"Ostentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are few in number, a heal or hall, a bur or bedroom, and in some cases a cicen or kitchen, and the materials are chiefly beams of wood, laths, and plaster. But when we come to the vocabularies of the Anglo-Norman period, we soon find traces of that ostentation in domestic buildings which William of Malmsbury assures us that the Normans introduced into this island; the house becomes more massive, and the rooms more numerous, and more diversified in their purposes. When we look at the furniture of the house, the difference is still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... once in the streets, where a thaw had set in, that filled the kennel with water, was La Font long in bringing me to the house I sought. It stood on the outskirts of the St. Honore Faubourg, in a quarter sufficiently respectable, and a street marked neither by squalor nor ostentation—from one or other of which all desperate enterprises take their rise. The house, which was high and narrow, presented only two windows to the street, but the staircase was clean, and it was impossible to cross the threshold without feeling a prepossession ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... been to the Bank himself, instead of sending Stifford, had departed with the minimum of ostentation. He had in fact crept away. Since the visit of Janet and the child he had not seen either of them again, nor had he mentioned the child to anybody ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... with his entire family, at the expense of the Government, to gradually prepare the people for the ostentation of royalty. The cities and towns that he visited furnished fetes, illuminations, parades and every variety of entertainment that could be thought of or invented for his amusement or glorification. Lest the parade might not be sufficiently gorgeous or demonstrative ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... a sort of tinselled ostentation the place might well have been the Marlianne's that he had just left—it was crowded and riot was at its height; a stringed orchestra in Hungarian costume played what purported to be Hungarian airs; shouts, laughter, clatter ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... had been forgotten; and in the 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 ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bucolicks 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 ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... truly make a judgment, that the principal point of greatness in any state, is to have a race of military men. Neither is money the sinews of war (as it is trivially said), where the sinews of men's arms, in base and effeminate people, are failing. For Solon said well to Croesus (when in ostentation he showed him his gold), Sir, if any other come, that hath better iron, than you, he will be master of all this gold. Therefore let any prince or state think solely of his forces, except his militia of natives be of good and valiant soldiers. And let princes, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... gaping citizens, anxious to see the new admiral, who has already taken on the dignities of his station, is costumed in velvet, wears a sword at his side, and is accompanied by a retinue of hired retainers. Vespucci, on the contrary, shows no ostentation in his garb, for he is but a man of business, and, entirely unconscious of any discrepancy in their apparel, conducts his guest to the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... and I must needs think the savages of America live much 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 all the ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... intention to come up to town shortly, and give a series of balls and receptions, when she would be much pleased to receive his friends; and by this means Lady Chutny's advent among the big bugs at Madras, was quietly heralded without the slightest effort or ostentation ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... depart. The Delaware got the canoe ready for his friend, as soon as apprised of his intention, while Hist busied herself in making the few arrangements that were thought necessary to his comfort. All this was done without ostentation, but in a way that left Deerslayer fully acquainted with, and equally disposed to appreciate, the motive. When all was ready, both returned to the side of Judith and Hetty, neither of whom had moved from the spot ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... prohibition of lending at interest in continental Europe promoted luxury and discouraged economy; the rich, who were not engaged in business, finding no easy way of employing their incomes productively, spent them largely in ostentation and riotous living. One evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The Jews, so acute in intellect and strong in will, were virtually drawn or driven out of all other industries or professions by the theory that ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... thyself on thy religious works, Give to the poor, but talk not of thy gifts: By pride religious merit melts away, The merit of thy alms, by ostentation. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... at the German coast, was not large, and the whole of his slaves, of both sexes and of all ages, did not exceed thirty-two. His friends and brother conspirators, who were among the first gentlemen in the land, did not live with more ostentation. All the sequestrated property being sold, it was found that, after having distributed among the widows and other creditors what they were entitled to, and after paying the costs of the trial and inventories, the royal treasury had little or nothing to ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... for the calm resourceful confidence of those who can, if need be, "walk alone," as regards dependence upon even an apostolic friend beside them. Live then as those who carry about with them the very life and power of God in Christ. And what will that life be? A life of spiritual ostentation? Nay, the beautiful and ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... Granvelle. Solicited by the King, at their 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dollars in his fraudulent hold-up arrangement with various mail subsidy lines. He was known to be mercenary and unscrupulous. Yet he was selected by Secretary of War Stanton to act as the agent for the Government. At this time Vanderbilt was posing as a glorious patriot. With much ostentation he had loaned to the Government for naval purposes one of his ships—a ship that he could not put to use himself and which, in fact, had been built with stolen public funds. By this gift he had cheaply attained the reputation of being ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... of American life is for simplicity and absence of ostentation. We have no parade of office: our public men wear no robes, no stars, garters, collars, etc.; and it would, therefore, be in good taste in our women to cultivate simple styles of dress. Now I object to the present fashions, as adopted from France, that they are flashy and theatrical. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... statues, and cabinet of curiosities, while dinner was preparing; but rather for the ostentation of his magnificence and taste, than to do me pleasure. I even observed an increasing coldness in his behaviour; and his eye was too often cast upon me with a fierceness that shewed resentment; and not ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... nine 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, for we should have been done in five minutes more, but that some devil tempted ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... material or moral. We do not wish to reduce useful expenditure, but to get money for what we need by increasing production and by more careful spending. It will be a time for all classes to refrain from expenditure on luxuries or ostentation, or in fulfilling those imagined claims which convention imposes. In different ways almost all classes are fettered by these conventional obligations. How much of the expenditure of a person with ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... him round here on Sunday afternoons, and have tea with him in the kitchen;" for my Euphemia has a motherly conception of her duty towards her maid-servants. And presently the amethystine ring was being worn about the house, even with ostentation, and Jane developed a new way of bringing in the joint so that this gage was evident. The elder Miss Maitland was aggrieved by it, and told my wife that servants ought not to wear rings. But my wife looked it up ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... two ends to every stick. It was the Stapletons and others of their sort, rather than any soft-handed Musgraves, who converted a wilderness, a little by a little, into the America of to-day. The task was tediously achieved, and without ostentation; and always the ship had its resplendent figure-head, as always it had its hidden, nay! grimy, engines, which propelled the ship. And, however direfully America may differ from Utopia, to have assisted in the making of America is no mean distinction. We Musgraves and our peers, I sometimes ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... of apartments 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 yellow, the colours of the family, who, ranged in double file, gazed ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... personal freedom, but the conventional and sophisticated man fears lest agreement should, after all, spell weakness, while indifferentism—specially in outward observances—argues strength. A certain shyness, moreover, withheld Iglesias, a not unadmirable dread of being guilty of ostentation. It was so little his custom to obtrude himself, his opinions, and his needs upon the attention of others, that he was scrupulous and diffident in the selection of time and place. The affair, however, decided itself, as ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the "Cricket on the Hearth," and the "Wreck of the Grosvenor," as I had never imagined a divine could read? The Bishop again. Who might be seen in the mid-day hours when the cabin passengers were asleep, quietly and without ostentation reading or talking to the steerage, ay, and Mrs. Saskabosquia too with her baby on her arm, going about amongst those poor tired folk, many of them with their own babies, not too well fed and not too well washed ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... one of the most kindly and delicate of humourists, and we can perceive the gentleness which made him one of the most charming of companions in a small society. His sense of the ludicrous saved him from the disagreeable ostentation of powers which were never applied to express bitterness of feeling or to edge angry satire. The reserve of his sensitive nature made access difficult, but he was so transparently modest and unassuming that his shyness was not, as is too often the case, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... could have admitted the Prussian maxim of keeping in line with the bishops, it would have accomplished nothing. The English bishops were divided; but the Irish bishops, who are the natural foes of the Fenian plot, were by an immense majority on the ultramontane side. There was almost an ostentation of care on the part of the Government to avoid the appearance of wishing to influence the bishops or the Court of Rome. When at length England publicly concurred in the remonstrances of France, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... instead of loading themselves down on life's journey with so many bags and parcels and boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of wealth and fashion,—suppose instead of all this, they should turn to quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, "plain ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... 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
... achievement! Yet this he would never know, seeing her, as he ever must, framed in a vast fortune from which she could not extricate herself. She thought if she might choose, she would remain quietly with her father for ever, doing good, as he, by stealth and without ostentation, feeding her heart on a memory that would never die; but here the spirit of self-sacrifice intervened, and gave her no hope of rest but in fulfilment of what she ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... my face with an air of great 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 ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... the apprehension she excited, and, with mischievous ostentation, produced from her pocket a weapon of war in the shape of a blue ribbon, and began weaving it into her chestnut fuzz, too naturally wavy and long to require frizettes. Coey, who was rather pretty in the white kitten style, had sparse pale hair, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Napoleon said of Turenne, "He is the only general whom experience ever made more daring." He had been fighting for forty years, and his fame was still increasing, without effort or ostentation on his part. "M. de Turenne, from his youth up, possessed all good qualities," wrote Cardinal de Retz, who knew him well, "and the great he acquired full early. He lacked none but those that he did not think about. He possessed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... sports or contentions of two gulls, as they wheeled and hovered about each other, with hoarse screams, one moment flapping on the foam of the wave, and then soaring aloft, till their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine. In the calm of the summer sunset, I drag my aged limbs, with a little ostentation of activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill. There I see the white sails of many a vessel, outward bound or homeward from afar, and the black trail of a vapor behind the eastern steamboat; there, too, is the sun, going down, ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... almost self-taught man. He united, in a singular degree, the sailor, the soldier, and the legislator. Like his brother, the admiral, his mind and manners rose immediately to the level of his situation, showing no arrogance nor ostentation, and exercising the sway of sudden and extraordinary power with the sobriety and moderation of one who had been born to rule. He has been accused of severity in his government, but no instance appears of a cruel or wanton abuse of authority. If he was stern towards ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... "the insolence of wealth" appears far more frequently in the houses of the rich than in the manners of the rich. The reason is plain enough. Personal ostentation is, in the very nature of it, ridiculous; but the ostentation which exhibits magnificent pictures, priceless china, and splendid furniture, can purchase good taste to guide it, and can assert itself without ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... consume Rockstone altogether. It was a very fine house, and the gardens were reported to be beautifully kept up, but the owner was almost always in Italy, and had so seldom been at Rockstone that it was understood that all this was the ostentation of a man who did not know what to do ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the courtezan, and paid her homage by endeavouring to imitate her dress and her manners. Cardsharpers and stockjobbers, disreputable adventurers and public functionaries were intimate friends. No one, able to insult modest industry by lavish ostentation, was asked how he had acquired his wealth. Honour and honesty were prejudices of the past. What has been the consequence? It is a comment upon despotism, which I hope will not be lost upon those who extol the advantages of personal government, and who would sacrifice the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... be plain and decent (for I don't think the ostentation of buildings necessary or suitable to works of charity), and be built somewhere out of town for ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... 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 ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... for himself, and, if possible, trick the British so that they would lose all benefit of the breeze. The clouds that were coming up to windward seemed to threaten a squall, and driving sheets of rain were rapidly advancing toward the ship. With great ostentation, the "Constitution" was made ready for a severe gale. The enemy could see the nimble sailors taking in sail, and furling all the lighter canvas. Then the driving rain swept over the ship, and she was shut out of sight. Immediately all ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... from ostentation as the Otaheiteans, and whose manners are so simple and natural, the strictness with which the punctilios of rank are observed is surprising. I know not if any action, however meritorious, can elevate ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... starched ruff is by a man who wrote to abuse it. An individual named Stubbes published an Anatomy of Abuses. Having become extremely rare, a small impression of it was lately reprinted, as a curious picture of the times. Stubbes dealt trenchantly with everything that savoured of pride and ostentation in dress; and he was peculiarly severe on Mrs Turner's invention, which made the ruff stand against bad weather. He describes the ruffs as having been made 'of cambric Holland lawn; or else of some other the finest cloth that can ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... certain personal enlargement. It adds to the romance of himself in his own eyes, as well as in the eyes of others. It procures the flattering ears of journalists, and a place on front pages, and, if one inclines toward ostentation, even the ownership of a ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... ruin. And under idleness I include, not mere inaction only, but all that circle of trifling occupations in which too many saunter away their youth; perpetually engaged in frivolous society or public amusements, in the labours of dress or the ostentation of their persons. Is this the foundation which you lay for future usefulness and esteem? By such accomplishments do you hope to recommend yourselves to the thinking part of the world, and to answer the expectations ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... ridiculous, in this strange confusion of two different states of being. These passions of masters, when they pass into the souls of menials, assume the natural dimensions of the place they occupy—they are contracted and lowered. What was pride in the former becomes puerile vanity and paltry ostentation in the latter. The servants of a great man are commonly most punctilious as to the marks of respect due to him, and they attach more importance to his slightest privileges than he does himself. In France a few of these old servants of the aristocracy are still to be met with here and ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the ground that he was at the head of a regularly constituted army and could only receive communications under his proper title of general. Those who knew General Washington, as I afterwards had the means of doing, were aware that this was not owing to pride or ostentation, but from the importance in the critical position in which he was placed of keeping up his character and of asserting the legality of the cause in which he was engaged. Whatever might have been then said of that ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... precisely the case with the Bourbons, who are rather reproached with avarice. Henri IV. was said to be avaricious. He gave to his mistresses, because he could refuse them nothing; but he played with the eagerness of a man whose whole fortune depends on the game. Louis XIV. gave through ostentation. It is most astonishing," added he, "to reflect on what might have happened. The King might actually have been assassinated in his chamber, without anybody knowing anything of the matter and without a possibility of discovering the murderer." For more than ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... formed, as if moulded by herself. Roland had simple manners, austere morals, tried opinions; enthusiastically attached to liberty, he was capable of disinterestedly devoting to her cause his whole life, or of perishing for her, without ostentation and without regret. A man worthy of being born in a republic, but out of place in a revolution, and ill adapted for the agitation and struggle of parties; his talents were not superior, his temper somewhat uncompliant; ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... a man of understanding, the answer he had 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 young ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... very refined and fastidious taste. He lived for the pleasures of art and literature, and the society where these are valued. For this, and not without some secret love of display, he lived in Paris; not extravagant in his pleasures, nor silly in his ostentation, but leading, like a gentleman, as worthy and rational a life as a man can lead who lives only to himself, with no further thought than to enjoy the passing hours. Mr. Rossitur enjoyed them elegantly, and, for a man of the world, moderately; bestowing, however, few of those precious ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... minarets and all sorts of gingerbread effects to compel the eye of the passer-by. But when he became enormously rich, so rich that his name was one of the synonyms for wealth, so rich that people said "rich as Roebuck" where they used to say "rich as Croesus," he cut away every kind of ostentation, and avoided attention more eagerly than he had once sought it. He took advantage of his having to