"Ostentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of cymbals, and the flowing of champagne. This cordial friendly people had welcomed them kindly, and must have their courtesy returned in fitting style. Mrs. Smith suggested a simpler entertainment, fearing contrast, and any appearance of ostentation, but the general gauged his neighbors better. They were at once too well bred, and too self-satisfied for any idea of comparison to occur to them. They would eat his fruit-cake, or make him welcome ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... 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 folly buried what remained to me in a bank in ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mean time, her anticipations were fixed on 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 ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was hot; boss-ridden Remsen City had dusty and ragged streets and sidewalks. It, therefore, would not do to endanger the freshness of the toilet. But she would arrive as if she had come all the way on foot. Arrival in a motor at so humble a house would look like ostentation; also, if she were seen going through that street afoot, people would think she was merely strolling a little out of her way to view the ruins of the buildings set on fire by the mob. She did pause to look at these ruins; the air of the neighborhood still had a taint ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... willing listener and an earnest coadjutor; but from a very different impulse. M. de Soissons panted for power, and loathed every impediment to the gratification of his ambition; while the young Prince, less firm of purpose, and more greedy of pleasure and ostentation, was wearied by the obscurity of his existence, and the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Quietly and without ostentation, the good man performed the ceremony according to the Jewish rites. The ring was given, the glass broken, the blessings pronounced, and the couple stood hand in hand to receive the congratulations of their assembled friends. Smiles and merry laughter gave ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... 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, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... a scholar without ostentation, a warrior who fought only in defense of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained with cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity, nor lifted up to insolence in the hour of triumph—there is no other name in English history to ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... taken Mrs. Vivian back into her heart, and given her generously of what worldly possessions she had. And she had done it with a wondrous quiet and absence of all ostentation either outwardly or inwardly. It had never occured to Lorraine that, whether it was a duty or not, after what had passed it was certainly a fine act ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... seen physicians' bills containing things of which no man who walked warily before God could approve. Concerning astrological predictions, physiognomy, divination by dreams, and otherwise, he would say, if it did not look like ostentation, he had seldom failed, but had often been of service; and to those who came to him he would guarantee satisfaction. Nor would he be ashamed to avow his willingness to practise rare secrets, for the help, conservation, and augmentation of beauty and comeliness; an endowment ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... 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
... salvation, as this man would make y^e world beleeve; for our reve^d Elder hath laboured diligently in dispencing the word of God unto us, before he came; and since hath taken equalle pains with him selfe in preaching the same; and, be it spoaken without ostentation, he is not inferriour to M^r. Lyford (& some of his betters) either in gifts or larning, though he would never be perswaded to take higher office upon him. Nor ever was more pretended in this matter. For equivocating, he may take it to him selfe; what y^e church houlds, they ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... works commanded by God, and not to human traditions, such as the ablutions were at that time, and the daily sprinkling of water, the vesture of monks, the distinctions of food, and similar acts of ostentation are now. But the adversaries distort the meaning by sophistically transferring the universal particle to only one part: "All things will be clean to those having given alms." [As if any one would infer: Andrew is ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... Folly and Inconsiderateness are the Foundations of Infidelity, the great Pillars and Supports of it are either a Vanity of appearing wiser than the rest of Mankind, or an Ostentation of Courage in despising the Terrors of another World, which have so great an Influence on what they call weaker Minds; or an Aversion to a Belief that must cut them off from many of those Pleasures they propose to themselves, and fill ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... thing would be a gross violation of the severe laws respecting the simple style of building used in the settlement, and would give cause for great offence. The inhabitants of the town must be content to live without ostentation and show, abiding by the general customs, and conducting themselves as humble members of ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... parting interview, to express his candid opinion as to the causes of the dissatisfaction in the provinces, Montigny very frankly and most imprudently gave vent to his private animosity towards the Cardinal. He spoke of his licentiousness, greediness, ostentation, despotism, and assured the monarch that nearly all the inhabitants of the Netherlands entertained the same opinion concerning him. He then dilated upon the general horror inspired by the inquisition and the great repugnance felt to the establishment of the new episcopates. These three evils, Granvelle, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from reo, to fall, because the scarlet petals have so fragile a hold on their receptacles; and the plant has been endowed with the sobriquet, "John Silver Pin, fair without and foul within." In the Eastern counties of England any article of finery brought out only occasionally, and worn with ostentation by a person otherwise a slattern, is called "Joan Silver Pin." After this sense the appellation has been applied to the Scarlet Poppy. Its showy flower is so attractive to the eye, whilst its inner juice is ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Bible so. It has been found, indeed, that she did not sell, pledge, bestow, or otherwise make the book subservient to her temporal or corporal wants, as Mr. Rant very ingeniously argued. Neither did she take it to place in her library—for she had no library; nor for ostentation in her hall—for she had no hall, as my pious friend Counsellor Sleek has. But, gentlemen, even if this old woman by reading the Bible learned to repent, and felt conversion of heart, you are not to infer that the act which brought her to grace and repentance ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... officers, when they discovered their deficiency, or that the men had more confidence in others, after a short respite at home, returned and joined their old companies as privates. Was there ever greater patriotism and unselfishness and less ostentation shown as in the example of these men! It was but natural that men selected almost at random, and in many instances unacquainted with a majority of the men at enlistment unusual to military life, or the requirements of an officer ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... during or since the Renaissance (i.e. revival) period, and is marked by a return to the styles of past ages or distant countries for the architectural features and ornaments of buildings; and by that luxury, complexity, and ostentation which, with other qualities, are well comprehended under the epithet Modern. This group of buildings forms what is known as Renaissance architecture, and extends from the epoch of the revival of letters in the fifteenth century, to ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... in reading some devotional book or playing the harp, for experience taught me that music soothes the troubled mind and relieves weariness of spirit. Such was the life I led in my parents' house and if I have depicted it thus minutely, it is not out of ostentation, or to let you know that I am rich, but that you may see how, without any fault of mine, I have fallen from the happy condition I have described, to the misery I am in at present. The truth is, that while I was leading this busy life, in a retirement that might compare ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... large man's life is confused by a chaos of data. No such trouble arises in this case. There is great poverty of fact and circumstance in the records of the private lives of these men; so careless were they of notoriety, so wholly did they merge themselves in their work. Anything like ostentation was foreign to their taste, and to the spirit of their time, which took plain, dutiful heroism as a matter of course. No one knows any "characteristic anecdotes" of Meriwether Lewis; and the best stories about Clark are ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... in so many different senses, but I never knew anybody who realized my conception of that ideal more perfectly than Mr. Mackay. In him, as Prince Leopold said of another, all culture and all refinement met. He was extremely simple in all his ways, and averse to every kind of vanity and ostentation. He had a sufficient fortune for a refined life, and did not care for any kind of wasteful extravagance. All belonging to him was simple and in good taste. He did not see very much society; that which he did see included several men and women ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... quite another matter. An old woman in a blonde wig, a dirty hand covered with jewels, ostentation without dignity, rhetoric without cogency, all offend by an inner contradiction. To like such things we should have to surrender our better intuitions and suffer a kind of dishonour. Yet the elements ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... himself;[32152] in the service of omnipotence, pride is insatiable, and, to mollify it, no barbaric act is too great.—The same appetite is visible in Collot d'Herbois, who, no longer on the stage, plays before the town the melo-dramatic tyrant with all becoming ostentation. One morning, at Lyons, he directs the revolutionary Tribunal to arrest, examine and sentence a youthful "suspect" before the day is over. "Towards six o'clock,[32153] Collot being at table enjoying an orgy with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock was improved in quick and perpetual circulation: but the riches of the Greeks were displayed in the idle ostentation of palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... seeming to say, "Ahem! See how well dressed and how dignified I am!" The furnishings of the room are elegant and perhaps uncomfortable and unhealthful, since the master of the house would consider not so much the comfort and health of his guests as his own ostentation, "A terrible thing is dysentery," he would say to them, "but you are sitting in European chairs and that is something you don't find ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... unlike the complex works of man, Heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan! No clustering ornaments to clog the pile; From ostentation, as from weakness free, It stands 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 words—Believe and Live. Too many, shocked at what ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... not a proper place in which to insert the baseness with which he abused the delicacy and weakness of females. Fathers of families * * * *. Every man was intimidated. Every feeling man wept, because all were the victims of the caprice of this insolent upstart, who made an ostentation ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... aspect, that revealed the priest, except, perhaps, the entire absence of beard, the more remarkable upon so manly a countenance. His chin, newly shaved, rested on a large and elevated black cravat, tied with a military ostentation which reminded the beholder, that this abbe-marquis this celebrated preacher—now one of the most active and influential chiefs of his order, had commanded a regiment of hussars upon the Restoration, and had fought in aid ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... all His orders, we should never be seen praying in public at all! Of course it is pleasant and human for people to meet together in some place and worship God—but I think such a meeting should be quite without any ostentation—and that all our prayers should be as simple as possible. Pray excuse me if I speak too boldly—but that is the spirit and feeling of most of the Weircombe folk, and they are really very good, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... London it is Charing Cross Road. It begins with pickles and ends with art; it joins Crosse and Blackwell to the National Gallery. In between the two are bookshops, theatres, and music halls, and yet it is a street without ostentation. No one in Charing Cross Road can be assuming: no one could be other than genial and neighbourly. All good books come there at last to find the people who will read them long after they have been forgotten by the people who only talk about them. Books endure while readers and talkers ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... which required such elaborate and splendid arts of delivery, if we would fully satisfy ourselves, as to whether this author really had any purpose after all in bringing them in here beyond that of mere ostentation, and for the sake of completing his muster-roll of the sciences. Above, we see an intimation, that the divisions of the subject are, after all, not so 'curious' but that the inquiry might possibly be resumed again in other connections, and ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... deceitful as all misers, carefully keeping within the limits of the law, the man might have been Tiberius in Rome, Richelieu under Louis XIII., or Fouche, had the ambition seized him to go to the Convention; but, instead of all that, Rigou had the common sense to remain a Lucullus without ostentation, in other words, a parsimonious voluptuary. To occupy his mind he indulged a hatred manufactured out of the whole cloth. He harassed the Comte de Montcornet. He worked the peasants like puppets by hidden wires, the handling of which amused him as though it were a game of chess ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... seemly," answered his father, gently. "It would make thee appear anxious to display thy wealth. Such ostentation will induce people to regard thee and thy father as foolish persons, possessed of more wealth than is good for the exercise of wisdom. Also, my son, thy future teaching must be not confined to the learning ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... was more fond of society than might have been expected from his studious habits. His habitual cheerfulness and gaiety, and his affability and frankness of manner, rendered him an universal favourite among his friends. Without any of the pedantry of exclusive talent, and without any of that ostentation which often marks the man of limited though profound acquirements, Galileo never conversed upon scientific or philosophical subjects except among those who were capable of understanding them. The extent of his general information, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... chronicled at length in all the newspapers. But after all, the marriage was the essential thing, and perhaps, having regard to some foolish love passages that had happened between Clementina and a certain penniless naval lieutenant, ostentation ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 to provide for but himself, and yet had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Banks, Lord Camden, and Mrs. Park. Those addressed to the three latter, being the most interesting, are here inserted at length, and cannot be read without considerable interest. They all of them bear strong traces of that deliberate courage without effort or ostentation, which distinguished his whole conduct; and his letter to Lord Camden breathes a generous spirit of self-devotion, highly expressive of the character ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... months later he 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 and chief ornament, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... directly under the garret. One day, without consulting Legree, she suddenly took it upon her, with some considerable ostentation, to change all the furniture and appurtenances of the room to one at some considerable distance. The under-servants, who were called on to effect this movement, were running and bustling about with great zeal and confusion, when ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Kirtley observed, many aspects of the organized public life so excessively worked out and applied in their development as to be unbelievable to Americans who had not come in actual contact with them. These logical extremes and exhaustive minutiae often enough combined a ferocious ostentation and comical absurdness that were so little realized by those afar who learned of the mighty seriousness and intelligence of the Germans merely from the printed page. The conduct and operations of the limitless bureaucracy ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... 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 possible ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... hundred and ninety-nine joined in a rapturous cheer, each man and woman, to show that he or she was not disappointed. The bearer spoke with Mr. Burrham, in answer to his questions, and, with a good deal of ostentation, he opened a check-book, filled a check and passed it to her, she signing a receipt as she took it, and transferring to him her ticket. So far, in dumb show, all was well. What was more to my purpose, it was rapid, for we should have been done in five minutes more, but that ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... 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 that she may once have been beautiful; ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... to display. Neither did they affect aristocracy. Their manner of living was as comfortable as their modest means would allow. It was a common habit for the people of this class to indulge in luxury far beyond their resources and no small amount of this love of ostentation was attributed to the daughters of the families. In this respect Marjorie offended not in the least. Whether assisting her father in the shop during the busy hours, or presiding at the Coffee House, or helping her mother with the affairs of the household, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... over his fellows, which he maintained with so much dignity in his march through life, was not assumed from vanity and ostentation, but was the natural and constant effect of those extraordinary powers of mind, of which he could not but be conscious by comparison; the intellectual difference, which in other cases of comparison of characters, is often a matter of undecided contest, being as clear ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... as 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 in Eusebius, H. E. V. 16. 21, 22; Clem, Strom. VII. 16. 95; Orig., ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... was one of those people who do everything that is right and proper and sensible with inevitable regularity. He always wore just the right and proper clothes, steering the narrow way between the smart and the shabby, always subscribed to the right charities, just the judicious compromise between ostentation and meanness, and never failed to have his hair cut ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... cheeks in the fervency of her devotion, until she felt that she was being noticed, when the windows of her soul were suddenly shut, and she turned to some subject of common interest, as if ashamed to be discovered praying, for she permitted herself no ostentation of devotion, but reserved it for her nights and solitary moments. Of her own salvation she had only a faltering hope, harassed always by a fear that she had at some time in her life committed the unpardonable sin, as to the nature of which she knew ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... perfectly simply, 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 ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... should be shown without ostentation." Beatrice laughed. "And you are decidedly ostentatious at the present moment. It would interest mamma and me very much to know the object of ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... take the needful steps to enable you to translate word into action. Have you not torn up your "scrap of paper" just as effectively as Germany has? As my husband puts it: England gave Belgium a check, a big check, and gave it with much ostentation, but took care that there should be no funds to meet it! Trusting to your check Belgium finds herself bankrupt, sequestrated, blotted out as a nation. But I know England well enough to foresee that English statesmen, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... old castle, and now a side glimpse at its particular towers; the former rich in all the bizarrerie of the Elizabethan school, while the simple arid solid strength of other parts of the building seemed to show that they had been raised more for defence than ostentation. Delighted with the partial glimpses which he obtained of the castle through the woods and glades by which this ancient feudal fortress was surrounded, our military traveller was determined to inquire whether it might not deserve a nearer view, and whether it contained ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to her jewel-case with ostentation. Balnokhazy, as he turned in the doorway, could see with what feverish anxiety she unlocked it and ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... time you may easily conceive how much I felt at being left behind by almost all my contemporaries. There never was a season more favourable for any man who chose to enter into the career of public life; and I think I am not guilty of ostentation in supposing my own moral character and my industry, my friends and connexions, when Mr H. first sought my acquaintance, were not at all inferior to those of several whose fortune is at this day upon a very different ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... to the clergy, that chivalry was most sedulously preached and developed in the most curious detail. In the hands of the troubadours it became a gospel of pageantry and fanfaron, of artificial sentiments and artificial heroisms, cloaking the materialism, the sensuality and the inordinate ostentation of a theatrical and frivolous society, intoxicated with the pride ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... 