"Ostentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toward his neighbors, his wife, his children, his servants, his masters, and thereby gain incomparably greater merit than he can find by fulfilling vows to do works chosen by himself and not commanded by God. The foolish opinion of the common people and the ostentation of the Bulls[29] have brought it to pass that these vows of pilgrimages, fastings, prayers, and other works of the kind far outweigh in importance the works of God's Law, although we never have sufficient strength to do these ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... resound with His praise! May the eye which seeth in secret witness here the sincere and unaffected piety which withdraws from the engagements of the world to silence and privacy, that it may be exercised with less interruption and less ostentation. ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... 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 ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... taste. It surprised Alma to see this extravagance; one would have thought the purchaser had never known restricted means, and dreamt of no such thing; she bought what she happened to desire, as a matter of course. And this was no ostentation for Alma's benefit. Evidently Sibyl had indulged herself with the same freedom throughout her travels; for she had brought back a museum of beautiful and curious things, which must have cost a good deal. Perhaps for the first time in her life Alma experienced a sense ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... and sincerity, without disguise. I am aware, however, those who differ from me in political sentiments may perhaps remark, I am stepping out of the proper line of my duty; and they may possibly ascribe to arrogance or ostentation, what I know is alone the result of the purest intention; but the rectitude of my own heart, which disdains such unworthy motives—the part I have hitherto acted in life—the determination I have formed of not taking any share in ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... 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 and modesty. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the most distinguished of the leaders of English Society. She is the daughter of Sir Sanford Freeling, who was for a time military secretary at Gibraltar. Her husband, Sir Arthur Willshire, was an officer in the Guards. Lady Willshire, in addition to her social activities, is, without ostentation, a woman whose charities occupy a large part of her time. In appearance she is over middle height, rather fragile, with great charm of manner. She is an accomplished musician and linguist. Her favorite recreations are riding, driving and bicycling, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... house," cried the lieutenant, "cultivation, refinement, a sufficient competency, the whole style of the establishment free from ostentation, yet most comfortable; and Emily—Emily was the soul of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... controversialist. Another is a razor; and he is sarcastical.' We talked of Whitefield. He said he was at the same college with him[84], and knew him before he began to be better than other people (smiling;) that he believed he sincerely meant well, but had a mixture of politicks and ostentation: whereas Wesley thought of religion only[85]. ROBERTSON said, Whitefield had strong natural eloquence, which, if cultivated, would have done great things. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I take it, he was at the height of what his abilities could do, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of such a prospect there was little to excite any but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little ostentation as was consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed, with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened on the plain. The fringe of alder by the watercourse began to loom ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... with so many bags and parcels and boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of wealth and fashion,—suppose instead of all this, they should turn to quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, "plain ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... more from our Vanity than our Virtue. Numbers give, as our great Master tells us, to be seen of Men; and for that Reason, probably, it is, that there are so few secret Corbans offered up to Heaven, and not to the World; and if this be so, 'tis plain, that People give more for the Ostentation of having given, than the good they hope to get done by it, and therefore you must have ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... according to his ideas—and still retain Moses and Josephine, who, he early discovered, were invaluable to him; in meeting the people worth knowing in the town and vicinity, and in being entertained, and entertaining—all very quietly and without ostentation. ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... the demands made by the French Ambassador, Marquis de Lavalette, in behalf of Roman Catholic pilgrims, Nicholas sent his Admiral, Prince Menzikov, as Ambassador Extraordinary to the Porte. With unusual ostentation Menzikov gathered the Russian fleet and an army of 30,000 men at Sebastopol, and then went alone to Constantinople. He demanded an audience of the Sultan, and on March 2 appeared before him in a plain overcoat and with boots ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... you by 'that highly distinguished man, Lord Nieuport, ambassador of the Dutch Confederation,'—a letter, it is evident, which you bring forward to be read, not for any force of proof in it, for it has none, but merely in ostentation. He—and it shows the singular kindliness of 'the highly distinguished man' (for what but goodness in him should make him take so much trouble on your most unworthy account?)—goes to Mr. Secretary Thurloe. He communicates your letter to Mr. Secretary. When he saw that he had no success, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... and with great * * * for his opinion was no result of insolent ostentation, nor was his language unbecoming the dignity of so wise a man: indeed, he performed a very noble action in thus freeing his countrymen from the terrors of an ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the fingers of his horny hand close together, put it for a few minutes under his armpit, to make it sweat, as he said; and, taking it again out, drew it over a ladle filled with melted copper, some of which he skimmed off, and moved his hand backwards and forwards, very quickly, by way of ostentation. ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... time the troops instinctively felt that this absence of ostentation meant hard work. They began to realise the magnitude of the obligations they had assumed. Soldiering was evidently something more than a series of brilliant spectacles and social gatherings. Here was a man in earnest, who looked upon war as a serious business, who was completely ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... complex works of man Heaven's easy, artless, unencumber'd plan, No meretricious graces to beguile, No clustering ornaments to clog the pile; From ostentation as from weakness free, It stands like the cerulean arch we see, Majestic in its own simplicity. Inscribed above the portal from afar, Conspicuous as the brightness of a star, Legible only by the light they give, Stand the soul-quickening ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... 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 ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... ornate modern mansion which he had built, putting to shame every other house in the place, gave an effect of ostentation to the Maddens as a family; it seemed only to accentuate the air of humility which enveloped Jeremiah as with a garment. Everybody knew some version of the many tales afloat which, in a kindly spirit, illustrated the incongruity between ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... was laid up by bilious derangement of a serious character, which recurred with increased violence towards the close of the year; and on the 2nd of September, 1834, Thomas Telford closed his useful and honoured career, at the advanced age of seventy-seven. With that absence of ostentation which characterised him through life, he directed that his remains should be laid, without ceremony, in the burial ground of the parish church of St. Margaret's, Westminster. But the members of the Institute of Civil Engineers, who justly deemed him their benefactor ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... me to understand and taste the Greek and Latin writers, has thus put it in my power to collect on my own shelves, for my actual use, almost all the best books in spite of my small income. Somewhat too I am indebted to the ostentation of expense among the rich, which has occasioned these cheap editions to ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Choice of his Friends, nor that of his Dishes, was the Result of Pride or Ostentation. He took Delight in appearing to be, what he actually was, and not in seeming to be what he was not; and by that Means, got a greater real Character than ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... of the art is to strike the imagination. The painter is, therefore, to make no ostentation of the means by which this is done; the spectator is only to feel the result in his bosom. An inferior artist is unwilling that any part of his industry should be lost upon the spectator. He takes as much pains to discover, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. And yet!—in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years Daniel Floyd had leased ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Puritans, however, and the suppression of Christmas observances in high places, the old customs and festivities were still observed in different parts of the country, though with less ostentation than formerly; and various publications appeared which plainly showed that the popular sentiments were in favour of the festivities. The motto of No. 37 of Mercurius Democritus, from December 22, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... isthmus which joined Mount Athos to the continent, in order to preserve the fleet from disaster at that most perilous part of the proposed voyage. These remarkable works, which made a deep impression on the minds of the Greeks, have been ascribed to a mere spirit of ostentation on the part of Xerxes; the vain-glorious monarch wished, it is supposed, to parade his power, and made a useless bridge and an absurd cutting merely for the purpose of exhibiting to the world the grandeur of his ideas and the extent of his resources. But ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... altar. Oh, it would not be thus but for the true manhood which our government infuses into loyal citizens. It would not be so, but for the Christianity it protects without dictation, and acknowledges without ostentation. ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... this ostentation I could not but smile; but no man ever had greater need of pomp to hold his own against uneven ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... and the Weaver, and the Encouragement of Trade in general. That the Extravagancy of their Tables, and Splendor of Entertainments, were only the Effects of an Hospitable Temper, their Benevolence to others, and a generous Disposition: That Pride or Ostentation had no Hand in these Things, nor yet in the laying out of the immense Sums for the Elegancy and Magnificence of Equipages, Gardens, Furniture and Buildings. All these Things, I dare say, you would let pass; but if ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... of memorial to his genius for absorbing the people's money was awaiting this philanthropic buccaneer. Vulgar ostentation was the outward badge of these civic burglaries. Tweed moved into a Fifth Avenue mansion and gave his daughter a wedding at which she received $100,000 worth of gifts; her wedding dress was a $5000 creation. At Greenwich he built a country ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... extravagance; but notwithstanding the houses of each of her other guardians were exempt from these particular vices, she saw not any prospect of happiness with either of them; vulgarity seemed leagued with avarice to drive her from the mansion of Mr Briggs, and haughtiness with ostentation to exclude her from that ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... Lillycraft on her arrival, she has none of the petty stateliness that I had imagined; but on the contrary she has a degree of nature, and simple-heartedness, if I may use the phrase, that mingles well with her old-fashioned manners and harmless ostentation. She dresses in rich silks, with long waist; she rouges considerably, and her hair, which is nearly white, is frizzled out, and put up with pins. Her face is pitted with the small-pox, but the delicacy of her features shows ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... 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 happier and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... generally temperate, an earnest lover of agricultural pursuits, mild in his deportment, bountiful in the use of his own, but a stern respecter of the rights of others; and, finally, he was all this without ostentation, and with a constant regard to the proportions of cases, and to the demands of time and place." His bounty displayed itself in a way, which may be worth mentioning, as at once illustrating the age, and the prudence with which he controlled the most generous of his impulses:—"Finus ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of admirable courage, but in a spirit of bravado. In giving lyric utterance to his resentment, Heine is conscious that the world is looking on, and so he indulges, even in the expression of his Weltschmerz, in a vain ostentation which stands in marked contrast to Lenau's dignified pride. He is quite right when he says in a letter to his friend Moser: "Ich bin nicht gross genug, um ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... the earth. And this is as it should be. Why should the pomp and extravagance of man accompany him to his last resting-place? Were it not well if in this matter we abated something of our conventionality and ostentation? I do not mean to say that interments need be stripped of every thing like ornament; in all things the middle way is the safest. A simple funeral has surely in it more that awakes true religious feeling than the pomp and splendour which are too frequently made the order of the ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... extinguishes the flame. Said a friend: "You never see any paper in the streets here as you do in New-York [swept out of the stores, &c.] the English throw nothing away." We speak of the vast parks and lawns of the Aristocracy as so much land taken out of use and devoted to mere ostentation; but all that land is growing timber or furnishing pasturage—often both. The owner gratifies his taste or his pride by reserving it from cultivation, but he does not forget the main chance. So of his Fisheries and even Game-Preserves. Of course, there are noblemen who would scorn to sell ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... need to tell you more? You know all about the other shows; they had not even the charm which moderate shows commonly have. The ostentation with which they were furnished forth took away all their gayety. What charm is there in having six hundred mules in the Clytemnestra or three thousand supernumeraries in the Trojan Horse, or cavalry and infantry in foreign equipment in some battle-piece. The populace admired ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... half-aristocratic swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a 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 ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... about the fruit 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... be my last will and testament as follows: First, I direct that all my just debts will be paid." . . . ("That's easy," said Sage, "because I haven't any.") "Also my funeral expenses and testamentary expenses." ("Make the funeral simple. I dislike display and ostentation, and especially at funerals," said Sage.) "Next," said the lawyer, "I give, devise, and bequeath" . . . (Sage shouted: "I won't do it! I won't do it!" and left ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... unseemly, on account of the scandal which ensues therefrom, if the corrector's sin be well known, because it would seem that he corrects, not out of charity, but more for the sake of ostentation. Hence the words of Matt. 7:4, "How sayest thou to thy brother?" etc. are expounded by Chrysostom [*Hom. xvii in the Opus Imperfectum falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] thus: "That is—'With what object?' Out of charity, think you, that you may save your neighbor?" No, "because you would ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... huddling them in uncouth fashion past the gaze of the spectator, because, forsooth, he would not seem to make a rarity of them. The subject to be treated, the groundwork to be adorned, becomes the barest excuse for a profitless haphazard ostentation. This fault is very incident to the scholarly style, which often sacrifices emphasis and conviction to a ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... 