remove to New York, where his vast interests centered; he bought a small and commonplace and, for a rich man, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... some names and some scraps 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, in a private ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 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 of ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that Adele's notorious extravagance got her into hot water shortly after she divorced Standish and had only her private means to support her insane passion for clothes and ostentation in general. She went to money-lenders—usurers, in fact. And, of course, that only made it worse. Then Walter, who has never been overscrupulous, conceived the brilliant notion of squaring everything up for a new start by swindling the burglary-insurance people. Adele has always ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... of good should be of his own choosing. He knew very well the temperaments of his chosen constituency, and he adapted himself to their impressionable peculiarities. To this end he dispensed heavily padded gratuities with much ostentation on selected occasions, but gathered his tolls in merciless silence. He did this without fear, for he knew that the blare of the multitude would drown the cries ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we venture to lay ourselves so open, that we dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that we swell in each other's ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... consistent one, because in his egotism he never forgot himself, not even among his mistresses. As grand monarque, the arbiter of all fortunes, the central sun of all glory, was he always figuring before the eyes of men. He never relaxed his habits of ceremony and ostentation, nor his vigilance as an administrator, nor his iron will, nor his thirst for power; so that he ruled as he wished until he died, in spite of the reverses of his sad old age, and without losing the respect of his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Ballard's Collection. Bodleian. With plain downright simplicity and free from all ostentation Peter carried this valuable ruby to the king in his waistcoat pocket, and presented it wrapped up in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... of Dhamersala is applied, in the mountains as in the plains of India, to a house provided for the accommodation of travellers, whether it be one of the beautiful caravanserais built to gratify the piety, ostentation, or benevolence of a rajah, or such a miserable shieling of rough stone and plank as that of Tuquoroma, in which we took up our quarters, at 13,000 feet elevation. A cheerful fire soon blazed on the earthen floor, filling the room with the pungent ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the clashing 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 to their ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... were literally true, the youthful population of Cuba must have been sensibly diminished by Rita's departure. There were black-browed youths, too, some gazing tenderly, some scowling fiercely, all wearing the Cuban ribbon with all possible ostentation. One of these youths was manifestly Carlos Montfort, Rita's brother, for they were like enough to have been twins; another had been pointed out to Margaret, in a whisper charged with dramatic meaning, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... language of freedom and sincerity, without disguise. I am aware, however, those who differ from me in political sentiments may, perhaps, remark, I am stepping out of the proper line of my duty; and they may possibly ascribe to arrogance or ostentation, what I know alone is the result of the purest intention. But the rectitude of my own heart, which disdains such unworthy motives; the part I have hitherto acted in life; the determination I have formed of not taking ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... quarrel with Marius was kindled anew by fresh matter supplied by the ostentation of King Bocchus, who, with the view of flattering the Roman people and pleasing Sulla, dedicated in the Capitol some figures bearing trophies, and by the side of them placed a gilded figure of Jugurtha being surrendered by himself to Sulla. Marius was highly incensed and attempted to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... to him, I can tell you! 'That's all ostentation,' I said. 'Why can't Regina and I begin life modestly? What do we want with a carriage to drive out in, and champagne on the table, and a footman to answer the door? We want to love each other and be happy. There are thousands of as good gentlemen as I am, in England, with wives and families, ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... would have been in colour without Giorgione we cannot say; but Giorgione could not affect his draughtsmanship. As it is, the word Titianesque means everything that is rich and glorious in paint. The Venetians, with their ostentation, love of pageantry, and intense pride in their city and themselves, could not have had a painter more to their taste. Had Giorgione lived he would have disappointed them by his preoccupation with romantic ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... interfere in elections for the House of Commons. We certainly know that a Minister of the Crown should not attempt to purchase parliamentary support. We happen to know also the almost more than public manner,—are we not justified in saying the ostentation?—with which at the last election the Duke repudiated all that influence with the borough which his predecessors, and we believe he himself, had so long exercised. He came forward telling us that he, at least, meant to have clean hands;—that he would not do as his forefathers ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... frontiers—German, Austrian, Italian and French. Lenin's Legation had opened up modestly and without ostentation as becomes a world's reformer, a distributing office on each one of the four. Somehow I could never work myself up to be really alarmed at jolly ANNA BALABANOFF, but I fancy she has done as much harm since as most people achieve ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... party it held them only for a day, and the other side rose up. Now he rested upon the Lutherans, whom he hated, and, standing on that terrace, he had watched gloomily the great State barges of the Ambassadors from the Empire and from France come with majestic ostentation downstream abreast, to moor side by side against ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... butcher in a poor neighbourhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close together ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... 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
... Ostentation is snobbish. Too great profusion is snobbish. Tuft-hunting is snobbish. But I own there are people more snobbish than all those whose defects are above mentioned: viz., those individuals who can, and don't give dinners at all. The man without hospitality shall never sit SUB IISDEM TRABIBUS with ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long past its infancy, and she had leisure to enjoy herself, in increasing the happiness of her offspring. She had improved her mind by reading; and her historical lore, in particular, was always ready to be produced for the common advantage. There was no ostentation in this; but everything was produced just as if each had a right to its use. Then it was, I felt the immense importance of having a companion, in an intellectual sense, in a wife. Lucy had always been intelligent; but I never fully understood ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... agree together. For what is more absurd, than that a ragged old Fellow, that has not a Coat to his Back, but what is so ragged that he may be ashamed to put it on, should every now and then change his Rags, as though he design'd to shew his Beggary by Way of Ostentation: And those Affectators of Variety seem equally ridiculous, who, when they have spoken barbarously once, repeat the same Thing much more barbarously; and then over and over again much more unlearnedly. This is not to ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... might well be uneasy; but neither Whig nor Tory had so much to fear as the Trimmer, who might not improbably find himself the common mark at which both parties would take aim. For these reasons Halifax determined to avoid all ostentation of power and influence, to disarm envy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach to himself by civilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be useful in the event of a counterrevolution. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 offensively combined may be excellent in isolation, so that an untrained or torpid ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... man with great ostentation; and tiptoeing over to the door he partly drew it to, putting his head outside to whisper, "He is too weak; it ain't best fur him to ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... sitting in the middle of the floor, handling his calumet with some ostentation. The Hurons were but the remnant of a race, for Iroquois butchery had reduced them in numbers and in spirit, but even in their exile they preserved a splendor of carriage that made the Ottawas, who camped beside them here, seem but a poor and shuffling people. This man was a comely specimen, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... difficult 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 of mud, and to render ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... 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 should ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... (fallacy of vision) 443. pageant, spectacle; peep-show, raree-show, gallanty-show; ombres chinoises [Sp.]; magic lantern, phantasmagoria, dissolving views; biograph^, cinematograph, moving pictures; panorama, diorama, cosmorama^, georama^; coup de theatre, jeu de theatre [Fr.]; pageantry &c (ostentation) 882; insignia &c (indication) 550. aspect, angle, phase, phasis^, seeming; shape &c (form) 240; guise, look, complexion, color, image, mien, air, cast, carriage, port, demeanor; presence, expression, first blush, face of the thing; point of view, light. lineament ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... these free fisherfolk of the islands; they have only haughty stares for the servile set of gondoliers in lacings of gold and scarlet—who are not nobles nor fishers, nor people of the soil—and they pass them silently, with much ostentation of taking all the gondoliers of Murano into the friendliness of their jests and curses, as the barges touch and clash with some swiftly gliding gondolier of their own rank, who wears no ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... himself driven into exile, the majesty of his appearance, and the magnanimity of his character, attracted the respect of strangers wherever he went. He had the air of a sovereign prince rather than of an exile, and commanded more regard than monarchs in the height of their ostentation. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... suspectible, the widow must be got handsomely aforehand; and no doubt but she is. The elegance of her house and furniture, and her readiness to discharge all demands upon her, which she does with ostentation enough, and which makes her neighbours, I suppose, like her the better, demonstrate this. She will propose to do handsome things by her two nieces. Sally is near marriage—with an eminent woollen-draper in the Strand, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to be seen of Men; and for that Reason, probably, it is, that there are so few secret Corbans offered up to Heaven, and not to the World; and if this be so, 'tis plain, that People give more for the Ostentation of having given, than the good they hope to get done by it, and therefore you must have met ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... whether by dissuading his friends from a vain ostentation he did not exhort them to the pursuit of virtue. He frequently said that there was no readier way to glory than to render oneself excellent, and not to affect to appear so. To prove this he alleged the ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... between the unfortunate! The poor man will seek in vain for true compassion at the rich man's doors; what he receives is a sacrifice to ostentation and not true benevolence; and the man in sorrow should not look for pity from one to whom sorrow is unknown, if there be such ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... prose composition were almost neglected in this reign. Even rhetoric sank to a low level; the splendid displays of men like Latro, Arellius, and Ovid gave place to the flimsy ostentation of REMMIUS PALAEMON. This dissolute man, who combined the professions of grammarian and rhetorician, possessed an extraordinary aptitude for fluent harangue, but soon confined his attention to grammatical studies, in which he rose to the position of an authority. Suetonius says he was born a ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... intervened. The Anglo-Saxon naturally loves a kind of feudal dignity; he likes a great house, a crowd of servants and dependants, the impression of power and influence which it all gives; and the delights of ostentation, of having handsome things which one does not use and indeed hardly ever sees, of knowing that others are eating and drinking at one's expense, which is a thing far removed from hospitality, are dear to the temperament of our ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... esteem the prior greatly, but his companion very little. They think that the religious who lives better and has the greater number of servants, is a great chief. They believe the contrary of him who does not live with so much ostentation. It happened that a religious was going to visit the chapels of that district where he lived. He, with the spirit that he brought from Castilla, intended to commence with the greatest poverty, so that he took neither bed nor refreshment. An Indian, who was going along as cook, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... written deeply in the modest stones which mark the green graves of their faithful dead during a period of fully two hundred years. The vainglory of a graven stone to exalt the virtues of imperfect men and women was to them a forbidden thing; the ostentation even of a name carved on a slab was at variance with doctrine; the cravings of a poor humanity to be remembered after death had to be satisfied with bare initials, and initials are all that were ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... the pedant of the lobby, both smell equally of the shop, yet 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
... drunk with ostentation from the tin dipper he went to the outside door and flung it open. "Don't you people know how hot and smelly it is in here?" he said, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... ideas they do or should stand for, those disputes would not end of themselves, and immediately vanish. I leave it then to be considered, what the learning of disputation is, and how well they are employed for the advantage of themselves or others, whose business is only the vain ostentation of sounds; i. e. those who spend their lives in disputes and controversies. When I shall see any of those combatants strip all his terms of ambiguity and obscurity, (which every one may do in the words he uses himself,) I shall think him a champion for knowledge, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... were loudly heard around, And feeling bosoms shuddered at the sound; Though, we, on these occasions, truly know, The plaint is always greater than the woe. Some ostentation ever is with grief Those who weep ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... a pair of pattens, a toasting-fork, a kettle, a pap-boat, a spoon for the administration of medicine to the refractory, and lastly, Mrs Gamp's umbrella, which as something of great price and rarity, was displayed with particular ostentation, completed the decorations of the chimney-piece and adjacent wall. Towards these objects Mrs Gamp raised her eyes in satisfaction when she had arranged the tea-board, and had concluded her arrangements for the reception of Betsey Prig, even unto the setting forth of two pounds ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... sparkle as we all reached, laughing and joking, to gather them; and Mr. Gabriel—we got into the way of calling him so,—he liked it best—hurried to get them out of sight as if he'd committed some act of ostentation. And then, to make amends, he threw off what constraint he had worn in this new atmosphere of ours, and was so gay, so full of questions and quips and conceits, all spoken in his strange way, his voice was so sweet, and he laughed so much and so like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... mind to induce her to despise these requirements of etiquette, and to 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 ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... 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
... before this speech would have astonished me beyond measure, but now I was not surprised, for I had acquired some knowledge of Spanish manners. I might admire the Senor de la Cerda's prodigality, but I could not help deploring such ostentation on the part of a Prince of the Church about to participate ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the prince, he was not restrained by any scruple of morality or delicacy from manifesting his jealousy and pique. [Footnote: See portrait, Chap. XXV.] Moreover, this disgraceful feeling was fostered by other considerations than those of mere sensuality or ostentation. Her father, the tributary ruler of Chiengmai, had on several occasions confronted his aggressive authority with a haughty and intrepid spirit; and once, when Maha Mongkut required that he should send his eldest son to Bangkok as a hostage for the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... greatly to the folly, or, I should say, the real vice of using it, is, that the parties themselves, nine times out of ten, do not drink it by choice; do not like it; do not relish it; but use it from mere ostentation, being ashamed to be seen even by their own servants, not to drink wine. At the very moment I am writing this, there are thousands of families in and near London, who daily have wine upon their tables, and who drink it too, merely because their own servants should ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... by the handful, and spent it with a lavish ostentation. Paul continued his habit of riding about in cabs and dining in hotels. It was a bad commercial training, but he was not at the time of life to think of that. The days and nights were full. There were both labour and enjoyment ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... think, if times mend, that a good deal more will be raised. There never was a meeting in Methodism like the one at City Road. It was an All-day meeting. The first hour was spent in devotional exercises, and then the contributions flowed in without pressure, ostentation, or shame. We are beginning the Circuit Meetings next week. Our Brixton one is fixed for Monday evening, but the cream of our subscriptions was announced at City Road. Dr. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the increase is for real comfort and advance in decent living, and so far it is to be commended. Such part of the increase as is for ostentation, for show and sham, is to be frowned upon, for this high cost of shelter is to-day the greatest menace to the social welfare of the community. When the average young man finds it impossible to support a family, when the ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... It gives their follies also room to rise; For praise too dearly loved, or warmly sought, Enfeebles all internal strength of thought, 270 And the weak soul, within itself unblest, Leans for all pleasure on another's breast. Hence ostentation here, with tawdry art, Pants for the vulgar praise which fools impart; Here vanity assumes her pert grimace, 275 And trims her robes of frieze[32] with copper lace; Here beggar pride defrauds her daily cheer, To boast one splendid banquet once a year; The mind still turns where shifting ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... the pressure of matronly and maidenly feet, by which the homespun garments of the time were made. While the less well- to-do and laboring classes were content with clothing spun and knitted at their own firesides, the wealthier people arrayed themselves with far more ostentation than they do at this day. Silks and satins came hither by ship-loads from France to supply the luxury of costume which was then in vogue. The difference between the costumes of that day and of this was especially marked in the attire of gentlemen. Now there ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... consent to such folly. It is not that I care for the money, but I disapprove of the ostentation. You can do as ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... daresay I put in because it sounded well; but I was properly paid for my ostentation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... provinces or sacrificing his private fortune. The latter was at this time by no means ample; but, with the good sense and taste which mark his character, he preserved in his domestic arrangements the dignity of a literary and public man, without any of the ostentation of magnificence which often distinguished ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... that little triumph of hers. It had stopped against a blank wall just when the car stopped under the ports cochere of the Dearborn Avenue house. John's arm which had been around her was withdrawn and he looked with just a touch of ostentation at his watch. She knew before he spoke that when he did, his tone would ring flat. The old spell was broken. He was once more under the dominion of the newer, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... is a species of dishonesty. They live within their means, and lay by something for a rainy day. They provide for the things of their own household,—yet they are not wanting in hospitality and benevolence on fitting occasions. And what they do, is done without ostentation. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... misfortunes of others; to be humble, but without meanness; to be proud, but without arrogance; to abjure every sentiment of hatred and revenge; to show himself magnanimous and liberal, without ostentation and without profusion; to be the enemy of vice; to pay homage to wisdom and virtue; to respect innocence; to be constant and patient in adversity, and modest in prosperity; to avoid every irregularity that stains ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... bewigged, cocked-hatted coachman, and the two gorgeous flunkies hanging on behind. Sir Gorgeous Midas has beaten the dukes in mere gorgeousness, flunkies and all—burlesqued the vulgar side of them, and unconsciously shamed it out of existence; made swagger and ostentation unpopular by his own evil example—actually improved the manners of the great by sheer mimicry of their defects. He has married his sons and his daughters to them and spoiled the noble curve of those lovely noses that Leech drew ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... 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, ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... that which will go without force. Amulet ornaments may be either a whim which does not take, or fashion may seize upon something of this kind and make it a tribe mark. Then it becomes group money, because it is universally desired. The articles admit of accumulation, and ostentation is a new joy; they also admit of change and variety. They are available for gifts to the medicine man (to satisfy ghosts, get rain, or thwart disease). They may be used to buy a wife, or to buy a step ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... those men who speak upon a level pitch, in a gentle and winsome monotony. His voice was never broken by impulse, never shaken by feeling. He was courteous without ostentation, treating everybody kindly without exactly seeming to intend it. He let fall pleasant remarks incidentally or accidentally, so that one was always fortuitously overhearing his good opinion of one's self. He did not have any conscious ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... man get away under his very nose 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 of amazing careers," or snivel dismally ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... friend, as I would rather prove myself a gentleman, by being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and communicable, than by any fond ostentation of riches, or, wanting those virtues myself, boast that these were in my ancestors; and yet I grant, that where a noble and ancient descent and such merit meet in any man, it is a double dignification of that person; so if this antiquity of ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... tell you of the famous men she has known for years, and how she has found the most celebrated of them simple in their tastes, and free from ostentation—"in fact it is always so, is it not, with les hommes celebres? C'est toujours comme ca, monsieur, toujours!" and mentions one who has grown gray in the service of art and can count his decorations from ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... voted in that district, spent a month every year with the Gerards, read a Republican morning newspaper, and judiciously enlarged the family reservation in Greenwood—whither he retired, in due time, without other ostentation than half a column in the Evening Post, which paper he had, in ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... What a dismal hash poor Mary, the cook, made of the French dish which she WOULD try out of Francatelli! How angry Mrs. Pope was at not going down to dinner before Mrs. Bishop! How Trimalchio sneered at your absurd attempt to give a feast; and Harpagon cried out at your extravagance and ostentation! How Lady Almack bullied the other ladies in the drawing-room (when no gentlemen were present): never asked you back to dinner again: left her card by her footman: and took not the slightest notice of your wife and daughters at Lady Hustleby's assembly! On ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hand however it is certain, that much of the ostentation and a multitude of the luxuries which subsist in European and Asiatic society are just topics of regret, and that, if ever those improvements in civilisation take place which philosophy has essayed to delineate, there would be a great abridgment of the manual labour that we now see ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... collar of which a close look revealed two much-battered and faded stars, indicating his rank of major-general. He wore a black "slouch" hat, the brim well down over his face, and rode along with a single orderly, without the least ostentation. The men of the other regiments knew him and broke out into a cheer, at which he promptly doffed his hat and swung it at the boys. His hat off, we recognized the handsome author of the "Burnside" whiskers. He was not only very ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... the pheasant proper placed upon his carriage and the buttons of his coachman, and both crest and motto on his writing-paper. The arms he hugged to himself, partly because, not having paid for them, he thought it would look ostentatious to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and partly because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he found it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have combined with much of the steady determination to aggrandise and elevate his race which was characteristic of the Douglases, and their indifference to commonplace laws and other people's rights, an impulsiveness of character, and temptation towards ostentation and display, which led him at once to submission and to defiance at unexpected moments, and gave an element of uncertainty to his career. Soon after his succession it would seem to have occurred to him, after some specially unseemly ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... 