and not for ostentation or ornament, and he seemed no more solicitous about their dress than his own.' A memorandum book containing notes of his visits to patients, etc., is in the Sloane collection of manuscripts ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... a chair with needless ostentation and then focused her regard on her brother who stood before her a self-confessed culprit, conscious guilt as manifest in his attitude as in the flaming confusion ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... se, we find maleness in its absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from the initial instinct of combat, through every form of glorious ostentation, with the loudest ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... afraid. Look on me as a friend," urged the judge, who towered above him in the dim candle-light. "Here's comfort without ostentation. Don't tell me you prefer the tavern, with its corrupt associations!" Hannibal was silent, and the judge, after a brief moment of irresolution, threw open the door. Then he bent toward the small stranger, bringing his face close to the child's, while his thick lips wreathed ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... give to the most ancient of the pyramids less than four thousand years of antiquity; but one must consider that these efforts of the ostentation of the kings could only have been commenced long after the establishment of the towns. But to build towns in a land inundated every year, let us always remark that it was first necessary to raise the land of the towns on piles in this land of mud, and to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... appearance, and the magnanimity of his character, attracted the respect of strangers wherever he went. He had the air of a sovereign prince rather than of an exile, and commanded more regard than monarchs in the height of their ostentation. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... reached Tagelel. From this place there was little danger in their proceeding singly, and it was agreed, in consequence of the low state of their finances, that they should separate, in order to try what each might be able to accomplish single-handed and without ostentation, till new supplies ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... conduct," (that is, his offer of two lac of rupees out of his own private cash for the Company's service, upon the 26th of June, 1780,) "on the occasion I have mentioned, is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or as the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into your possession, was not my own,—that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... be enough to sustain a school of magnificent architecture. And although, in highly wrought plate, and in finely designed jewelry, noble art may occasionally exist, yet in general both jewels and services of silver are matters of ostentation, much more than sources of intellectual pleasure. There are also many evils connected with them—they are a care to their possessors, a temptation to the dishonest, and a trouble and bitterness to ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... who mingle very little in society; who are little known to the generality of foreigners, and who keep their daughters entirely at home, that they may not be contaminated by bad example. These select few, rich without ostentation, are certainly doing everything that is in their power to remedy the evils occasioned by the want of proper schools, or of competent instructresses for their daughters. Being nearly all allied by birth, or connected by marriage, they form a sort ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... fellow." But it let me into a secret of his character, and ever after that, I was as particular in my invitations as possible. Men thought him proud, and cold, and touchy, which he was not; and stingy, which he scorned to be, from his contempt for ostentation in any shape. The rarity of his wine-parties, and his never having other wines produced than port or sherry, he himself explained to me—"Men would say, it was easy for me to sport claret and champagne, when I could get them for nothing." But if an unthinking freshman ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... killed. At Canterbury they pillaged the palace of the archbishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, then as now, drew an immense revenue from the state, and lived in great splendor, and they justly conceived that the luxury and ostentation in which he indulged was in some degree the cause of the ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... games in showy apparel, with silk umbrellas held over their heads; and amongst other articles of dress, the principal of them wore an immense drab-coloured quaker's hat of the coarsest quality. So great were their ostentation and pride, that they would scarcely deign to speak ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... to literature by a nobleman of amiable manners, of untarnished public and private character, and of cultivated mind. On this, as on other occasions, Lord Dover performed his part diligently, judiciously, and without the slightest ostentation. He had two merits, both of which are rarely found together in a commentator: he was content to be merely a commentator,-to keep in the background, and to leave the foreground to the author whom he had undertaken to illustrate. yet, though willing to be an attendant, he was by no means a slave; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... his restoration of a comma, without inserting the panegyrick in which he celebrated himself for his achievement. The exuberant excrescence of his diction I have often lopped, his triumphant exultations over Pope and Howe I have sometimes suppressed, and his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed; but I have in some places shown him, as he would have shown himself, for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... were collected within the beleaguered town, had been invited to a masqued ball, for it was the policy for Sir William Howe to hide the distress and danger of the period and the desperate aspect of the siege under an ostentation of festivity. The spectacle of this evening, if the oldest members of the provincial court circle might be believed, was the most gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred in the annals of the government. The brilliantly-lighted apartments were thronged with figures ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... helmets and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance, all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful in working in metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation—even wounds, which were often enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every free man was followed by two attendants, likewise mounted. War-chariots were early in use, as they ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... their novelty, listened, with a degree of patience and attention, which his guest mistook for the humility of wonder. The latter, indeed, described the few festivities which the turbulence of that period permitted to the court of Henry the Third, with a minuteness, that somewhat recompensed for his ostentation; but, when he came to speak of the character of the Duke de Joyeuse, of a secret treaty, which he knew to be negotiating with the Porte, and of the light in which Henry of Navarre was received, M. St. Aubert recollected enough of his former experience to be assured, that his guest ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... jessamine, the blossomed myrtle and the tuberose, my old fragrant favourites, for this scentless (but triumphant) beauty; everybody who beheld the Phoebus begged for a plant or a cutting; and we, generous in our ostentation, willing to redeem the vice by the virtue, promised as many plants and cuttings as we could reasonably imagine the root might be made to produce*—perhaps rather more; and half the dahlia growers round rejoiced over the glories of the ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... share of the reverence paid by fools to rank and wealth. He was travelling this lonely coast on a tour of inspection, to visit and report upon a site where His Majesty's advisers had some design to plant a fort; and a fine ostentation coloured his progress here as through life. He had brought his coach because it conveyed his claret and his batterie de cuisine (the seaside inns were detestable); but being young and extravagantly healthy and, with all his faults, very much of a man, he preferred to ride ahead ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... friend) as I would rather prove my self to be a Gentleman, by being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, vertuous and communicable, then by a fond ostentation of riches; or (wanting these Vertues my self) boast that these were in my Ancestors; [And yet I confesse, that where a noble and ancient Descent and such Merits meet in any man, it is a double dignification of that ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... many people but an excuse for ostentation. For others it is a means to an end; while a third variety apparently keep a debit and credit account with their acquaintances—in books of double entry, so that no errors may occur—and issue invitations like receipts, only ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... squeezing. Some men grumbled at him. He was spoiling the trade. Well, perhaps to a certain extent; not much. Most of the places he traded with were unknown not only to geography but also to the traders' special lore which is transmitted by word of mouth, without ostentation, and forms the stock of mysterious local knowledge. It was hinted also that Morrison had a wife in each and every one of them, but the majority of us repulsed these innuendoes with indignation. He was a true humanitarian and rather ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... him of the magnificent library he would gather for himself. And it should be in no wise for show—the gross ostentation of the unlettered parvenu—but a genuine library, which should minister to his own individual culture. The thought took instant hold upon his interest. By that road, his progress to the goal of gentility would be smooth and simple. He seemed not to ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... because of my experience therein of more than twenty-two years. They esteem the prior greatly, but his companion very little. They think that the religious who lives better and has the greater number of servants, is a great chief. They believe the contrary of him who does not live with so much ostentation. It happened that a religious was going to visit the chapels of that district where he lived. He, with the spirit that he brought from Castilla, intended to commence with the greatest poverty, so that he took neither bed nor refreshment. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... there was a big lump in Joyce's throat, and Cynthia herself coughed and flourished a handkerchief about her face with suspicious ostentation. Suddenly she ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... beloved. To mention integrity and freedom from corruption in such a man, would be an affront to his virtues. He did not even court reputation, an object to which men of worth frequently sacrifice, by ostentation or artifice: equally avoiding competition with, his colleagues, [33] and contention with the procurators. To overcome in such a contest he thought inglorious; and to be put down, a disgrace. Somewhat less than three years were spent in this office, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... fared very well in the matter of gifts, and for some days much of his time was spent in reading notes of profuse thanks, which were yet vaguely apologetic. The Grays and Mrs. Dan had remembered him with an agreeable lack of ostentation, and some of the "Little Sons of the Rich," who had kept one evening a fortnight open for the purpose of "using up their meal-tickets" at Monty's, were only too generously grateful. Miss Drew had forgotten him, and when they met after the holiday her recognition was ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... a lunch was given in our honour by the Governor at the Palace, a ramshackle old building, comfortably furnished, but with no attempt at ostentation. The household was more like that of an English country house, and there was none of the stateliness and ceremony here which characterised the Governor's Palace at Irkutsk. Nor was I sorry for it, for in this land of hunger and long distances man can well dispense with formality ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... but the songs of a strange land. It was 'Live and let live,' here. Stranger guests came from far and near, music sounded, goblets clashed, and I," said the Wind, "was not able to drown the noise. Ostentation, pride, splendor, and display ruled, but not the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... and the company of princes, for the reason that he has always had a peculiar loathing for tyranny, just as he has always loved equality. (Now you will hardly find any court so modest that has not about it much noisy ostentation, dissimulation and luxury, while yet being quite free of any kind of tyranny.) Indeed it was only with great difficulty that he could be dragged into the Court of Henry VIII, although nothing more courteous and unassuming than this prince could ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... between God's miracles and the devil's wonders. For Christ and his saints have their miracles always tending to fruit and profit. The devil and his witches and necromancers, all their wonderful works tend to no fruitful end, but to a fruitless ostentation and show, as it were a juggler who would for a show before the people play feats ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... sights, and see the City, If I your meaning understood, You wish'd a Picture, cheap, but good; The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy; To suit a Poet's quiet study, Where Books and Prints for delectation Hang, rather than vain ostentation. The subject? what I pleased, if comely; But something scriptural and homely: A sober Piece, not gay or wanton, For winter fire-sides to descant on; The theme so scrupulously handled, A Quaker might look on unscandal'd; Such as might satisfy Ann Knight, And classic ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... luxury great, there must be some persons who have a great deal of ostentation, even if they have little taste. A picture or a jewel of great value will, very certainly, find a purchaser, but that will only serve as a motive for bringing the fine painting from another country, where the necessaries of life are cheaper, and where men enjoy that careless ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... proceeded to untie and run over the contents of the papers, with a serious face and what seemed an ostentation of delay. Me and my impatience it would appear he had forgotten; for when he was quite done, he sat a while thinking, whistled a bar or two, refolded the papers, tied them up again; and then, and not before, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... quiet. Hence, the continuity of his patronage was never broken by trials of rival hostelries; and Troyon's was always expecting Bourke for the simple reason that he invariably arrived unexpectedly, with neither warning nor ostentation, to stop as long as he liked, whether a day or a week or a month, and ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... obliging, and possessed of the finest manners. At the same time, he who did not know that he was with Cherubini would think him stern and reserved, so well did the composer know how to conceal everything, if only to avoid ostentation. He truly shunned brag or speaking of himself. Cherubini's voice was feeble, probably from narrow-chestedness, and somewhat hoarse, but was otherwise soft and agreeable. His French was Italianized.... His head was bent forward, his nose was large and ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... had bestowed high eulogiums on my humanity: after which, he had hinted a desire, but with well-bred reserve, to know who I was; and I, catching the apparent delicacy of his feelings and thinking but very little on the subject, imagined there would be ostentation in personally taking to myself his praises, by giving him my name and place of abode. I therefore told him I would answer that question when we became better acquainted; if he should then find he had no reason to alter ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and rode forth gaily, clad in superfine furs and a hood elegantly fastened with a gold pin, and tied into a love-knot at the "greater end," while the bridle of his steed jingled as if its rider had been as good a knight as any of them—this last, by the way, a mark of ostentation against which Wyclif takes occasion specially to inveigh. This Monk (and Chaucer must say that he was wise in his generation) could not understand why he should study books and unhinge his mind by the effort; life ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... of De Berquin, at this time in the very prime of life.[268] But the great Erasmus, his correspondent, stood in far greater admiration of his extraordinary learning, his purity of life—a rare excellence in a nobleman of the court of Francis the First—his kindness and freedom from all ostentation, his uncompromising hatred of every form of meanness and injustice,[269] and a fearless courage which, in the eyes of the timid sage of Rotterdam, appeared to fall little short of foolhardiness. Like most of the really earnest reformers, De ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... imperfect development, it is still useless and absurd to tell people to make use of intellectual and moral resources which they have not yet got. It is as vain to preach to the majority of the well-to-do the duty of abstinence from wastefulness, rivalry, and ostentation as it is vain to preach to the majority of the badly-off abstinence from alcohol; without such pleasures their ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... he resembled a butcher in a poor neighbourhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close together ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... flunkies hanging on behind. Sir Gorgeous Midas has beaten the dukes in mere gorgeousness, flunkies and all—burlesqued the vulgar side of them, and unconsciously shamed it out of existence; made swagger and ostentation unpopular by his own evil example—actually improved the manners of the great by sheer mimicry of their defects. He has married his sons and his daughters to them and spoiled the noble curve of those lovely noses that Leech drew so well, and brought them down a peg ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... on his introduction, was received with some ostentation, and not a little ceremony. They were evidently unknown to each other; but the keen glance of the abbot instantly detected the signal for some secret message. Paslew was habited in the Cistercian gown, and scapulary of white ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... last of the useful and modest services rendered to literature by a nobleman of amiable manners, of untarnished public and private character, and of cultivated mind. On this, as on other occasions, Lord Dover performed his part diligently, judiciously, and without the slightest ostentation. He had two merits which are rarely found together in a commentator, he was content to be merely a commentator, to keep in the background, and to leave the foreground to the author whom he had undertaken to illustrate. Yet, though willing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... battles, for the amusement of the people at great public celebrations. There were, of course, numerous ranges of seats around the margin of this lake for the accommodation of the spectators. Nero took possession of this structure for some of his carousals, in order to obtain greater scope for ostentation and display. The water was drawn off on such occasions and the gates shut, and then the bottom of the reservoir was floored over to make space ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... cultivated mind and very refined and fastidious taste. He lived for the pleasures of art and literature, and the society where these are valued. For this, and not without some secret love of display, he lived in Paris; not extravagant in his pleasures, nor silly in his ostentation, but leading, like a gentleman, as worthy and rational a life as a man can lead who lives only to himself, with no further thought than to enjoy the passing hours. Mr. Rossitur enjoyed them elegantly, and, for a man of the world, moderately; bestowing, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... company, we had Florio, who never interrupted any man living when he was speaking, or ever ceased to speak, but others lamented that he had done. His discourse ever arises from a fulness of the matter before him, and not from ostentation or triumph of his understanding; for though he seldom delivers what he need fear being repeated, he speaks without having that end in view; and his forbearance of calumny or bitterness, is owing rather to his good ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... misnamed a Church! Oh, dear friend!—do not look at me thus! Surely you must feel that what I say is true? Surely you know that there is nothing of the loving God in that vast Cruelty of a place, where wealth and ostentation vie with intolerant officialism, bigotry and superstition!—where even the marble columns have been stolen from the temples of a sincerer Paganism, and still bear the names of Isis and Jupiter wrought ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... without ostentation, putting aside some money each quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the company's business—a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... brilliant qualities. Without his vanity and his magniloquence it is possible that he might never have acquired the sonorous elocution which is so useful and even necessary an instrument in political life. His cold-bloodedness touched at certain points on rectitude and loyalty; his ostentation had a lining of generosity. Results, we must remember, are to the profit of society; motives ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... great Jubilee year, the festivals of the carnival began none the less for that, and were conducted in a manner even more extravagant and licentious than usual; and the conqueror after the first day prepared a new display of ostentation, which he concealed under the veil of a masquerade. As he was pleased to identify himself with the glory, genius, and fortune of the great man whose name he bore, he resolved on a representation of the triumph of Julius Caesar, to be given on the Piazzi di Navona, the ordinary place ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forty-eight hours to make all necessary preparations, would not you have gone where your more impressionable acquaintances and friends were gathered together in the greatest numbers, informing them of the position and doing, on the strength of it, a quiet but irretrievable swank? No ostentation, mark you, and nothing approaching a boast, but just a suspicion of a brave careless laugh, a voice just slightly choked with emotion and but a formal reluctance to accept the numerous and costly gifts proffered by relatives who at less ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... displayed itself in gaiety of appearance, and wantonness of expence, and introduced me to the acquaintance of those whom the same superfluity of fortune had betrayed to the same licence and ostentation: young heirs who pleased themselves with a remark very frequently in their mouths, that though they were sent by their fathers to the university, they were not under the necessity of living by ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... as delicately as his really clever brush would allow, and thereby securing golden opinions as well as golden guineas. He was a genial, breezy sort of man,—quite without vanity or any sort of "art" ostentation, and he had been a friend of Miss Leigh's for many years. Innocent loved going to his studio whenever her "godmother" would take her, and he, in his turn, found interest and amusement in talking to a girl who showed ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... stood a lady whom Archdale looked at with pride. He was fond of his mother without recognizing a certain likeness between them. She was dressed elegantly, although without ostentation, and she came towards her guests with an ease as delightful as their own. Stephen going to meet her, led her forward and introduced her. Lady Dacre looked at her scrutinizingly, and gave a little ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... Frederick the Great is well known. Once when his sister, the Duchess of Brunswick, was at Potsdam, Frederick made to the brave Count Schwerin the present of a gold snuff-box. On the lid inside was painted the head of an ass. Next day, when dining with the king, Schwerin, with some ostentation, put his snuff-box on the table. Wishing to turn the joke against Schwerin, the king called attention to the snuff-box. The Duchess took it up and opened it. Immediately she exclaimed, 'What a striking likeness! In truth, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... him. His repeated efforts to win Jerusalem mean nothing if we do not recognize that he hoped against hope that many of the people might yet turn and let him lead them. With some such purpose, therefore, he went up a little later without ostentation, and quietly appeared in the temple teaching. The effect of this unannounced arrival was that the opposition was not ready for him. The multitude was compelled to form an opinion of him for itself, and ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... was assisting the villain Yeager had knocked out. The others crowded around him in excitement, all expostulating at once. They were dressed wonderfully and amazingly as cowpunchers, but they were painted frauds in spite of the careful ostentation of their costumes. Steve's shiny leathers and dusty hat missed the picturesque, but he looked indigenous and they did not. He was at his restful ease, this slender, brown man, negligent, careless, eyes twinkling but alert. The brand of the West ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... Christian art added steeples and cupolas to increase the solemnity of the impression. The most perfect building of the kind is, without doubt, the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. For chastity and purity of style, it can never be surpassed. The numerous churches erected by ostentation and devotion in basilikon form are all inferior to that incomparable temple. Many, it is true, have been disfigured, robbed, and half-burned; but their faults are not accidental. The greater number were built at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... must have its own forms of ostentation, pretence, and vulgarity. The ancient Romans had theirs, the English and the French have theirs as well,—why should not we Americans have ours? Educated and refined persons must recognize frequent internal conflicts between the "Homo sum" of Terence and the "Odi profanum vulgus" of Horace. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they might recover the castles of the government which were held by the Geraldines. He promised to go, and he might have done so without danger or difficulty; but he neither went nor sent; only a rumour came that the deputy was ill;[362] and in these delays and with this ostentation of imbecility, the winter passed away, as if to convince every wavering Irishman that, strong as the English might be in their own land, the sword dropped from their nerveless hands when their feet were on Irish soil. Nor was this ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... their knowledge,—without the knowledge of any other human being: it is kept hid in the darkest and most secret recesses of his own black agents and confidants, and those of Munny Begum. Why is it a secret? Hospitality, generosity, virtues of that kind, are full of display; there is an ostentation, a pomp, in them; they want to be shown to the world, not concealed. The concealment of acts of charity is what makes them acceptable in the eyes of Him with regard to whom there can be no concealment; but acts of corruption are kept secret, not to keep ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one whose qualities had rendered him dear to all who knew him. He was the very opposite to his son; he was a bland and a kind old man, opposed by every feeling to authoritative demonstrations and episcopal ostentation. It was perhaps well for him, in his situation, that his son had early in life been able to do that which he could not well do when he was younger, and which he could not have done at all now that ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... no serious demands were made upon him, he enjoyed the society of Shelley and his circle, and the two were much together, both at Venice and in the Palazzo Lanfranchi at Pisa, where, with a menagerie of animals and retainers, Byron had installed himself in those surroundings of Oriental ostentation which ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... the hands of private persons. We have thus a vast and new patronage, which, in its present agency, is injurious to our schools; but which is nevertheless in a great degree earnest and conscientious, and far from being influenced chiefly by motives of ostentation. Most of our rich men would be glad to promote the true interests of art in this country: and even those who buy for vanity, found their vanity on the possession of what they suppose ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the great 12th. She was aware of what the entertainment would consist, but was in honour bound to conceal her knowledge from Virginia and Louisa, who on their side affected great excitement and curiosity, and made every ostentation of guessing and peeping. Gifts were smuggled into the house from every quarter—some to take their chance, some directed with mottoes droll or affectionate. Clara prepared a few trifles, in which she showed that school had done something for her fingers, and committed her little parcels ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her carriage and in the set of her head. This new light in the eye and this new bearing were born of the authority and leadership which had this day been vested in her by the decree of God, and they asserted that authority as plainly as speech could have done it, yet without ostentation or bravado. This calm consciousness of command, and calm unconscious outward expression of it, remained with her thenceforth until her mission ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... and word He taught evermore the divided and scattered children of one great family that only as they drew near each other could they approach Him who was their common centre; and that while no ostentation of prayer nor rigid observance of ceremonies could elevate man to heaven, the simple exercise of love, in thought and action, could bring heaven down to man. To weary and restless spirits He taught the great truth, that happiness consists in making others happy. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... commerce has been limited, agriculture has increased; the republican government has lost its form rather than its substance, for a family of patriotic princes, dear to the people, govern peaceably in the midst of the ancient and the newer liberties. In Holland are to be found riches without ostentation, freedom without insolence, taxes without poverty. The country goes on its way without panics, without insurrections,—preserving, with its fundamental good sense, in its traditions, customs, and freedom, the ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... spectacle; peep-show, raree-show, gallanty-show; ombres chinoises [Sp.]; magic lantern, phantasmagoria, dissolving views; biograph^, cinematograph, moving pictures; panorama, diorama, cosmorama^, georama^; coup de theatre, jeu de theatre [Fr.]; pageantry &c (ostentation) 882; insignia &c (indication) 550. aspect, angle, phase, phasis^, seeming; shape &c (form) 240; guise, look, complexion, color, image, mien, air, cast, carriage, port, demeanor; presence, expression, first blush, face of the thing; point of view, light. lineament feature trait lines; outline, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he rather chose to die with them, than drag out a life imbittered with the remembrance of such dismal scenes.[*] When the treasures gained by this enterprise arrived at Portsmouth, the protector, from a spirit of ostentation, ordered them to be transported by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... that Heaven is a myth. My manners soon betrayed the effect of the enlightenment of my mind. No more arrogance, no more boasting. I did not divest myself of pride, but it became more tractable and more convenient; it renounced ostentation and vain display; the peacock changed into a man of good breeding. This, sir, is what experience has done for me, assisted by Sequere fatum. It has made me wise, an honest man and an atheist. So I said a little while ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Bradshaw had just announced to him. He had experienced many mortifications in his intercourse with that gentleman, but they had fallen off from his meek spirit like drops of water from a bird's plumage; and now he only remembered the acts of substantial kindness rendered (the ostentation all forgotten)—many happy hours and pleasant evenings—the children whom he had loved dearer than he thought till now—the young people about whom he had cared, and whom he had striven to lead aright. He was but a young man when Mr Bradshaw first came to his chapel; they had grown old together; ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... poets it is whose soul has emigrated into Archy, but I feel sure it is not Ezra Pound or any of the expatriated eccentrics who lisp in odd numbers in the King's Road, Chelsea. Could it be Amy Lowell? Perhaps it should be explained that Archy's carelessness as to punctuation and capitals is not mere ostentation, but arises from the fact that he is not strong enough to work the shift key of his typewriter. Ingenious readers of the Sun Dial have suggested many devices to make this possible, but none that seem feasible ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... was this: Le Grice was in the habit of eating apples in school-time, for which he had been often rebuked. One day, having particularly pleased the master, the latter, who was eating apples himself, and who would now and then with great ostentation present a boy with some half-penny token of his mansuetude, called out to his favorite of the moment: "Le Grice, here is an apple for you." Le Grice, who felt his dignity hurt as a Grecian, but was more pleased at ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... guard it and mature it carefully. Do not throw it out too lavishly broadcast with the ostentation of a generous genius having gifts to spare. Share it with proved and worthy friends, when they notice it and ask you about it, but in the meanwhile develop and cultivate it as a gardener does a tree. And this leads me to the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... public concert the evening before they left for Lexington, and they were to go by a special train after the entertainment should be over. They came to the concert hall, therefore, not only booted and spurred, but there was perhaps a bit of youthful but very natural ostentation of being ready for the field. Their hair was cropped as close as barber's shears could cut it, they wore the regulation uniform of the cavalry, with trim round-about jackets, and were the "cynosure of all eyes." Their parting words were said to their lady friends ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... her jewel-case with ostentation. Balnokhazy, as he turned in the doorway, could see with what feverish anxiety she unlocked it and fumbled ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... veins. It is not without reluctance that I offend the sensibility of the tender mind with images like these. If such cruelties were not practised, it were to be desired that they should not be conceived; but since they are published every day with ostentation, let me be allowed once to mention them, since I mention them with abhorrence.... The anatomical novice tears out the living bowels of an animal, and styles himself a 'physician'; prepares himself ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... suspicion, the form and substance of a new esprit de corps, among the "Clarion" men, and established the system of Talk-it-Over Breakfasts which made a close-knit, jealously guarded corporation and club out of the staff. Free of all ostentation or self-assertiveness was Hal's talk; simple, and, above all virtues, brief. He didn't tell his employees what he expected of them. He told them what they might expect of him. The frankness of his manner, the self-respecting modesty of his attitude toward an audience of more experienced ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and his family the Pope showed unbounded extravagance and ostentation. He had pedigrees manufactured to prove the descent of his family from ancient Scandinavian heroes, and that of his nephews, on whom he heaped honours, from the Dukes of Benevento. He collected all the proudest devices of heraldry to incorporate them as quarterings ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... warning reminder of an origin that was certainly obscure and presumably low, no stale, dust-laden odours of the circus ring. He had looked and spoken as any man of Stephen's acquaintance might have done, facetiously, it is true, but without ostentation or vulgarity. When the break came, therefore, it was the more shocking to the younger man because he had been so imperfectly ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... enclosed the adjoining park of St. James's, which appertained to this palace as well as to that of St. James's, which that monarch had erected on the site of an ancient hospital, founded before the conquest for "leprous sisters." For some curious details of Wolsey's magnificence and ostentation during his residence at York Place, we refer the reader to the second volume ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... Legion of Honor whenever occasion required, but at all other times turned the badge under his lapel "because he hated to have fellow-Americans think he was showing off." And any one who knows Edison will bear testimony to his utter absence of ostentation. It may be added that, in addition to the two quarts of medals up at the house, there will be found at Glenmont many other signal tokens of esteem and good-will—a beautiful cigar-case from the late Tsar of Russia, bronzes from the Government of Japan, steel trophies from Krupp, and a host ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... individual named Stubbes published an Anatomy of Abuses. Having become extremely rare, a small impression of it was lately reprinted, as a curious picture of the times. Stubbes dealt trenchantly with everything that savoured of pride and ostentation in dress; and he was peculiarly severe on Mrs Turner's invention, which made the ruff stand against bad weather. He describes the ruffs as having been made 'of cambric Holland lawn; or else of some other the finest cloth that can be got for money, whereof some be a quarter ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... of stability in the French colony in that they were "only desirous to know the nature and quality of the soil and did never seek to have (its products) in such quantity as was requisite for their maintenance, affecting more by making a needless ostentation that the world should know they had been there, more in love with glory than with virtue.... Being always subject to divisions among themselves it was impossible that they could subsist, which proceeded sometimes from emulation or envy, and at other times from the laziness of the disposition of some, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... relations of human life, are emphatically things, and sometimes are so to the exclusion of the most absolute things themselves, men of all qualities being often governed by names, the policy of France seems the wiser, viz., se faire valoir, even at the price of ostentation. But, at all events, no man is entitled to exercised that extrem candor, forbearance, and spirit of ready concession in re aliena, and, above all, in re politica, which, on its own account, might be altogether honorable. The council might give away ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... my levity was merely put on, and would at once give way before the influence she hoped to exert upon my mind. Poor little thing! she deceived herself. I allowed her, indeed, to do entirely as she pleased; but for myself, I carried my infidelity to the length of an absolute superstition. I made an ostentation of it. I would rather have been in a "hell" than in a church on Sunday; and though I did not prevent my wife's instilling her own principles into the minds of our children, I, in turn, took especial care to deliver mine upon all occasions ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... vanity of vanities in a sinful world. Despising honours and dignities, he positively loathes outward show; he is a Radical by instinct and nature. Though one of the wealthiest men in the House of Commons, nobody has over known him guilty of one act of ostentation. Probably he loves power. I have not the smallest doubt that he would enjoy very well being a Cabinet Minister. But for social distinction, for the frippery and display of life, he has a positive dislike. He is like Mr. Biggar ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... literary question comes out oddly in the article upon 'The Relation of Novels to Life,' contributed to the 'Cambridge Essays.' He has no fear of modern aesthetes before his eyes. His opinion is that life is too serious a business for tomfoolery and far too tragic for needless ostentation of sentiment. A novel should be a serious attempt by a grave observer to draw a faithful portrait of the actual facts of life. A novelist, therefore, who uses the imaginary facts, like Sterne and Dickens, as mere pegs on which to hang specimens of his own ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... intellectual qualities, and make us love the man at the same time that we admire the author. While the productions of writers of loftier pretension and more sounding names are suffered to moulder on our shelves, those of Goldsmith are cherished and laid in our bosoms. We do not quote them with ostentation, but they mingle with our minds, sweeten our tempers, and harmonize our thoughts; they put us in good humor with ourselves and with the world, and in so doing they make us ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... I think, often do well, when considering the superb ostentation of Duerer's workmanship, with its superabundance of curve and flourish, its delight in its own ease and grace, to think of those young men among his ancestors who made their living from horses on the wind-swept plains of Hungary. The perfect control which it is ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... bent on a mission of charity, yet unable to lay aside their hard convictions, gazed non-committally on, as though they would draw aside their skirts from contamination, yet sought to do so with the least possible measure of ostentation ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... general impressed with that signet of classical finish which guarantees the permanency of literary work more surely than direct utility or even intellectual power. This refinement is the more admirable for being in great part the reflection of his own moral nature. Without ostentation or affectation, he was exquisite in all things, a mirror of loyalty, courtesy, and good taste in all his literary connections, and exemplary in all the relations of domestic life which he was called upon to assume. He never married, remaining ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... sitting in the middle of the floor, handling his calumet with some ostentation. The Hurons were but the remnant of a race, for Iroquois butchery had reduced them in numbers and in spirit, but even in their exile they preserved a splendor of carriage that made the Ottawas, who camped beside them here, seem but a poor and shuffling people. This man was a comely specimen, and ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... Celtic race," says their historian Thierry, "were personal bravery, in which they excelled all nations; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to every impression; much intelligence, but at the same time extreme mobility, want of perseverance, aversion to discipline and order, ostentation and perpetual discord—the result of boundless vanity." Cato the Elder more briefly describes them, nearly to the same effect; "the Celts devote themselves mainly to two things—fighting and -esprit-."(6) Such qualities—those of good soldiers ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and without thought of ostentation, for her parents' riches had come when she herself was so young that she had no remembrance of the little house in the manufacturing town, but looked as a matter of course upon the luxuries with which she was surrounded. It never occurred to her mind that any of ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... eternal lines. The theme being set, each plays on himself as on an instrument; asserts and justifies himself; ransacks his brain for instances and opinions, and brings them forth new-minted, to his own surprise and the admiration of his adversary. All natural talk is a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we venture to lay ourselves so open, that we dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that we swell in each other's eyes to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in peace, near her husband, Maria Anne, Edle von Gluck, born Pergin. She was a good Christian, and without ostentation a mother to the poor. She was loved and cherished by all who ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... some changes of late years, mostly in the direction of simplicity. Meaningless display and ostentation should be avoided, and, if a girl is marrying into a family much better endowed in worldly goods than her own, she should have no false pride in insisting on simple festivities and in preventing her family from ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... didn't come! Thursday came and went; a beautiful, bright, sunny day, but with no signs of the merry boy whom all had begun to love, nor of the big black dog. The children had made all the needful preparations with much ostentation and bustle, and were in a state of excited happiness, ready for any gale. But the last hope had to be given up, as the old clock ticked away hour after hour. And at last Polly had to put Phronsie ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... part of my possession, not valuing them by number or weight, but by the profit and esteem of the receiver; accounting myself never the poorer for any thing I give. What I do shall be done for conscience, not ostentation. I will eat and drink, not to gratify my palate, but to satisfy nature. I will be cheerful to my friends, mild and placable to my enemies. I will prevent an honest request, if I can foresee it; and I will grant it, without asking. I will look upon the whole world as my country; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... laid ourselves down to sleep, the elder Tahitian fell on his knees, and with closed eyes repeated a long prayer in his native tongue. He prayed as a Christian should do, with fitting reverence, and without the fear of ridicule or any ostentation of piety. At our meals neither of the men would taste food, without saying beforehand a short grace. Those travellers who think that a Tahitian prays only when the eyes of the missionary are fixed on him, should have slept with us that night on the mountain-side. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... represented the two forces that were at this time working in society, the one opposing the entrance of the Grecian influence, and the other encouraging the refinement in manners and modes of living that came with it, even encouraging ostentation and the lavish use of money for pleasures. When Scipio was making his arrangements to go to Africa, he was governor of Sicily, and lived in luxury. Cato, then but thirty years old, had been sent to ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... down in her seat. It was a pitiful and almost terrible sight to see her, all the florid, vulgar ostentation and sleek content dashed out of her, leaving her with pasty cheeks and horror-stricken, staring eyes to face the ruined future. Mrs. Berry burst into ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... place, and rest awhile. And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.' Further, in the case before us we have a fine example of the conduct proper for men exalted above their fellows. They ought not to make a public show of themselves, nor to display their abilities in vain ostentation. All their abilities should scent of piety and the fear of God. The apostle Paul reproved the Corinthians for abusing extraordinary gifts to make the people think them prophets and spiritual persons, while they ought to have applied them to the 'edifying ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... little of late. He had no abiding place; sometimes he referred to one hill shanty, sometimes to another, as home; but the home-feeling with him was at its fullest and strongest when he was "trampin'." Ostensibly his vocation was that of a travelling farm-hand, but it was all ostentation. Piney would not work. Not while the pony could carry him from hospitable farm-house to hospitable farm-house. He was a knight of the saddle, the uncrowned king of the woods, and Bruce, riding along beside him now, regarding him, enjoying ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... of Christ. Revealing his animus, Calvin branded the staunch and earnest defenders of these doctrines as the "apes" of Luther. In his Second Defense against Westphal, 1556, he exclaimed: "O Luther, how few imitators of your excellences, but how many apes of your pious ostentation have you left behind! O Luthere, quam paucos tuae praestantiae imitatores, quam multas vero sanctae tuae iactantiae simias reliquisti!" (Gieseler 3, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... material, delicately embroidered with jet, were arranged, as usual, with a view to the only effect she ever cared to make—the effect of the great lady, in command—clearly—of all possible resources, while far too well bred to indulge in display or ostentation. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... best of our gifts—peace, freedom, security, and a new standard of public morality—these blessings are like sleep, like health, like innocence, like the eternal revolutions of day and night, which sink inaudibly into human hearts, leaving behind (as sweet vernal rains) no flaunting records of ostentation and parade; we are not the nation of triumphal arches and memorial obelisks; but the sleep, the health, the innocence, the grateful vicissitudes of seasons, reproduce themselves in fruits and products enduring for generations, and overlooked by the slanderer only because they are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... from the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence for virtue, nursed it, as preachers tell us that we ought to nurse our good dispositions, and paraded it, on all occasions, with Pharisaical ostentation. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... subject? Alas! how many ambitious, honourable, high-minded, and fond husbands and fathers are echoing such questions with a sigh of agony! Poor Follett! 'twas for such reasons that he lived with an honourable economy, eschewing that extravagance and ostentation which too often, to men in his dazzling position, prove irresistible; it was for such reasons that he rose up early, and went to bed late, and ate the bread of carefulness. Had he been alone in the world—had he had none ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... occasion when he had grievously exceeded it the excess had been paid with no more protest than a gentle "I think you ought not to have done this." The two had lived together when John was at home without ostentation or any appearance of style, but with every essential of luxury. The house and its furnishings were old-fashioned, but everything was of the best, and when three or four of the elder man's friends would come to dine, as happened occasionally, the contents of the cellar made them look at each other ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... Maximus, was announced, on which he leapt down from the judgment seat in an unseemly manner, and forgetting himself so far as to run at full speed from the hall, he kissed him, and received him with great reverence, and led him into the palace, appearing by this unseasonable ostentation a seeker of empty glory, and forgetful of those admirable words of Cicero, which describe ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... countless host of foot-soldiers. The Gothic nobles appeared in burnished armor, curiously inlaid, and adorned with chains and jewels of gold, and ornaments of precious stones, and silken scarfs, and surcoats of brocade, or velvet richly embroidered; betraying the luxury and ostentation with which they had declined from the iron hardihood of their warlike sires. As to the common people, some had lances and shields and swords and crossbows, but the greater part were unarmed, or ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Yet happiness is the simplest thing in the world. It is found in many a home with carpetless floors and pictureless walls. It knows neither rank, station, nor color, nor does it recognize wealth. It only demands that it live with a contented mind and pure heart. It will not live with ostentation; it flees from pretense; it loves the simple life; it insists upon a sweet, healthful, natural environment. It hates the forced and complicated ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... despise the understanding of one who conducts himself in such a manner as naturally produces such lamentable consequences, and continues in the same destructive paths to the end of a long life, ostentatiously boasting of morals and philosophy in print, and with equal ostentation bragging of the scenes of low debauchery in public conversation, though deplorably weak both in mind and body, and his virtue and his vigour in a state of non-existence. His confederacy with Swift and Pope puts me in mind of that of Bessus and his sword-men, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front right opposite to the humbler residence of our Kings, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... branches of prose composition were almost neglected in this reign. Even rhetoric sank to a low level; the splendid displays of men like Latro, Arellius, and Ovid gave place to the flimsy ostentation of REMMIUS PALAEMON. This dissolute man, who combined the professions of grammarian and rhetorician, possessed an extraordinary aptitude for fluent harangue, but soon confined his attention to grammatical studies, in which he rose to the position of an authority. Suetonius says ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... especially from the cabinet of Great Britain. "If sufficient time were available to me," said Peron, "it would be very easy to demonstrate to you that all our natural history researches, extolled with so much ostentation by the Government, were merely the pretext of its enterprise." The principal object was "one of the most brilliant and important conceptions," which would, if successful, have made the Government for ever illustrious. The unfortunate circumstance was, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... the fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, and suffering for the love of God whatever hardships can befall in the world—not in any great attempt, or in performance of those enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, ostentation, pride, and worldly honour; that humility and resignation are our prime virtues; and that these include no action but that of the soul, whereas, on the contrary, an heroic poem requires to its necessary design, and as its last perfection, some great action of war, the accomplishment of ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... real touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost Oriental ostentation was used by the young Thackeray as something on which to sharpen his new razor of Victorian common sense. His pose as a dilettante satirist inflamed the execrable temper of Tennyson, and led to those lively comparisons to a bandbox and a lion ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... prosperity as the touchstone of all success; already the fatal might of this idea is beginning to spread; it is replacing the finer type of Southerner with vulgar money-getters; it is burying the sweeter beauties of Southern life beneath pretence and ostentation. For every social ill the panacea of Wealth has been urged,—wealth to overthrow the remains of the slave feudalism; wealth to raise the "cracker" Third Estate; wealth to employ the black serfs, and the prospect of wealth to keep them working; wealth ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... nature is garish or exaggerated more often than not; but it is a libel. She is aristocratic to the nth degree, and is never over done; courage she has, but no ostentation. There was, however, just a slight touch of over-emphasis in this singing-girl's presentation—that you were bound to say, if you considered her quite apart from her place in this nature-scheme. She was not wholly aristocratic; she was lacking in that high, social refinement ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... an invitation to my good Mrs. Ord, to meet a circle of old friends. The day proved extremely pleasant. We went to dinner, my father and I, and met Mrs. Montagu, in good spirits, and very unaffectedly agreeable. No one was there to awaken ostentation, no new acquaintance to require any surprise from her powers; she was therefore natural and easy, as well as informing ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... for a time with more or less interest, but at last she took one of her school-books, with slight ostentation, and went over to study by the lamp. Mrs. Hender had brought her knitting-work, a blue woolen stocking, out of a drawer, and sat down serene and unruffled, prepared to keep awake as late as possible. She was ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... was calm and peaceful, though without hope this side the grave. We shall scarcely forgive ourselves for making even a distant allusion to one portion of Elinor's pleasures and labours, although more especially connected with home; since none could perform their religious duties with less ostentation, with more single-hearted sincerity—none could more carefully follow the precept, to "give with simplicity," than Miss Wyllys, and the niece she ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtilety, what truth, in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and die, without weakness and without ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest reward of virtue, he described exactly the character of Jesus Christ: the resemblance was so striking that all the Fathers ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the few men in the prison (the group comprised about a dozen) who had been fortunate enough to retain a tooth-brush. We wore our tooth-brushes fastened into the front button-holes of our blouses, partly possibly from ostentation, but chiefly for the purpose of keeping them from being stolen. I was struck by receiving an offer one morning from the lieutenant of the prison guard of $300 for my tooth-brush. The "dollars" meant of course Confederate ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... mysteriously from around the Point. Its only occupant—a common sailor—asked her name, and handed her a sealed package. Mrs. Bunker's invention had already been at work. She had created an aunt in Mexico, for whom she had, with some ostentation, made some small purchases while in San Francisco. When her husband spoke of going as far south as Todos Santos, she begged him to deliver the parcel to her aunt's messenger, and even addressed it boldly to her. Inside the outer wrapper she wrote a ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... her way to Winchester, her progress being one of royal ostentation. Her entry to the town was like a Roman triumph. She was received with all honor, was voted queen in a great convocation of nobles, prelates, and knights, and seized the royal regalia and the treasures of her vanquished foe. All would have gone well ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... simple and beloved, yet, through you, he shall become pompous, and abhorred. His fellow-creatures are thenceforth mere material for his trampling feet; he swells into regions to which no criticism can reach; he covers himself in a triple hide of vanity, ostentation, and disdain; he hails himself continually as the unaided Saviour of his country, and dies in the odour of braggadocio, without a genuine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... the lute, and sang to it, though never the old Danish ballads, but songs in foreign languages. Here were banqueting and mirth, titled guests came from far and near, music's tones were heard, goblets rang. I could not drown the noise," said the wind. "Here were arrogance, ostentation, and display; here was power, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... glorious wildness of the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought—"How clever is man who can make all these things!"—so diverse, and so pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its refinement, the rightness of every touch. No overcrowding; no ostentation. Beautiful spaces, giving room and dignity to a few beautiful objects; famous pictures, yet not too many; and, in general, things rather suggestive than perfect; sketches—fragments—from the great arts of the world; as it were, a lovely wreckage from a vast ocean ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cabin door and showed an interior, equally simple but well joined and fitted,—a marvel of neatness and finish to the frontier girl's eye. There were shelves and cupboards and other conveniences, yet with no ostentation of refinement to frighten ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... active efforts, several cautions should be observed:—1. Avoid every appearance of ostentation. Suppress every rising of self-complacency, on account of what you do, and of the success which attends your efforts. Such feelings are abominable in the sight of God; and if indulged, will make you appear contemptible in the eyes of men. The Pharisees ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... that then he loved display and ostentation and was proud, wilful and self-confident; nevertheless, there were times when for a moment he feared, but in spite of that timidity, he went on in his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... she was beginning to feel extremely doubtful if she would ever have any wedding-day at all. She felt instinctively that a jewel such as King Charles's clasp was not fit for her to wear. Tom would not like to see it, she well knew; he detested anything which looked like ostentation. And, perhaps, Christ would not like it too. Would it not interfere with the wearing of that other ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, with which He desired His handmaidens to adorn themselves? Jenny resolved that she would not put ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... use of a private letter, and had much rather wave my triumph, than give a friend a moment's pain. I love to laugh at an impertinent savant, but respect learning when Joined to such goodness as yours, and never confound ostentation ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... is training and ability. Since the best time to acquire these is when we are young, it may be necessary for a while to practice the very opposite of ostentation—self-sacrifice. If your husband is a professional man and you have married early, he may still be working for an advanced degree. This entails fees and—what is even more exacting—time. It means sacrifice—giving up social engagements and ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... there might have been a little ostentation at bottom, from which, with great delicacy be it spoken, English travellers are not always exempt; though to say the truth, he had nothing of it in his manner. He moved about taciturn and reserved as usual, among the gaping crowd in his gingerbread-colored travelling ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... he had ever written anything, and felt only the charm which a nature of such capacity for supreme enjoyment causes every one around it to enjoy. His talk was unaffected and natural, never bookish in the smallest degree. He was quite up to the average of well read men, but as there was no ostentation of it in his writing, so neither was there in his conversation. This was so attractive because so keenly observant, and lighted up with so many touches of humorous fancy; but, with every possible thing to give relish to it, there were not many ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of 1862 Richard Calmady went up to Oxford. Not through ostentation, but in obedience to the exigencies of the case, his going was in a somewhat princely sort, so that the venerable city, moved from the completeness of her scholarly and historic calm, turned her eyes, in a flutter of quite ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... condition unknown to him or his fathers, since he once served in our army as a free man. We marvel that such a man should be dragged into bondage who (on account of his infirmity) ought to have been liberated by a lawful owner. It is a new kind of ostentation to claim the services of such an one, the sight of whom shocks you, and to call that man a slave, to whom you ought rather ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... declare in favor of the other reading, and affirm that the worthy in question was a burly, bulbous man, who, in sheer ostentation of his venerable progenitors, was the first to introduce into the settlement the ancient Dutch fashion of ten pair ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving |