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 contraction ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... sometimes live—be it only for an hour, and though we must lay all else aside—to make others smile. The sacrifice is only in appearance; no one finds more pleasure for himself than he who knows how, without ostentation, to give himself that he may procure for those around him a moment of ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... dishonesty. They live within their means, and lay by something for a rainy day. They provide for the things of their own household,—yet they are not wanting in hospitality and benevolence on fitting occasions. And what they do, is done without ostentation. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... dining room Neatness an essential Care of the dining room Furnishings of the dining room Table talk A pleasant custom Table manners Suggestions for table etiquette The table Its appearance and appointments The table an educator in the household A well ordered table an incentive to good manners Ostentation not necessary Setting the table The sub-cover Napkins The center piece Arrangement of dishes "Dishing up" Setting the table over night Warming the dishes The service of meals A capital idea Fruit as the first ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... we should return to plain narration, And thus my narrative proceeds:—Dudu, With every kindness short of ostentation, Showed Juan, or Juanna, through and through This labyrinth of females, and each station Described—what's strange—in words extremely few: I have but one simile, and that's a blunder, For wordless woman, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the rest of the faithful on account of their not being as yet full-fledged members of the Church. It may well be that they are the most faithful of the faithful, for stone is a hard thing to kneel upon, and when it is used for this purpose without ostentation, it is a pretty safe test of sincerity in religion. The grouping of the people here would interest at once an artistic eye, the more so because many of the women of Cahors wear upon their heads kerchiefs of brilliant-coloured silk folded in a peculiarly graceful and picturesque ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... no flavor of servility in this most benign trait of character. It was bred in his bone and was fostered by the teachings of his church. Along with this went a bonhomie and a lightheartedness, a touch of personal vanity, with a liking for display and ostentation, which unhappily did not make for thrift. The habitant "enjoys what he has got," writes Charlevoix, "and often makes a display of what he has not got." He was also fond of honors, even minor ones, and plumed himself on the slightest recognition from official ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... great man, and I believe a good man. I, at any rate, will not belittle him. I think that he had the firmness and audacity necessary for a revolutionary leader, that he had honesty to preserve him from the temptations of ambition and ostentation, and that he had the good sense to be guided in civil matters by men who had studied the laws of social life and the theories of free government. He was justus et tenax propositi; and in periods that might well have dismayed a smaller man, he feared neither ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... observed them to want compassion; those in whose presence he never can be gay, though excited by invitations to mirth and freedom; and those from whom he cannot be content to receive instruction, though they never insulted his ignorance by contempt or ostentation. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... a swift but femininely penetrating first glance. Yes, he did look older; no, not exactly older—sad, rather. Evidently he was unhappy, distinctly unhappy. And as handsome and as tasteful as ever—the band of his straw hat, the flower in his buttonhole, his tie, his socks—all in harmony; no ostentation, just the unerring, quiet taste of a gentleman. What a satisfactory person to look at! To be sure, his character—However, character has nothing to do with the eye-pleasures, and they are undeniably agreeable. Then there were his manners, and his mind—such a man of the world! ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... the opposite of this. It must have human notice. Ostentation is its very essence. Cease to notice it, and it will soon die. "I went about to establish mine own righteousness," says Paul, before he got the true Charity. Here was a grand opportunity for Pharisaic Saul. These Nazarenes, were they not everywhere spoken against? Was not this a grand ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... liveliness of Caesar's Commentaries or of the Duke of Wellington's Despatches. Montesquieu[1317] says of it:—"Hanno's Voyage was written by the very man who performed it. His recital is not mingled with ostentation. Great commanders write their actions with simplicity, because they receive more honour from facts than words." If we may take the work as a specimen of the accounts which Phoenician explorers commonly gave of their travels in unknown regions, we must regard them as ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... other by the pitiless desert. In those days San Juan recognized no material distinction between midnight and noon-day. All was glitter, glow, life, excitement along the streets; the gloomy overhanging mountains were pouring untold wealth into her lap, while vice and crime, ostentation and lawlessness, held high carnival along the crowded, straggling byways. The exultant residents existed to-day in utter carelessness of the morrow, their one dominant thought gold, their sole acknowledged purpose those carnal pleasures ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... force to the taunt. David Hume leaped up, but Brett anticipated him, gripping his arm firmly, and without ostentation. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... seen from Mount Everest. My eyes ache with the diversity of their shapes, the eccentricity of their styles, the irregularity of their altitudes. No man viewing them can continue blind to the independence of the American citizen, to the ostentation of his right of personal selection, to his individual caprice. They stand, a brick-and-iron commentary upon the competing ambitions of ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... gorgeous spectacle of him. Now when Solon came before him, and seemed not at all surprised, nor gave Croesus those compliments he expected, but showed himself to all discerning eyes to be a man that despised the gaudiness and petty ostentation of it, he commanded them to open all his treasure houses, and carry him to see his sumptuous furniture and luxuries, though Solon did not wish it; he could judge of him well enough by the first sight of him; and, when he ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... 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 ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Prakriti), also the ten senses, the one (manas), the five objects of sense, desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, body consciousness, courage,—all this in brief hath been declared to be Kshetra in its modified form. Absence of vanity, absence of ostentation, abstention from injury, forgiveness, uprightness, devotion to preceptor, purity, constancy, self-restraint, indifference to objects of sense, absence of egoism, perception of the misery and evil of birth, death, decrepitude and disease,[261] freedom ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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 the delight of lads brought ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... figures and incidents of the preceding night; things to be put away and forgotten; things that would not have happened but for another thing—the thing before which everything faded! A ball-room; the sounds of music; the one man she had cared for insulting her with the flaunting ostentation of his unfaithfulness; herself despised, put aside, laughed at, or worse, jilted. And then the moment of delirium, when the light danced; the one wild act that lifted her, the despised one, above them all—made ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... and great ability, which he used with dissimulation and suppleness in order to succeed in his views, the duke, on his side, had a great sense of another sort and to another purpose, which he displayed by a public ostentation of his pride, without any fear of putting himself in a false position." Between 1468 and 1477, from the incident at Peronne to the death of Charles at the siege of Nancy, the history of the two princes was nothing but one constant alternation between ruptures and re-adjustments, hostilities ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... unrecognizable as a general officer; wore a rough blouse, on the collar of which a close look revealed two much-battered and faded stars, indicating his rank of major-general. He wore a black "slouch" hat, the brim well down over his face, and rode along with a single orderly, without the least ostentation. The men of the other regiments knew him and broke out into a cheer, at which he promptly doffed his hat and swung it at the boys. His hat off, we recognized the handsome author of the "Burnside" whiskers. He was not only very popular with his own corps—the ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... personal prestige. In part at least this was the cause of that habitual display which, while impressing, also roused the anger of the nobles, who regarded him as an upstart, and of the satirists of ecclesiastical ostentation and luxury. Secure in the confidence of the King, he never attempted to conciliate either popular sentiment or the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... that I have spoken are no mere quibbles, and I have tried to make you understand that they have not fallen into my head for ostentation or by mere chance on the present occasion: on the contrary, from the outset I realized that this course was both suitable and advantageous for me; that is why I both think and speak thus. Consequently you may be not only of good courage with reference to the present, ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... up and waving us their doubtful greetings. But, curious contradiction, although some barricades have been practically abandoned, others are being erected very cautiously, very quietly, and without any ostentation, as if the enemy were preparing for eventualities which he knows must inevitably occur. Sometimes, too, there is even a little crackle of musketry in some remote corner, which remains quite unexplained. A secret traffic in eggs and ammunition is still going on with renegade ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... whether Whig or Tory, might well be uneasy; but neither Whig nor Tory had so much to fear as the Trimmer, who might not improbably find himself the common mark at which both parties would take aim. For these reasons Halifax determined to avoid all ostentation of power and influence, to disarm envy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach to himself by civilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be useful in the event of a counterrevolution. The next ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of society that judge Clemens and his family belonged, but his means no longer enabled him to provide either the comforts or the ostentation of his class. He settled his family and belongings in a portion of a house on Hill Street—the Pavey Hotel; his merchandise he established modestly on Main Street, with Orion, in a new suit of clothes, as clerk. Possibly the clothes gave ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... time the Emperor experienced any unusual anxiety, I noticed that in order to dispel it he took pleasure in exhibiting himself in public more frequently, perhaps, than during his other sojourns in Paris, but always without any ostentation. He went frequently to the theater; and, thanks to the obliging kindness of Count de Remusat, I myself frequently attended these assemblies, which at that time always had the appearance of a fete. Assuredly, when on the occasion of the first representation of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... and nourish our being do we really live. The watchword, 'back to nature' may be said to have given the first impulse to the later call of the 'simple life,' which has arisen as a protest against the luxury, ostentation, and ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... I like him, either in the pulpit or out of it: I, who had a father one of the soundest divines and finest scholars in the kingdom; who never made an ostentation of what he knew; but loved and venerated he gospel he taught, preferring it to all other learning: to be obliged to hear a young man depart from his text as soon as he has named it, (so contrary, too, to the example set him by his learned and worthy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... borne men, and expectation fainted, Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust Should haue ascended to the Roofe of Heauen, Rais'd by your populous Troopes: But you are come A Market-maid to Rome, and haue preuented The ostentation of our loue; which left vnshewne, Is often left vnlou'd: we should haue met you By Sea, and Land, supplying euery Stage With an ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... possible the Christian virtues of the heretics were described as hypocrisy and love of ostentation (see e.g., Rhodon in Euseb., H. E. V. 13. 2 and others in the second century). If this view was untenable, then all morality and heroism among heretics were simply declared to be of no value. See the anonymous writer ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... who were great star-gazers; and Merodach Baladan sent messengers to compliment the king, whose favour with Heaven had thus been shown to all the earth. For once Hezekiah erred, and was so much uplifted, as to display his treasure and his new-born son in ostentation. Isaiah rebuked him, telling him that his children should be slaves in the hands of the very nation who had heard his boast. He meekly submitted, thankful that there should be peace and truth in his days. Soon after, Babylon was reduced by Sennacherib, and Merodach Baladan driven into exile. ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... close friends of Doctor Craig's, an elderly couple whose name, if the Warnes had known, was one of the old names of the city, standing for the bluest of blue Knickerbocker blood, though for only moderate wealth and for no ostentation whatever. Georgiana had begged that no other guests be asked, being anxious, on her father's account, to have the whole affair over with the least possible agitation for him. To this Doctor Craig ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... and Varro.[448] Splendid dinner-services might take the place of the old simple ware, and luxurious drapery and rugs covered the couches instead of the skins of animals, as in the old time.[449] Vulgarity and ostentation, such as Horace satirised, were doubtless too often to be met with. Those who lived for feasting and enjoyment would invite their company quite early in the day (tempestativum convivium) and carry on the revelry till midnight.[450] And lastly, the practice of drinking wine after dinner (comissatio), ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... 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 ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... had trifled away the good fortune of being appointed at the court of Augustus the Second, where, in addition to every other species of ostentation, they were also looking about for a court-poet, who could give elevation and grace to their festivities, and immortalize a transitory pomp. Von Koenig was more mannerly and more fortunate: he filled this post with ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... been short-lived, that little triumph of hers. It had stopped against a blank wall just when the car stopped under the ports cochere of the Dearborn Avenue house. John's arm which had been around her was withdrawn and he looked with just a touch of ostentation at his watch. She knew before he spoke that when he did, his tone would ring flat. The old spell was broken. He was once more under the dominion of ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the sharper change of throwing off the chancellor to become the archbishop. With keen political sagacity he at once sought the moral support of the religious party who had so vehemently condemned his appointment. The gorgeous ostentation of his old life gave way to an equally elaborate scheme of saintliness. He threw away with tears his splendid dress to put on sackcloth and the black cloak of the monk. His table was still covered with gold and silver dishes and with costly meats, but the hall was ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... man who hates ostentation. I doubt if he has ever spent a thousand a year on himself all his life—do you think it is wise ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... and to which, no doubt, he has so much ow'd that happy Preservation of his Characters, for which he is justly celebrated. Great Genius's, like his, naturally unambitious, are satisfy'd to conceal their Art in these Points. 'Tis the Foible of your worser Poets to make a Parade and Ostentation of that little Science they have; and to throw it out in the most ambitious Colours. And whenever a Writer of this Class shall attempt to copy these artful Concealments of our Author, and shall either think them easy, or practised by a Writer for his Ease, he ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... mourning—with heavy veils invariably hiding their faces—the broken-hearted daughters of the Capital moved like shadows of the past, through the places that were theirs no longer. There was no ostentation of disdain for their conquerors—no assumption of horror if they passed a group of Federals—no affected brushing of the skirt from the contact with the blue. There was only deep and real dejection—sorrow bearing too heavily on brain ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... plundering the provinces or sacrificing his private fortune. The latter was at this time by no means ample; but, with the good sense and taste which mark his character, he preserved in his domestic arrangements the dignity of a literary and public man, without any of the ostentation of magnificence which often distinguished ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... cases the financial conditions may seem to be parallel, but in essential spirit there is no resemblance. What is done from sentiment and affection is above commercial measurement. What is done for the sake of ostentation is, by its own act, made a legitimate object ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... 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 to a ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... mass, of valour, ostentation, fury, affection and wild revolutionary manhood, this Danton, to his unknown home. He was of Arcis-sur-Aube; born of 'good farmer-people' there. He had many sins; but one worst sin he had not, that of Cant. No hollow Formalist, deceptive and self-deceptive, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... our round, preceded by the canes and the English flag. We stopped to take the hand of every caboceer, (which, as their household suites occupied several spaces in advance, delayed us long enough to distinguish some of the ornaments in the general blaze of splendour and ostentation). The caboceers, as did their superior captains and attendants, wore Ashantee cloths of extravagant price, from the costly foreign silks which had been unravelled to weave them, in all the varieties of colour as well as pattern; ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... not interfere in elections for the House of Commons. We certainly know that a Minister of the Crown should not attempt to purchase parliamentary support. We happen to know also the almost more than public manner,—are we not justified in saying the ostentation?—with which at the last election the Duke repudiated all that influence with the borough which his predecessors, and we believe he himself, had so long exercised. He came forward telling us that he, at least, meant to have clean hands;—that ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of unceasing trouble, and their hard, quick movement as they press onward regardless of all that begirts the way, indicates those who have no thought to spare from their own immediate necessities, for comment upon the gay and flaunting world. Little does ostentation know, as it flashes by in satined arrogance and jeweled pride, of the sorrow it may jostle from its path; and perhaps it is happy for us as we move along in smiles and pleasantness, not to comprehend that the glance which meets our own comes from the bleakness of a withered heart—withered ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... there was nothing to encourage me and plenty to appal. They kept a close watch about the cottage; they had a beast of a watch-dog—at least, unless I had settled it; and if I had, I knew its bereaved master would only watch the more indefatigably for the loss. In the pardonable ostentation of love I had given all the money I could spare to Flora; I had thought it glorious that the hunted exile should come down, like Jupiter, in a shower of gold, and pour thousands in the lap of the beloved. Then I had in an hour of arrant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not be set aside. The young man had said that the Clouds were very wealthy. That Leslie was especially so. That when she was of age she would have a vast inheritance. There had been no sign of great wealth or ostentation in their living but if that were so then there was an insuperable wall between him ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... extent it fortifies the democratic element in giving the people of the cities greater influence in the government. It arrives at nearly the same result by impoverishing the peasant and land owner, by the many new pleasures offered him and by displaying to him the ostentation and voluptuousness of luxury and ease. It tends to create bands of mercenaries rather than those capable of worthy personal service. It introduces into the nation luxury, ease, and avarice at the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various |