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 ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... where seeming Pity moves the mind, From self's mean source the liberal current flows; While Ostentation, insolently kind, Wounds while he soothes, insults ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... be 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 ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... The main reason why gems and the precious metals were formerly used as ornaments seems to have been the great convertible value belonging to them, which made them symbols of wealth and importance, and consequently a favorite means of social ostentation. The fact that they have entirely lost this quality would account, I think, largely for their disuse as ornaments, even if ostentation itself had not been deprived of its motive by the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... which are mere collateral functions of convenience, need only a small one. Wherefore, then, and to what end, are the vast systems of building, the palaces and towers of Oxford? These are either altogether superfluous, mere badges of ostentation and luxurious wealth, or they point to some fifth function not so much as contemplated by other universities, and, at present, absolutely and chimerically beyond their means of attainment. Formerly we used to hear attacks upon the Oxford discipline as fitted ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to the Directoire, when, following the Revolution, the voice of the populace decried all ostentation and everything savouring of the superfluous. The Great Napoleon in his first period affected simplicity and there were no longer bronze mounts, in rosettes, garlands and bow-knots, elaborate inlaying, nor painted furniture with ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... were well provided; yes, sir, if we had had an hundred miles to travel, we had sufficient to bear our expenses in a noble manner." (At which words he produced the half-guinea which was found in the basket.) "I do not show you this out of ostentation of riches, but to convince you I speak truth. Your seating me at your table was an honour which I did not ambitiously affect. When I was here, I endeavoured to behave towards you with the utmost respect; if I have failed, it was not with design; nor ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... them, and to hold converse with him through their idols or anitos; and he appeared to them in various forms. The method of making the sacrifices hinged on the different purposes for which they were intended. If it were for a feast of ostentation and vanity that was being made to some chief, they called it "the feast of the great god." The method of celebrating it was near the house of the chief, in a leafy bower which they erected especially for that purpose, hung round about with hangings in their fashion, namely, the Moorish, which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... 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 flames, ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... unable to 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 ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... little ability as there is energy, and the plain cook with her savagery, or the fourth-rate confectioner with his rancid pastry, have it all their own way, according to the election of economy or ostentation. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... impossible to regard them with any feeling but that of warm regard and esteem. S—- was, in truth, a noble-hearted fellow. Whatever he did seemed so much a matter of habit, that the idea of selfish design or ostentation was utterly excluded from the mind. I could relate several instances of the disinterested benevolence of this kind-hearted tavern-keeper. I shall just mention one, which came under my own observation while ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... slammed, and locked from within with a great noise of rattling keys. The sound of the keys made Anna feel faint; Axel was on the other side of that ostentation of brute force. She leaned against the wall shivering. The children tittered; she was a very fine lady, they thought, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... is covered with a deep black; above which, arches are drawn one over another as high as the short ribs. They are often a quarter of an inch broad, and the edges are not straight lines, but indented. These arches are their pride, and are shewn both by men and women with a mixture of ostentation and pleasure; whether as an ornament, or a proof of their fortitude and resolution in bearing pain, we could not determine. The face in general is left unmarked; for we saw but one instance to the contrary. Some old men had the greatest part of their bodies covered with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... small canvas bag which no one had taken notice of up to that moment, and took from it a large quantity of broken biscuit, a lump of salt beef, several cocoa-nuts, a horn of gunpowder, and a bag of shot and ball—all of which he spread out in front of the fire with much ostentation. The satisfaction caused by this was very great, and even Muggins, in the fulness of his heart, declared that after all there were worse things than being lost in ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... high-backed chair, he arranged his garments fussily about him, rolled up his long embroidered sleeves to the elbow, and spread his writing implements all over the desk in front of him with much mock-solemn ostentation. Then, rubbing his lean hands together, he gave a stealthy glance of covert derision round at Sah-luma and Theos,—a glance which Theos saw and in his heart resented, but which Sah- luma, absorbed in his own ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... by Empson, Julian deviated from the principal door, to one which opened, with less ostentation, in an angle of the courtyard. On a modest tap from the flute-player, admittance was afforded him and his companions by a footman, who conducted them through a variety of stone passages, to a very handsome summer parlour, where a lady, or something resembling one, dressed ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... in hacks, or private carriages; but not many. Milton people were, for the most part, plain folk, and frowned upon any ostentation. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... shoulders, because he knows if it weren't for him and men like him upon whom the prosperity of this nation depends, we'd have famine and anarchy on our hands in no time. And look what he's done for the city, without ostentation, mind you! He never blows his own horn-never makes a speech. And for the Church! But I needn't tell you. When this settlement house and chapel are finished, they'll be coming out here from New York to get points. By the way, I meant to have written you. Have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... England, was born in the year 1662, at Middleton in Buckinghamshire, a parish of which his father was rector. Francis was educated at Westminster School, and carried thence to Christchurch a stock of learning which, though really scanty, he through life exhibited with such judicious ostentation that superficial observers believed his attainments to be immense. At Oxford, his parts, his taste, and his bold, contemptuous, and imperious spirit, soon made him conspicuous. Here he published at twenty, his first work, a translation of the noble poem of Absalom and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him with a certain tenderness during the last half-hour. She liked these simple, downright men, and fancied that the absence of ostentation which usually characterized them was essentially English, though she had certainly met a few in that country who came under quite a different category. They were continually posing; men who could not afford to be natural lest they should give themselves away. Though she liked him, Gregory ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss |
