"Ostentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their best shoes toeing out precisely under the smooth sweep of her gray silk skirt. Miss Martha Rose dressed always in gray, a fashion which the village people grudgingly admired. It was undoubtedly becoming and distinguished, but savored ever so slightly of ostentation, as did her custom of always dressing little Lucy in blue. There were different shades and fabrics, but blue it always was. It was the best color for the child, as it revealed the fact that her big, dark eyes were blue. Shaded as they were by heavy, curly lashes, they ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Vittoria smiled a little on me and a great deal on Messer Guido; and as for Dante, she glanced at him slightly and gave him little heed, for his habit was modest and his looks were not of a kind at once to tickle the fancy of such as she. Yet Dante looked at her curiously, though without ostentation, as one whose way it is instinctively to observe all men and all women with an exceeding keenness and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mortification, to which the Crusaders, according to the opinion expressed by him of Gilsland, ought to subject themselves. A space of ground, large enough to accommodate perhaps thirty tents, according to the Crusaders' rules of castrametation, was partly vacant—because, in ostentation, the knight had demanded ground to the extent of his original retinue—partly occupied by a few miserable huts, hastily constructed of boughs, and covered with palm-leaves. These habitations seemed entirely deserted, and several of them ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of a good light and free air, he fitted up for a study and furnished with books, chosen with so little regard to editions or their external appearances as showed they were intended for use, and that he disdained the ostentation of learning." ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... ourselves into a state of superiority, and immediately began to envy, hate, and declare war against us. The neighbouring little squires, too, were uneasy to see a poor renter become their equal in a matter in which they placed so much dignity; and, not doubting but it arose in me from the same ostentation, they began to hate me likewise, and to turn my equipage into ridicule, asserting that my horses, which were as well matched as any in the kingdom, were of different colours and sizes, with much more of that kind of wit, the only ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... of so essential importance. Indeed, among things appertaining to human life, it is friendship alone that has the unanimous voice of all men as to its capacity of service. By many even virtue is scorned, and is said to be a mere matter of display and ostentation. Many despise wealth, and contented with little take pleasure in slender diet and inexpensive living. Though some are inflamed with desire for office, many there are who hold it in so low esteem that they can imagine nothing more inane or worthless. ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... exuberance of money displayed itself in gaiety of appearance, and wantonness of expence, and introduced me to the acquaintance of those whom the same superfluity of fortune had betrayed to the same licence and ostentation: young heirs who pleased themselves with a remark very frequently in their mouths, that though they were sent by their fathers to the university, they were not under the necessity of ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... indulge in rhetoric and to dwell upon the magnificence of some of the more luxurious houses of the wealthy Romans; to describe their ostentation of rich marbles in pillar, wall, or floor—the white marbles of Carrara, Paros, and Hymettus; the Phrygian marble or "pavonazzetto" its streakings of crimson or violet; the orange-golden glow of the Numidian stone of "giallo ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... directions, and there are few directions, if any, in which good taste and good morals more commend the happy medium than in tips. Excess in them, however, is not always prompted by good nature and generosity and reciprocation of spontaneous kindness, but often by desire for comfort, and even by ostentation. But all such promptings require regulation for the same reason that, it is now becoming generally recognized, the promptings of even ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Chandos, had built himself an Italian palace at Canons, near Edgware, in which he must have outdone even the magnificent Lord Burlington in sumptuousness and ostentation. Like a German princeling, he kept his choir and his band of musicians, though there seems to be no evidence that he was himself genuinely musical. The chapel of the house, a florid Italian baroque building with frescoes in the appropriate style by Italian ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... going into the dark and I was not afraid—with ostentation. I still regard that, though now with scarcely so much gravity as heretofore, as a very magnificent period in my life. For nearly four months I was dying with immense dignity. Plutarch might have recorded it. I wrote—in touchingly unsteady pencil—to all my intimate ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... 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
... written anything, and felt only the charm which a nature of such capacity for supreme enjoyment causes every one around it to enjoy. His talk was unaffected and natural, never bookish in the smallest degree. He was quite up to the average of well read men, but as there was no ostentation of it in his writing, so neither was there in his conversation. This was so attractive because so keenly observant, and lighted up with so many touches of humorous fancy; but, with every possible thing to give relish to it, there were not many ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... supplyes and encouragement, as Ben. Johnson and[1] many others of that tyme, whose fortunes requyred, and whose spiritts made them superiour to ordinary obligations; which yett they were contented to receave from him, because his bountyes were so generously distributed, and so much without vanity and ostentation, that except from those few persons from whome he sometimes receaved the characters of fitt objectes for his benefitts, or whome he intrusted for the more secrett derivinge it to them, he did all he could that the persons themselves who receaved ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... an insight and a foresight which the ancients would have called divination, he saw, in the midst of darkness and obscurity, the logic of events, and forecast the result. From the first, in his own quaint, original way, without ostentation or offense to his associates, he was pilot and commander of his administration. He was one of the few great rulers whose wisdom increased with his power, and whose spirit grew gentler and tenderer as his ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... shops as soon as she had paid L1, 19s. to Denry. It was a marvellous scheme. The rumour of it spread; before dinner Denry had visits from other aspirants to membership, and he had posted a cheque to Bostocks', but more from ostentation than necessity; for no member could possibly go into Bostocks' with his coupons until at least ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... interested in its being and its well-being. But besides this, by virtue of His perfect humanity, He was attracted by those peculiar traits which are seen in the earlier years of human life. He loved the artlessness and gentleness, the sense of dependence, the implicit trust, the absence of ostentation and ambition, the unconscious modesty, in one word, the child-likeness of ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... to the gate to hear the several claims of those who endeavored to pass. The first among other pretensions, set forth that he had been very liberal to an hospital; but Minos answered, "Ostentation," and repulsed him. The second exhibited that he had constantly frequented his church, been a rigid observer of fast-days: he likewise represented the great animosity he had shown to vice in others, which never escaped his severest censure; and as to his own behavior, he had never been ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... to give to the most ancient of the pyramids less than four thousand years of antiquity; but one must consider that these efforts of the ostentation of the kings could only have been commenced long after the establishment of the towns. But to build towns in a land inundated every year, let us always remark that it was first necessary to raise the land of the towns on piles in this land ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... prejudicial to the matter. It takes from the general power, not only to please, but to instruct. The monotony of style produces an apparent monotony of ideas. What is really striking and valuable, is lost in the vain ostentation and circumlocution of the expression; for when we find the same pains and pomp of diction bestowed upon the most trifling as upon the most important parts of a sentence or discourse, we grow tired of distinguishing between pretension ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... antiquity, wealth and hereditary refinement, the observer would see, what now is never beheld, foolish parvenus frenzied in the pursuit of an elegance which, in its nature, is inaccessible to them. We should see lavish and unmeaning displays. We should see a gaudy ostentation,—serving only as a magnificent frame to the vanity of the subject. We should see the grave and thoughtful, the witty and accomplished, the men and women whose genius fitted them for society, withdrawing from ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... without thought of ostentation, for her parents' riches had come when she herself was so young that she had no remembrance of the little house in the manufacturing town, but looked as a matter of course upon the luxuries with which she was surrounded. It never occurred to her mind ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 life would ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... 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 returned from viewing ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Orthodocia, and immediately looked out of the window again. I edged my chair toward the other window. Then the cloven foot appeared in the shape of a note-book. He produced it with gentle ostentation, as one would a trump card. The simile is complete when I add that he took ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front right opposite to the humbler residence of our Kings, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reasonable beings! The Ten Commandments would be unnecessary: no reasoning being sins, no reasoning creature makes mistakes. There would be no rich men, for what reasonable man cares for luxury and ostentation? There would be no poor: that I should eat enough for two while my brother in the next street, as good a man as I, starves, is not reasonable. There would be no difference of opinion on any two points: there is only one reason. You, dear Reader, would find, that ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... century, the marked division of costume into waist and skirt begins, the waist line more and more pinched in, the skirt more and more full, the sleeves and neck more elaborately trimmed, the head-dresses multiplied in size, elaborateness and variety. Textiles developed with wealth and ostentation. ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... the odour from the Russian binding of good old authentic- looking folios and quartos is less annoying than the steams from the tavern or bagnio. Nay, though the pedantry of the scholar should betray a little ostentation, yet a well-conditioned mind would more easily, methinks, tolerate the fox brush of learned vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptuous ignorance, that assumes a merit from mutilation in the self-consoling sneer at the pompous ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... eyes, and dignity towered on her forehead. Almamoulin approached and trembled. She saw his confusion and disdained him: "How," says she, "dares the wretch hope my obedience, who thus shrinks at my glance? Retire, and enjoy thy riches in sordid ostentation; thou wast born to be wealthy, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... plain clothes and without attendants, tied his horse to the fence, and walked unannounced into the Senate chamber. This careful avoidance of display marked his whole official career, running sometimes, indeed, into an ostentation of simplicity whose good taste might be questioned. But of Jefferson's entire sincerity there can be no doubt. Inconsistent as he sometimes was—as every man is—his purposes and policies all tended steadily toward the betterment of humanity; and the great mass of the people who to this day revere ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... treat them with open contempt. Maria Theresa, in the spirit of independence which ever characterizes a strong mind, ordinarily lived like any other lady, attending energetically to her duties without any ostentation. She would ride through the streets of Vienna unaccompanied by any retinue; and the other members of the royal family, on all ordinary occasions, dispensed with the pomp and splendors of royalty. Maria Antoinette's education and natural disposition led her to adhere to the customs of the court ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... literary question comes out oddly in the article upon 'The Relation of Novels to Life,' contributed to the 'Cambridge Essays.' He has no fear of modern aesthetes before his eyes. His opinion is that life is too serious a business for tomfoolery and far too tragic for needless ostentation of sentiment. A novel should be a serious attempt by a grave observer to draw a faithful portrait of the actual facts of life. A novelist, therefore, who uses the imaginary facts, like Sterne and Dickens, as mere pegs ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... 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
... with deep astonishment, To famous Westminster how there resort Living in brasse or stony monument, The Princes and the worthies of all sort; Do I not see re-formed nobilitie, Without contempt, or pride, or ostentation, And look upon offenseless majestie, Naked of pomp or earthly domination? And how a play-game of a painted stone Contents the quiet, now, and silent sprites, Whom all the world, which late they stood upon, Could not content, nor quench their appetites. Life is a frost of cold felicities; And ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... and convey Government secrets to a foreign Power. It was but natural that these three dismal failures should find their way to the newspapers and that, in the hysterical condition of modern journalism, they should be flung out to the world at large with all the ostentation of leaded type and panicky scare heads, and that learned editors should discourse knowingly of "the limitations of mentality" and "the well-authenticated cases of the sudden warping of abnormal intelligences resulting in the startling termination ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... friend and class fellow, Whiteside, gave him a dinner to which I attended him, where was the late Dr. Lloyd, the Provost of the College, a learned man, whose works on "Optics" are well known. It was pleasant to note how Forster, like his prototype, the redoubtable Doctor, here "talked for ostentation." "I knew, sir," he might say, "that I was expected to talk, to talk suitably to my position as a distinguished visitor." And so he did. It was an excellent lesson in conversation to note how he took ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... in his Sentiments, is an unnecessary Ostentation of Learning, which likewise occurs very frequently. It is certain that both Homer and Virgil were Masters of all the Learning of their Times, but it shews it self in their Works after an indirect and concealed manner. Milton seems ambitious of letting us ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the commanders' names of every squadron, with all others, their magazines of provision, were put in print, as an army and navy irresistible and disdaining prevention; with all which their great and terrible ostentation, they did not in all their sailing round about England so much as sink or take one ship, barque, pinnace, or cock-boat of ours, or even burn so much as one sheep-cote ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... 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 nothing, and which was, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... 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, she was equally at home. Neither the ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... others. It was not that she had anything to conceal, but undeniably, Chatty felt herself on a lower level of being, subdued by Minnie's presence. There is often in young married persons a pride in their new happiness, an ostentation of superiority in their twofold existence, which is apt to produce this effect upon the spectators. Minnie and her husband stood between the two ladies, neither of whom possessed husbands, as the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... villain Yeager had knocked out. The others crowded around him in excitement, all expostulating at once. They were dressed wonderfully and amazingly as cowpunchers, but they were painted frauds in spite of the careful ostentation of their costumes. Steve's shiny leathers and dusty hat missed the picturesque, but he looked indigenous and they did not. He was at his restful ease, this slender, brown man, negligent, careless, eyes twinkling but alert. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... But, hark, again—"Ostentation, parental pride and a host of moral" (immoral?) "qualities must be recognized as among the springs of industry; political economy should not ignore these, but, to discuss them, it must abandon its pretensions to the precision of ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... let my counsell sway you in this case, Your daughter heere the Princesse (left for dead) Let her awhile be secretly kept in, And publish it, that she is dead indeed: Maintaine a mourning ostentation, And on your Families old monument, Hang mournfull Epitaphes, and do all rites, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Anglican divines of our day who have enriched the whole Church of Christ by their scholarly contributions to sacred literature; and we would ascribe all the praise of Methodist achievement to the almighty Author of good, whom the spirit of ostentation and vain glorifying must displease, while it would ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... would inform Lady Collingwood and the family that it was meant to move in the House for a monument for Lord Collingwood in St Paul's, next to Nelson's. Of course the Body, which has arrived in the Thames, will be deposited in that Church, and the funeral must be splendid without ostentation—at the expense of the executors, or rather of the family." It was not, however, till May 8th that Mrs Stanhope was enabled to furnish her son with full details of the manner in which the intended ceremony ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... friend by himself, "he only acts thus from pride and ostentation. What am I at his house, but a living witness of his generosity and devotion? He seems to live for me—it's Tremorel here and Tremorel there! He triumphs over my misfortunes, and makes his conduct a glory and ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance, all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful in working in metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation—even wounds, which were often enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every free man was followed by two attendants, likewise mounted. War-chariots were ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... cleanness is to be referred to 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 present; therefore all the apostles are present. Wherefore ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... Port Elizabethans was a thing to be remembered with great pleasure. No sooner had we landed than invitations poured in on us. This was not merely complimentary it was the outcome of genuine kindness and a desire to be helpful. There was no ostentation, but just the natural expression of a simple desire to welcome and assist the stranger newly arrived within the gates. Hospitality was one of the cardinal South African virtues in those days. It has been truly said that even a quarter ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... 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, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... receives by the gift of a Christmas or New Year's volume to the wife or daughter of his entertainer. The presentation of Etrennes is now carried to a ruinous and ludicrous height among our French neighbours; but it should be remembered that, without either ostentation or folly, a gift ought to be worth offering. It is better to give nothing than too little. On the other hand, mere costliness does not constitute the soul of a present; on the contrary, it has the commercial and unflattering effect of repayment for ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... the relationships he formed, the modest demeanor of the citizen was always evident; for he was aware that a constant exhibition of pomp brings more envy upon its possessor than greater realities borne without ostentation. Thus in selecting consorts for his sons, he did not seek the alliance of princes, but for Giovanni chose Corneglia degli Allesandri, and for Piero, Lucrezia de' Tornabuoni. He gave his granddaughters, the children of Piero, Bianca to Guglielmo ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... 'stony-hearted,' and whom I, eating no opium, and speaking as I find, shall ever consider the most kindly and maternal of all streets—the street of the middle classes—busy without uproar, wealthy without ostentation. Ah, the pretty ancles that trip along thy pavement! Ah, the odd country cousin-bonnets that peer into thy windows, which are lined with cheap yellow shawls, price L1. 4s. marked in the corner! Ah, the brisk young lawyers flocking from their quarters at the back of Holborn! Ah, the quiet old ladies, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... anything and could get it, he had it; and if a friend had a longing for ices, strawberry mess, oyster- patties, or any other school luxury, he would treat him, running up a score if he had not the cash in his pocket to pay with. And if there was generosity in this impulse, I fear that there was ostentation too. It added to his popularity, and popularity had become as the air he breathed. For the only real test of generosity is self-denial. If you go without something you really want in order to oblige someone else, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... name and motherly tenderness. When we had seen all, she stood a moment before us, and as one of the coarse woolen lappets of her cape had hidden it, she drew out a heavy crucifix of gold, and placed it in sight, with a heavenly little ostentation, over her heart. Sweet and beautiful vanity! An angel could have done it without harm, but she blushed repentance, and glided away with ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... more trying to the Christianity or the philosophy which teaches the vanity of riches than a few hours' domestication in a family where wealth is employed, not for purposes of ostentation, but for the perfecting of home comfort and the gratification of refined intellectual tastes; and as Mr. Stanton leaned back, slippered and gowned, in one of the easiest of chairs, and began to look ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I know," said Master John. "What d'ye think—if he did'nt 'pitch into' our 'dunghill' the other day, and laid him dead at a blow. I owe him one!—Come along." I followed in his footsteps, and soon beheld Chanticleer crowing with all the ostentation of a victor at the hens he had so ruthlessly widowed. A clothes-horse, with a ragged blanket, screened us from his view; and Master'John, putting the muzzle of his gun through a hole in this novel ambuscade, discharged ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... and manners, and the advantages of a pleasing person. It is said he possessed a pretty taste for the fine arts, and had himself attained some proficiency in poetry, music, and painting. His knowledge appeared without ostentation, and embellished by a diffidence that rarely accompanies so many talents and accomplishments, which left you to suppose more than appeared. His sentiments were elevated and inspired esteem, they had a softness ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... yourself as the servant of all, but without ostentation, or their having any knowledge ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... through which he passed, were filled with attendants or visitors of various descriptions, disposed, perhaps, with some ostentation, in order to impress the envoy of Montrose with an idea of the superior power and magnificence belonging to the rival house of Argyle. One ante-room was filled with lacqueys, arrayed in brown and ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 to ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... quality of execution is simplicity. The more unpretending, quiet, and retiring the means, the more impressive their effect. Any ostentation, brilliancy, or pretension of touch,—any exhibition of power or quickness, merely as such, above all, any attempt to render lines attractive at the expense of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... even that 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 ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... had 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
... Christopher Columbus and his brother Bartolomeo were absent, engaged in superintending the erection of a fort in the province of Xaragua; Don Diego was commanding in their absence. Bovadilla landed and went to hear mass, displaying during the ceremony a very significant ostentation; then, having summoned Don Diego before him, he ordered him to resign his office into his hands. The admiral, warned by a messenger of what was occurring, arrived in great haste. He examined the letters patent brought by Bovadilla, and having read them, he declared ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... the two forces that were at this time working in society, the one opposing the entrance of the Grecian influence, and the other encouraging the refinement in manners and modes of living that came with it, even encouraging ostentation and the lavish use of money for pleasures. When Scipio was making his arrangements to go to Africa, he was governor of Sicily, and lived in luxury. Cato, then but thirty years old, had been sent to Sicily to ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... of ancient authors by heart, which they improperly and impertinently retail in all companies, in hopes of passing for scholars. If, therefore, you would avoid the accusation of pedantry on one hand, or the suspicion of ignorance on the other, abstain from learned ostentation. Speak the language of the company that you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other. Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of pompous ostentation and riotous overloading of ornament, the Baroque, now took the place of the classical beauty of the Renaissance and art degraded became the slave of wealth, until the great Cardinal Albani erected his villa to serve ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... was a big lump in Joyce's throat, and Cynthia herself coughed and flourished a handkerchief about her face with suspicious ostentation. Suddenly she burst out: ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... the discoverer, while you reap all the credit, have all the fun!" dolefully lamented Waldo, when the catch was displayed with an ostentation which may have covered just a tiny bit of malice. "I'll put a tin ear on ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... travellers reached Tagelel. From this place there was little danger in their proceeding singly, and it was agreed, in consequence of the low state of their finances, that they should separate, in order to try what each might be able to accomplish single-handed and without ostentation, till new supplies ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... full of people who can't imagine why they don't prosper like their neighbors, when the real obstacle is not in the banks nor tariffs, in bad public policy nor hard times, but in their own extravagance and heedless ostentation. The young mechanic or clerk marries and takes a house, which he proceeds to furnish twice as expensively as he can afford; and then his wife, instead of taking hold to help him earn a livelihood by doing her own work, must ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... fastidious taste. He lived for the pleasures of art and literature, and the society where these are valued. For this, and not without some secret love of display, he lived in Paris; not extravagant in his pleasures, nor silly in his ostentation, but leading, like a gentleman, as worthy and rational a life as a man can lead who lives only to himself, with no further thought than to enjoy the passing hours. Mr. Rossitur enjoyed them elegantly, and, for a man of the world, moderately; ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... But what I alluded to 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 more pleased at having this opportunity ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... 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 ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... raptures over them. You mustn't imagine all those people are selfish and callous merely because they preserve a decent reticence. To tell you the truth, that constant profession of noble feelings you would like to see would have something of ostentation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... of the interior had a heightened emphasis by reason of the elemental turmoils without. True, the rain beat in a deafening fusillade upon the roof, and the ostentation of the one glass window, a source of special pride to its owner, was at a temporary disadvantage in admitting the fierce and ghastly electric glare, so recurrent as to seem unintermittent. But the more genial illumination of hickory ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... will to serve. Abbe Chesnais, who does not attach primary importance to the vocation, has understood this well. At the end of his notes he reminds us that Guynemer was a believer who accomplished his religious exercises regularly, without ostentation and without weakness. "How many times he has stopped me at night," he writes, "as I passed near his bed! He wanted a quiet conscience, without reproach. His usual frivolity left him at the door of the chapel. He believed in the presence ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... he uses it in a spirit of wise benevolence, and his public and private benefactions, while large, are made without ostentation or affectation. Affable, approachable, companionable, devoted and faithful in his personal friendships, it is little wonder that some of them now and then impulsively speak of him as "the best ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... 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 manifested ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... mind, in several letters during her imprisonment which I have read, much the contrary. The French editor makes this observation: "Who could believe that these writings are of the same epoch? The first denotes asperity and ostentation; the second indicates simplicity, softness, and nobleness. The one is that of Elizabeth, queen of England; the other that of her cousin, Mary Stuart. The difference of these two handwritings answers most evidently ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to 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 to be near them and forgot it by morning. And the women themselves ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... army and the loyal gentry of the province, most of whom were collected within the beleaguered town, had been invited to a masqued ball, for it was the policy for Sir William Howe to hide the distress and danger of the period and the desperate aspect of the siege under an ostentation of festivity. The spectacle of this evening, if the oldest members of the provincial court circle might be believed, was the most gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred in the annals of the government. The brilliantly-lighted apartments were ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all, they did less mischief than Lucifer had expected from them, the cause was their entire bewilderment by what had passed, and their utter inability to penetrate the policy of Gerbert, who henceforth devoted himself even with ostentation to good works. They could never quite satisfy themselves whether they were speaking to the Pope or to the Devil, and when under the latter impression habitually emitted propositions which Gerbert justly stigmatised as ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... continued quickly. "Or if indeed we do call them difficulties, let us say at once that they are very minor ones. Only the thing must be done neatly and without ostentation, for the sake ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... force, there were two hundred horse, seemingly very well armed and mounted, and, as we conceived, properly trained and regimented, being furnished with trumpets, drums, and standards. These troops paraded about the hill with great ostentation, sounding their military music and practising every art to intimidate us (as our numbers on shore were by this time not unknown to them), in hopes that we might be induced by our fears to abandon the place before the pillage was completed. But we were ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... this be so: His meanes of death, his obscure buriall; No Trophee, Sword, nor Hatchment o're his bones, No Noble rite, nor formall ostentation, Cry to be heard, as 'twere from Heauen to Earth, That I must call ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... extravagant gifts of silver plate presented to Isabeau of Bavaria. The family of Mustel in fact had "fait mettre en criees et subhastations le manoir de la ville." And in times of such distress the citizens may well have objected to any useless ostentation on ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... enmities which Francis had brought back from the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence for virtue, nursed it, as preachers tell us that we ought to nurse our good dispositions, and paraded it, on all occasions, with Pharisaical ostentation. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... waste labour breed luxury create unhappiness by propagating factitious wants too often engender vice and are injurious for the most part to real civilization. The most malignant feelings which enter into the present struggle have been generated especially in England by the ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surrounding poverty. No really high nature covets such a position as that of a luxurious and useless millionaire. Communism as a movement is a mistake but there is a communism which is deeply seated ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... harsh thing to say—instead of finding something nice and appropriate. On board, where she never saw him in evening clothes, Renouard's resemblance to a duke's son was not so apparent to her. Nothing but his—ah—bohemianism remained. She rose with a sort of ostentation. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Those essays, written by him, which we have read, exhibit a sagacious and careful treatment of the subjects under consideration. He shared in a very great degree the taste of his times for outward show and splendor; but in him it took a direction which led to something far higher than mere ostentation. The works of sculpture and architecture produced under his reign are monuments of a pure and severe taste; the capital of Prussia has seen none more beautiful. He complacently indulged in the contemplation of the greatness founded by his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... the guardians of Cecilia. He is a man of wealth and great ostentation, with a haughty humility and condescending pride, especially in his intercourse with his social inferiors.—Miss Burney, Cecilia (1782). DEME'TIA, South Wales; ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that respectable residence for 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 ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... into such long invectives and loaded the young widow with such bitter reproaches, that Zadig was far from being pleased with this ostentation ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Although this was the 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 ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pleasure will have no taste for sedition, and he who is in debt is no longer free. Your majesty must bestow gifts and places at court; the Magyars will grow ambitious—they will become hangers-on of princes, and—dissipation, ostentation, and extravagance will ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... offer sets before thee to deliver. 380 These if from 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 naught. Means ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... strong Northern character, his eyes are light grey, and his complexion sandy; he is a large man of perfectly unassuming manners and of most amiable deportment. Daily receiving homage from all the potentates of Europe, he is still without the least appearance of ostentation. He readily assented to a request to sit for his portrait which I hope soon ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... had been admitted to a fashionable club, he had moved into bachelor apartments suitable to his improving fortunes and social position. He had also committed himself to the keeping of an English man-servant—he did not like to call him his valet, lest the appearance of ostentation and Anglomania should prejudice him with his business associates. But somehow the new dignity of his own surroundings seemed to lend something bordering on probability to the conjecture that this ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... service, and its lofty arch 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
... pictures by a given artist adds to their "gentility," and there is no price which his work may not immediately reach, and for years maintain; and in buying at that price, you are not getting value for your money, but merely disputing for victory in a contest of ostentation. And it is hardly possible to spend your money in a worse or more wasteful way; for though you may not be doing it for ostentation yourself, you are, by your pertinacity, nourishing the ostentation of others; you meet them in their game ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... thousand nine 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, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... reasonably despise the understanding of one who conducts himself in such a manner as naturally produces such lamentable consequences, and continues in the same destructive paths to the end of a long life, ostentatiously boasting of morals and philosophy in print, and with equal ostentation bragging of the scenes of low debauchery in public conversation, though deplorably weak both in mind and body, and his virtue and his vigour in a state of non-existence. His confederacy with Swift and Pope puts me in ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... shortcomings may be best taken by seeing how a man exercising such enormous power, power repeated day by day, and almost at every hour of the day, might have prepared the way for disarmament and peace, might have modified the character of modern civilization, might have made ostentation look like a crime, might have brought capital and labour into a sensible partnership, and might have given to the moral ideals of the noblest sons of men if not an intellectual impulse ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie |