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, as the greater artist does to conceal, the marks of his subordinate ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... situation. It was then, when the frontier was broken and all the world aquake with alarm, that he consulted his generals; the only time he ever did so. Says Velleius Paterculus, who served uner him:—"There was no ostentation in his conduct; it was marked by solid worth, practicality, humaneness. He took as much care of any one of us who happened to be sick, as if that one's health were the main object of his concern." Ambulances, he continues, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... and my meditations are with you, though personally absent; and my petitions to Heaven are, that 'the things which make for peace may not be hidden from your eyes.' My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation, upon the occasion. They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with it. That, you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to this great people, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... service of the Mennonite Church is always appealing and helpful. The music of voices, without any accompaniment of musical instrument, the simple prayers and sermons, are all devoid of ostentation or ornamentation. Amanda liked to join in the singing and did so lustily that morning. But during the sermon she often fell to dreaming. The quiet meeting-house where only the calm voice of the preacher was heard invited the building of ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... from her window—a prisoner's window, her 'eager heart could have termed it—of a remarkable ostentation of cordiality between the colonel and Cecil, in the presence of Mr. Romfrey. Was it his humour to conspire to hand Miss Halkett to Cecil, and then to show Nevil the prize he had forfeited by his folly? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pointed to the sun and the moon, and guided the pen when they wrote. Longman, the third, looked at the others over his shoulder. Goldband, the fourth, had a gold sash round his waist; and little Playman did nothing at all, and was the more proud. There was too much ostentation, ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... Perhaps a further insight into the real character of Assur-bani-pal may have induced him to venture on hostilities. For the king's contemporaries had begun to realise that, beneath his apparent bravery and ostentation, he was by nature indolent, impatient of restraint, and fond of ease and luxury. When not absorbed in the routine of the court and the pleasures of the harem, he spent his leisure in hunting on the Mesopotamian plains, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... we should return to plain narration, And thus my narrative proceeds:—Dudu, With every kindness short of ostentation, Show'd 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... and the narration, neither ought it to be finely spun out, or harmonized into periodical cadences, but, rather, it should be simple and natural, promising neither too much by words nor countenance. A modest action, also, devoid of the least suspicion of ostentation, will better insinuate itself into the mind of the auditor. But these ought to be regulated according to the sentiments we would have the judges ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... departed for the kitchen, possibly to caution the cook against undue ostentation at dinner, and Copley, obeying an imperious glance from a pair of gray eyes, followed his aunt to the veranda. She led the way to one end of it, and there turned the corner into an ell that had been screened and ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... 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. An Indian, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... with the grime and squalor of the English factory-town, where the human and the inanimate machine grind out their yearly mountains of iron-ware and calico, in order that the employer may vie with his neighbours in soulless ostentation, and the workman consume his millions upon ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... have been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagna or the Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied fever and nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all the ostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings of one of the high-perched "Palaces," where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly declared, they could "rely on the plumbing," and "have the privilege of over-looking ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... of London murmured at this profusion, and accused William of ostentation. But, as this fault was never, on any other occasion, imputed to him even by his detractors, we may not unreasonably attribute to policy what to superficial or malicious observers seemed to be vanity. He probably thought ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... our arrival 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
... brilliant purple. He wore a blue coat with bright buttons, upon which some letters were inscribed; and around his neck was fastened a ribbon of the same color, to which a medal was attached. This he displayed with something of ostentation whenever an opportunity occurred, and seemed altogether a person who possessed a most satisfactory impression of his own importance. In fact, had not this feeling been participated in by others, Mr. Billy Crow would never ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... 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 or offense. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the excellent habit of never costing less than about half a million dollars. It is also etiquette that the gifts to the university from old students shall touch a certain annual sum; they touch it. Withal, there is no architectural ostentation at Harvard. All the buildings are artistically modest; many are beautiful; scarcely one that clashes with the sober and subtle attractiveness of the whole aggregation. Nowhere is the eye offended. One looks upon ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... Philippe made some ostentation of his numerous engagements with men of Church and State; but ended by inviting the King of Scotland to sup with him that evening, if his Grace would forgive travellers' fare ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hand in his breast-pocket, in which, with his love of ostentation, he always carried a bundle of notes and some loose gold, and, as he held out his hand to Derrick, there ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... from Solomon; whereupon quoth the other, 'He could have given thee no truer nor better counsel. Thou knowest thou lovest no one, and the honours and services thou renderest others, thou dost not for love that thou bearest them, but for pomp and ostentation. Love, then, as Solomon bade thee, and thou shalt be loved.' On this wise, then, was the froward wife corrected and the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... are the facts, and the fair inferences from them. A plain lesson here lies on the surface. The Church—that is to say, the men and women who make its members—should draw to itself the notice of the outside world. I do not mean by advertising, and ostentation, and sounding trumpets, and singularities, and affectations. None of all these are needed. If you are live Christians it will be plain enough to outsiders. It is a poor comment on your consistency, if, being ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... never to surrender your dignity. I have often explained to you that ye have no reason to doubt of eventual success in the war, but I will now remind you, more emphatically than before, and even with a degree of ostentation suitable as a stimulus to your present unnatural depression, that your naval force makes you masters not only of your allies, but of the entire sea—one-half of the visible field for action and employment. Compared ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... 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 a lion in curlpapers. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... bereavement we were comforted and consoled by many friends. I believe that my father was universally mourned as a good citizen, of sterling worth; he had been no man's enemy, and had served a goodly number of his fellow-creatures nobly and generously, without ostentation or self-glory. He was ever a careful and indulgent, though not an affectionate parent, and now that he was gone I could afford to interpret his indifference, even in this way, in a new and more partial manner. He had had no conception of what the needs of a clinging, susceptible ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... the colonel, with his mouth full of brown bread, "is delightful, really delightful. The New England hospitality that we read about. So free from ostentation ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have sometimes adopted 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 contraction ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... conceive that the natural man can have any other motive for being just and upright than that it is useless to be otherwise, or that a character for honesty is profitable; according to his experience, between the feelings of ostentation and selfish alarm and the feeling of love to Christ, there lie no sensibilities which can lead a man to relieve want. Granting, as we should prefer to think, that it is Dr. Cumming's exposition of his sentiments which is deficient rather than his sentiments themselves, still, the fact ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... I may conceive out of the weakness of my apprehension; but to say truth, there is no such fault, no such ambition, no novelty, or ostentation, as some suppose; but as [4177]one answers, this of compound medicines, "is a most noble and profitable invention found out, and brought into physic with great judgment, wisdom, counsel and discretion." ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... enormous numbers, attracted by his courageous resistance to the Bolshevist movement—(a resistance which had then frequently endangered his life, and may since have ended it)—and by his determined avoidance of all pomp and ostentation. In the great religious processions which took place at that time, hundreds of thousands passed before him, but he had no bishops and very few clergy in his retinue, only one priest and one deacon. When urged to adopt more ceremony and display in his public appearances, he replied, ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... from such speculations, and his talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride, his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of the indolent ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... you had witnessed, the other day, my incredible boldness in attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they made the Christian religion a religion of postures and ceremonies, of circumflexions and genuflexions, of garments and vestures, of ostentation and parade; that they took tithe of mint and cummin, and neglected the weightier matters of the law,—justice, mercy, and the duties of life: ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the costumes, of scandals among actors and actresses, and similar matters. The youth knew not that in Berlin, where outside show exerts the greatest influence (as is abundantly evidenced by the commonness of the phrase "so people do"), this ostentation must flourish on the stage preeminently, and consequently that the special care of the management must be for "the color of the beard with which a part is played" and for the truthfulness of the costumes which are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... more generous than just. He would not pay a debt if he could help it, but would give the very amount to the first friend that begged it. There was much ostentation in this, but then my friend Nash was ostentatious. One friend bothered him day and night for L20 that was owing to him, and he could not get it. Knowing his debtor's character, he hit, at last, on a happy expedient, and sent a friend to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... 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 with her had not good fortune turned her brain. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the German admiral on the bridge of the Queen Elizabeth, with him were King George and Queen Mary. Admiral von Wimpfen made the formal declaration of surrender and it was accepted by the British admiral without ostentation. ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... at the inn in the village. The effort to sustain his customary vivacity was not encouraged by persons and circumstances about him. Lady Lundie's fidelity to the memory of the late Sir Thomas, on the scene of his last illness and death, persisted in asserting itself, under an ostentation of concealment which tried even the trained temper of Sir Patrick himself. Blanche, still depressed by her private anxieties about Anne, was in no condition of mind to look gayly at the last memorable days of her maiden life. Arnold, sacrificed—by ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... a large mansion in Hamilton Place; and his sober dinners were succeeded by splendid banquets. Naturally, he had no taste for such things; his mind was too nervous, and his temper too hard, to take pleasure in luxury or ostentation. But now, as ever he acted upon a system. Living in a country governed by the mightiest and wealthiest aristocracy in the world, which, from the first class almost to the lowest, ostentation pervades,—the very backbone and marrow of society,—he felt ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... thoughtfulness of her had been a thing to wonder at. He remembered for months, years even, her most trivial fancies, her unexpressed dislikes. He knew her tastes, as if by instinct; he prepared little surprises for her, and placed them in her way without ostentation, and quite as matters of course. He never permitted her to be embarrassed; the little annoying situations of the day's life he had smoothed away long before they had ensnared her. He never was off his guard, never disturbed, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Agamemnon—namely, to sacrifice his innocent daughter, just entering the portals of life in its most golden stage, on the miserable pretence of winning a public benefit; masking a diabolical selfishness by the ostentation of public spirit. Yet if some calamity, or even some atrocity, had carried off the innocent creature under circumstances which involved an advantage to her country, or to coming generations, the most loving father might gradually allow himself to ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... 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?" ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... inflame us the more fiercely, not extinguish us. Nevertheless, because for Thy Name's sake which Thou hast hallowed throughout the earth, this our vow and purpose might also find some to commend it, it seemed like ostentation not to wait for the vacation now so near, but to quit beforehand a public profession, which was before the eyes of all; so that all looking on this act of mine, and observing how near was the time of vintage which I wished to anticipate, would talk ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... the Mercer, the Merchant, 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 you should ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... patrole during the whole night around his quarters. All this was done by the advice of his officers, who were anxious to get under cover, and who alleged it was absurd to suppose that Cortes would venture to attack them with so pitiful a handful of men, and that he only advanced from ostentation, or to induce them to come to an agreement. On returning to quarters, Narvaez publickly offered a reward of two thousand crowns to whoever should kill Cortes or Sandoval; and he stationed as spies ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... 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
... 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, brother, this is one of the best portraits I have ever seen ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... yards almost certain. The barrels were very short, in order that the gun might be convenient to carry in carriage or car. This formidable weapon was to be carried in the hand so as to be ready when opportunity served; a little ostentation as to one's habit of going armed being vigorously insisted ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... stage-coach came thundering into Hawkeye with a perfectly triumphant ostentation—which was natural and proper, for Hawkey a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri. Washington, very stiff and tired and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to proceed now. But his difficulty was quickly solved. Col. Sellers came down the street on a run and arrived ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... enabled Buckingham to fling the reins on to the neck of his mad vanity, to indulge to the very fullest his crazy passion for ostentation and magnificence. Because the Court of France was proverbially renowned for splendour and luxury, Buckingham felt it due to himself to extinguish its brilliance by his own. On his first coming to the Louvre he literally blazed. He wore a suit of white satin velvet with a short cloak in the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... life. The barley loaf seems to have been more generally eaten than the wheaten loaf; this, with salt fish and vegetables, was the common food of the population. Economy in domestic life was universal. In their manners, their dress, their private dwellings, they were little disposed to ostentation or display. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... October came, I sniffed and sniffed, and all to no purpose; and my lady—who had watched the little experiment rather anxiously—had to give me up as a hybrid. I was mortified, I confess, and thought that it was in some ostentation of her own powers that she ordered the gardener to plant a border of strawberries on that side of the terrace ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... mountains, rivers, and bulwarks, avoid all pomp and ostentation, as if you meant to show your own eloquence; pass over these things as slightly as you can, and rather aim at being useful and intelligible. Observe how the great and sublime Homer acts on these occasions! as great ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... is not sufficient excuse for him. He is not one whit better than if he had made his money by a lucky bet on a racehorse. Nor can he ever hope to live down this terrible social misdemeanour, especially if it is accompanied by the least ostentation. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... kindness, and expressed his concern at seeing me look so ill, with his accustomed sensibility.... We had a long and serious conversation about his present situation, and the approaching termination of all his earthly prospects. He spoke of his death without any of the ostentation of philosophy, but with firmness as well as feeling, as an event likely to happen very soon, and which gave him concern chiefly from leaving his four children so young and unprotected, and his wife hourly expecting a fifth. He mentioned, with ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... the mouth, or injected into the 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. Mead has invidiously remarked of Woodward that he gathered shells and stones, and would pass for a philosopher. With pretentions much less reasonable the anatomical novice ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... windows; so new that the hewn cedar logs had not yet weathered to the habitual dull gray tone, but glowed jauntily red as the timbers alternated with the white and yellow daubing. A stanch stone chimney seemed an unnecessary note of ostentation, since the more usual structure of clay and sticks might serve as well. It reminded Ben Hanway that its occupant was not native to the place, and whetted anew his curiosity as he looked about, the reins on his horse's neck in his slow approach. It was a sheltered ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... servitude thou shalt restore To thir inheritance, then, nor till then, Thou on the Throne of David in full glory, From Egypt to Euphrates and beyond Shalt raign, and Rome or Caesar not need fear. To whom our Saviour answer'd thus unmov'd. Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm, And fragile arms, much instrument of war Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought, Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear 390 Vented much policy, and projects deep Of enemies, of aids, battels and leagues, Plausible to the world, to me worth ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... accounts for the want 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 ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... the good people of Ferrara saw them slowly wending their way through the streets, they must have thought that Alfonso had chosen a rich bride. It never occurred to them that these chests, boxes, and bales which were being carried through the streets with such ostentation were filled with the plunder of various ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... times you could rely upon lovers for retirement. But nowadays their role seems to be a bold ostentation of their condition. They rely upon other people to do the timid, shrinking part. Society, in America, is arranged principally for their convenience; and whatever portion of the landscape strikes their fancy, they preempt and ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the very gods who form'd you wonder'd At their own skill, and cry'd, A lucky hit Has mended our design! Their envy hindered, Or you had been immortal, and a pattern, When Heaven would work for ostentation sake, To ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... to finish; already Rena Bonnesdel was looking at them, and there was a hint of amused surprise in Eileen Shannon's mischievous eyes, averted instantly, with malicious ostentation. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... no hint of affectation about her. Her eyes were a trifle red and swollen and she seemed in the grip of something more than mere excitement. But in her dress there was no ostentation—it was somber, but not black. And she came straight to Carroll—her eyes meeting his squarely—and they mutually acknowledged Evelyn's gushing, ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... murmurs of Nan's beautifully modulated voice in his ears, he found his anger slowly rising, not against any one in particular, but against the vulgar ostentation in which these people moved and the vapid assumption of superiority with which they evidently looked out ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... increased, because the physicians and surgeons, having opened his body, declared, from the signs that they found, that he had been poisoned, which made his death more regrettable. [34] The Audiencia buried the governor in the monastery of St. Augustine at Manila, with the pomp and ostentation due to his person and offices. Then, again taking charge of the government, the Audiencia despatched the vessels to Nueva Espana, whence advice was sent to his Majesty of the taking of Maluco and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... be so crucial, came in cheerfully enough. There was, to be sure, a trifle less ostentation in the public celebrations, but the usual amount of champagne brought in the most vital year in the history of the nation. The customary number of men, warmed by that champagne, made reckless love to the women who happened ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... benedictions, bidding the heroes go—offering them on their country's 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
... of labour, I was dealing with things that were remote from her, and difficult to make real; but Veblen's theme, the idle rich, and the arts and graces whereby they demonstrate their power, was the stuff of which her life was made. The subtleties of social ostentation, the minute distinctions between the newly-rich and the anciently-rich, the solemn certainties of the latter and the quivering anxieties of the former—all those were things which Sylvia knew as ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... of education was really pernicious, and far from being calculated to fulfil the object which every wise government must have in view. The result of the system, he said, was to inspire the pupils, who were all the sons of poor gentlemen, with a love of ostentation, or rather, with sentiments of vanity and self-sufficiency; so that, instead of returning happy to the bosom of their families, they were likely to be ashamed of their parents, and to despise their humble homes. Instead of the numerous attendants by whom they were surrounded, their ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... regarded as having secured his dynasty. Frederick the Great described George as a prince who governed England by respecting liberty, even while he made use of the subsidies granted by Parliament to corrupt the Parliament which voted them. {271} He was a king, Frederick declares, "without ostentation and without deceit," and who won by his conduct the confidence of Europe. This latter part of the description is a little too polite. Kings do not criticise each other too keenly in works that are ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... manner in which she had pronounced this name, she had infused so triumphant an expression, such manifest ostentation, that Vaudrey felt himself suddenly ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... wolves." "The great proprietors," says another contemporary,[1340] "attracted to and kept in our cities by luxurious enjoyments know nothing of their estates," save "of their agents whom they harass for the support of a ruinous ostentation. How can ameliorations be looked for from those who even refuse to keep things up and make indispensable repairs?" A sure proof that their absence is the cause of the evil is found in the visible difference between the domain worked under absent abbe-commendatory ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... have this and that, affection generated by the merits of the object for which or whom it is felt, treachery, deception, disrespect and respect, theft, killing, desire of concealment, vexation, wakefulness, ostentation, haughtiness, attachment, devotion, contentment, exultation, gambling, indulgence in scandal, all relations arising out of women, attachment to dancing, instrumental music and songs—all these qualities, ye learned Brahmanas, have been said to belong to Passion. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... best team of horses in the transportation, and Miss Bumps' entry into Bear Canyon was a triumphal one. At a brisk trot and in a cloud of dust, the equipage came down the easy grade toward the mail-box and the four interested Vigilantes, who, throwing aside all ostentation, sprang to their feet and stared. They saw a little, blue-ginghamed woman under a huge peanut-straw hat, who sat in her own front doorway beside a substantial trustee and tatted while her interested ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... precept, 'Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.' So that whilst, on the one hand, there is to be the manifestation in daily conduct of the inner principles that animate us, on the other hand, if there comes in the least taint or trace of ostentation, everything is spoiled, and the light is darkness. The light of the sun makes all things visible and hides itself. We do not see the sunbeams, but we see what the sunbeams illuminate. It is the coarser kinds of light which are themselves separately ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... rite, nor formall ostentation,[1] Cry to be heard, as 'twere from Heauen to Earth, That I must call in ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the pit. Authors, who are in a manner his makers and masters, sit there contented—why should not he? 'He is used to show himself.' That, then, is the very reason he should conceal his person at other times. A habit of ostentation should not be reduced to a principle. If I had seen the late Gentleman Lewis fluttering in a prominent situation in the boxes, I should have been puzzled whether to think of him as the Copper Captain, or as Bobadil, or Ranger, or Young Rapid, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... repelled, the plan of attack having been betrayed by a miller of the vicinity; but the main object of the Cretans had been to show a sign of virility to the new commander-in-chief, and the object was attained with the loss of three killed. Omar landed with great ostentation, having brought a magnificent outfit, cavalry, staff, horse artillery, etc., etc., all in new and brilliant uniforms; but the astute Cretans rejoiced in the change, for the cunning of Mustapha Kiritly ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... things the best felicities; because he thinks that he may have them all if he have that which he then chiefly wishes to obtain. This is, then, what they chiefly wish to obtain, wealth, and dignity, and authority, and this world's glory, and ostentation, and worldly lust. Of all this they are desirous because they think that, through these things, they may obtain: that there be not to them a deficiency of anything wished; neither of dignity, nor of power, nor of renown, nor of bliss. They wish for all this, and they do well that they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... should require such Brevity, and be so essentially sparing in Expression, I see no other reason but this: It loves Simplicity so much that it must be averse to that Pomp and Ostentation which Epick Poetry must show, for that must be copious and flowing, in every part smooth, and equal to it self: But Pastoral must dissemble, and hide even that which it would {42} show, like Damon's Galatea, who flies then when she most desires ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... glorious scheme to her partial mind, never such a devoted knight to execute it. An hour or two may have passed whilst they were having their colloquy. Beatrix came out to them just as their talk was over; her tall beautiful form robed in sable (which she wore without ostentation ever since last year's catastrophe), sweeping over the green terrace, and casting its shadows ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... always old Danish melodies, but songs of a strange land. It was 'live and let live' here: stranger guests came from far and near, the music sounded, the goblets clashed, and I was not able to drown the noise," said the Wind. "Ostentation, and haughtiness, and splendour, and display, and rule were there, but the fear of the Lord was ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... judging to the American merchant (full of kindness and honorable sympathy as beneath the crust he so often is) who wants pictures and statues, not merely from ostentation, but as means of delight and improvement to himself and his friends, who has a soul to respect the genius and desire the happiness of the artist, and who, if he errs, does so from ignorance of the circumstances, I give the following memorandum, made at ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... more happy than the poorer sort of these, because as they have nothing, so they desire nothing; whereas these are proud and insolent and in the main are in many parts mere beggars and drudges. Their ostentation is inexpressible; and, if they can, they love to keep multitudes of servants or slaves, which is to the last degree ridiculous, as well as their contempt of ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Let this be so; His means of death, his obscure funeral,— No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,[34] No noble rite nor formal ostentation,— Cry to be heard,[35] as 'twere from heaven to earth, That I must ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... say, read them all; and, knowing that a mind like yours must grasp closely what comes within it, I will then appeal to you whether any poet of our country, since Milton, hath exerted greater powers with less of strain and less of ostentation. I would, however, by his permission, lay before you for this purpose a poem which is ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... a rather striking, high-coloured woman, with eyes that had a hard sparkle, and, when her face was in repose, unusually firm lips. She wore the latest and most pronounced type of dinner dress with a few jewels of value, but they gave her no air of ostentation. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... you the trouble?" he asked. "Why not spread your store here on the table, and let us all work out the calculation? Everybody knows you broke the bank, so there's no imprudence or ostentation in displaying ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... They showed a want of tact, however, in carrying their street demonstrations for their favorite to excess; they crowded together at the Richmond House, making that hotel the Seward headquarters; with too much ostentation they marched every day to the convention with music and banners; and when mention was made of doubtful States, their more headlong members talked altogether too much of the campaign funds they intended to raise. All this occasioned a reaction—a certain mental protest among both Eastern ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... public communications, and his private writings. He uniformly ascribed his successes to the beneficent agency of the Supreme Being. Charitable and humane, he was liberal to the poor, and kind to those in distress. As a husband, son, and brother, he was tender and affectionate. Without vanity, ostentation, or pride, he never spoke of himself or his actions unless required by circumstances which concerned the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Another alteration was discernible in him, and that was precisely the reverse of what might have been expected. He became more thrifty, more attentive to the expenses of life than he had been. Though a despiser of show and ostentation, and far too hard to be luxurious, he was too scientific an architect of the weaknesses of others not to have maintained during his public career an opulent appearance and a hospitable table. The profession ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to beguile, No clustering ornaments to clog the pile, From ostentation as from weakness free, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... 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, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... family. She was intelligently interested in all that related to her husband's business and interests, as well as in his recreative enjoyments. The household affairs were under her skilful guidance. She conducted them with economy, and yet with generous liberality, free from the least taint of ostentation or extravagance. The home fireside was a scene of cheerfulness. And most of our family have been blest with this sunny gift. Indeed, a merrier family circle I have never seen. There were twelve persons round the table to be provided for, besides two servants. This required, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... 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 provided merely with slings, and clubs studded with nails, and with the iron ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... was wholly unknown, and benevolence anticipated the demands of poverty.[I] Every misfortune was relieved, as it were, before it could be felt, without ostentation on the one hand, and without meanness on the other. It was, in short, a society of brethren; every individual of which was equally ready to give, and to receive, what he thought the common right of mankind. So perfect a harmony naturally prevented all those connections ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... a canon for style. The reaction came soon. Involved, whether justly or not, in the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 A.D., he was forced to commit suicide. He died as the Stoics of the age were wont to die, cheerfully, courageously, and with self-conscious ostentation.[153] Within a few years of his death the great Ciceronian reaction headed by Quintilian began. The very vehemence with which the Senecan style was attacked, now by Quintilian[154] and later by Fronto,[155] shows what a commanding ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... flesh. A fine sight that would be from the rich man's door! The latter had to die too, for all his purple, and to be swathed in less gorgeous robes. His funeral is mentioned, not only because pomp and ostentation went as far as they could with him, but to suggest that he had to leave them all behind. 'His glory shall not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... so often experienced—that great personal gifts and prodigious eclat cannot possibly escape the poison of envy and detraction. He was attacked by calumny; his gifts denied and ridiculed; his munificence ascribed to vainglory, and his charity to pride and ostentation; yet none will ever know the extent of his private charities, and no one who knows anything of Liszt can be ignorant of the simple, unaffected goodness of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... That there be large sums given for these is within common knowledge. 1 d., 2 d., nay even 4 d., is not too great a price, if a man will have of the finest leaf, reckless of expense. In this sort of smoking, however, I find more of vainglory and ostentation than solid satisfaction; and its votaries would seem to display less a calm, healthy affection for tobacco than (as Sir T. Browne hath it) a "passionate prodigality.'' And, besides grievous wasting of the pocket, atmospheric changes, varyings in the crops, and the like, cause uncertainty ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... may remember, the least assuming of girls, the least exacting of wives. But women have many sides to their nature, and remain puzzles—puzzles in their virtues as in their vices; and if Dulcie were ever guilty of ostentation, you have not to dive deep to discover that it was out of respect to her Will—to her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... instructed; 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 ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... about the end of May, all was ready. Not without a feeling of regret I left my little room among the white myrtle blossoms and the oleander flowers. I kissed with humble ostentation my kind host's hand in presence of his servants, bade adieu to my patients, who now amounted to about fifty, shaking hands with all meekly and with religious equality of attention, and, mounted in a "trap" which looked like a cross between a wheel-barrow and dog-cart, drawn ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... productions are in 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 true ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... persons, whom they supposed to be their enemies, they 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 oppressive ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... minimum of ostentation he gave the document to Joseph, who, evidently well trained under Sir Nicholas, vanished into the next room before ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... conversation on the comparative merits of San Francisco sandhill and water lots; the jocular occupants of the middle seat were still engrossed with the lady. Clarence slipped out of the stage and entered the bar-room with some ostentation. The complete ignoring of his person by the barkeeper and his customers, however, somewhat disconcerted him. He hesitated a moment, and then returned gravely to the ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the type of 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
... up the bottle of liqueur, poured his glass full once more, and began drinking it off in little sips. Presently he stood up, and throwing back his shoulder, with a little ostentation of health, he went over to the chintz-covered chair, and sat down in it. His mood was contented and brisk. He held up the glass ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
