"Ostentatious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I loads Buddy ostentatious into the little roadster and starts off, with him wantin' to sit all over me as usual, or else drapin' himself on the door half-way out of the car. Maybe I stopped at Joe Sarello's, maybe I only ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... standard of living if we abstract from that where the income simply secures the needs of bare existence. Above that, everything depends upon the habits of those around us. If the community steadily screws up these habits, makes life ostentatious for those of moderate means as well as for the rich, hysterically emphasizes the material values, the will to be satisfied with the income of safe investments has to fight against tremendous odds. The truly ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... which he would now meet. He no longer felt attracted by these extraordinary bargains. Why buy anything more? . . . Of what use was such useless stuff? Whenever he thought of the hard life of millions of men in the open field, he felt a longing to lead an ascetic life. He was beginning to hate the ostentatious splendors of his home on the avenue Victor Hugo. He now recalled without a regretful pang, the destruction of the castle. No, he was far better off there . . . and "there" was ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Commandant, as they moved further away down the path by which they had come. "After all, my place in this expedition is only to take a few photographs, wherever they are permitted"; and he touched the camera, slung over his shoulder, of which he had already made ostentatious use on several occasions. "May I have a snapshot of the hospital, with all those chaps on the verandahs? Thanks; we must go a little to the right, then. By Jove! what a lot of gray figures there are about. How do you make sure they can't escape, if they choose, out here ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... inflexible as ever existed—not limited either by customs or institutions, not recognised and adjusted in the regular order of society, playing a reciprocal part in its machinery, but secret, disowning its own existence, baptized with ostentatious names of democracy, obsequious to the people for the sake of governing them; this nameless, lurking aristocracy, that ran in the blood of society like a rash not yet come to the skin; this political tapeworm, that produced nothing, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Swift, the rough Atterbury, the gentle Spence, the stern attorney-bishop Warburton, the virtuous Berkeley, and the 'cankered Bolingbroke.' Bolingbroke wept over him like a child; and Spence's description of his last moments is at least as edifying as the more ostentatious account of the deathbed of Addison. The soldier Peterborough and the poet Gay, the witty Congreve and the laughing Rowe, the eccentric Cromwell and the steady Bathurst, were all his intimates. The man who could conciliate so many men of the most opposite description, not one of whom but was a remarkable ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... sisters, which she had seen drawn such extravagant rewards, she thought the handsomest thing she could do was to love and be silent. This put her affection out of suspicion of mercenary ends, and showed that she loved, but not for gain; and that her professions, the less ostentatious they were, had so much the more of truth ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... counted by scores of millions; he has palaces in this country and abroad. His domination over the lives of the thousands who slave in his foundries is kept unshaken by reason of the fact that he coats the bitter acts of oppression of which he is constantly guilty, with ostentatious gifts in the name of benevolence. He presents the cities of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... American border-settlers or adventurers in Canada may be called, are invariably insolent, vulgar, and unbearable in their manners; whilst, away from the frontier, in the United States, the traveller observes no ostentatious display of Republicanism, no vulgar insolence to strangers, unless it be in the bar-room of some wayside tavern, where one is sometimes obliged, as elsewhere, to rest awhile, and where the frequenters may be expected to be not either ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Lucien, and his heart beat fast when he felt that every one was looking at him. His assurance bore the ordeal with some difficulty in spite of the encouraging example of Mme. de Bargeton, who welcomed the most illustrious personages of Angouleme with ostentatious courtesy and elaborate graciousness; and the uncomfortable feeling that oppressed him was aggravated by a trifling matter which any one might have foreseen, though it was bound to come as an unpleasant shock to a young man with so little experience of the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of cracked, patched, and greasy fiddles. And there were men, whose red and bloated faces gave faithful witness of their habitual intemperance; and men, whose threadbare and ragged garments betokened sloth and poverty; and men, whose vulgar and ostentatious display of showy clothing, and gaudy chains, and rings and breast-pins, which they did not know how to wear, indicated dishonest pursuits; and men, whose blue jackets and bluff, brown faces showed them ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... for the equanimity of Sir John Hawkins, one of the executors of the will, who, when he found that this negro servant would receive about fifteen hundred pounds, including an annuity of seventy pounds a year, grumbled and muttered "a caveat against ostentatious bounty and favor to negroes." But however much the Sir Johns may grumble, we cannot think the less of Johnson for his kindness in remembering a ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... pension, and, besides, had saved half his allowances ever since he had been in India. He was a man of great reading, no small ability, considerable accomplishment, excellent good sense and good humour. The ostentatious said he was a screw; but he gave away more money than far more extravagant people: he was a disciple of David Hume (whom he admired more than any other mortal), and the serious denounced him as a man of dangerous principles, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very numerous company were assembled—twenty-five or thirty in all. They were, apparently, people of rank-certainly of high breeding—although their habiliments, I thought, were extravagantly rich, partaking somewhat too much of the ostentatious finery of the vielle cour. I noticed that at least two-thirds of these guests were ladies; and some of the latter were by no means accoutred in what a Parisian would consider good taste at the present day. Many females, for example, whose age could not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... doubt No nation occupies a foot of land that was not stolen No people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones Notion that he is less savage than the other savages Only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want Ostentatious of his modesty Otherwise they would have thought I was afraid, which I was Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead Prosperity is the best protector of principle Received with a large silence that suggested doubt Seventy is old enough—after ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... Petion, disgusted them all; including Barnave. He behaved with ostentatious rudeness and brutality. The king began to converse with him upon the condition of the nation, and to explain the reasons of his own conduct, saying that he wished to strengthen the government so far as to enable it to be a government, since France could not be a republic... "Not ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... knowledge and intuition of things without parade or dogmatism. Doubtful of all versatility as Kate was, she could not help admitting to herself that his truths were none the less true for their quantity or that he got at them without ostentatious processes. His talk certainly was more picturesque than her brother's, and less subduing to her faculties. John had ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... reminds me of a congenial subject.—Nothing in New York astonishes visitors from the country so much as the magnificent coffin-shops, rivalling, in the ostentatious and tempting display of their wares, the most elegant stores on Broadway. Model coffins, of the latest style and pattern, are set up on end in long rows and protected by splendid show-cases, with the lids removed to exhibit their rich ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... has a wizard in his body. Be on thy guard, old Hans, this is no serving-man for thee!" When the tailor had brought the wood, the giant commanded him to shoot two or three wild boars for supper. "Why not rather a thousand at one shot, and bring them all here?" inquired the ostentatious tailor. "What!" cried the timid giant in great terror; "Let well alone to-night, and lie ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... in composition should never seek after the heavy style. The best of all authors in the English language for style is Addison. Macaulay says: "If you wish a style learned, but not pedantic, elegant but not ostentatious, simple yet refined, you must give your days and nights to the volumes of Joseph Addison." The simplicity, apart from the beauty of Addison's writings causes us to reiterate the literary command—"Never use a big word when a little one will convey the same ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... was both an instinct and a principle with him to avoid waste. He did not have the gas turned down low in a temporarily vacated room because he would save two cents by doing so, but because he justly regarded waste as wicked. His example in this particular, in a city so given to careless and ostentatious profusion as New York, was most useful. We needed such an example. Nor did he appear to carry this principle to an extreme. He was very far from being miserly, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... truth, Claparon's private office. Between the ostentatious reception-room of Francois Keller and the untidy abode of the counterfeit banker, there was all the difference that exists between Versailles and the wigwam of a Huron chief. Birotteau had witnessed the splendors of finance; he was now to see its fooleries. Lying in bed, in a sort ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... was straying away again from his mother. Her stick was tied to a peg in the ground and she could not follow him. A part-grown puppy, somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, with ostentatious and belligerent importance. The puppy's name, as White Fang was afterward to hear him called, was Lip-lip. He had had experience in puppy fights and was already ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.—One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. They are "gay men" who make use of gaiety, because they are misunderstood on account of it—they ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... by the manners and airy talk of the rich American, whom he found much less vulgar than many he had met in London society. He made no ostentatious show, though it was whispered throughout Trouville that he was one of the wealthiest men in Wall Street. What would young Baldwin have thought if he had seen those ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... house-warming, after starting the subject; and he had told Beverley that they ought to be able to move in a week. She must make everything right about the servants: he would see to outside arrangements. And this "big party" could take place in a fortnight. It was ostentatious sending out invitations longer in advance. They must make a "splash"—worthy of the house—and the pearls. Beverley must think up something original in the way of entertainment—a surprise. And ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... because his name was Rupert. It seemed to them a name both affected and ostentatious. Besides, crop it as you might, his hair would assume the ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... to be irresistible. On one occasion he was caught cutting off the head of a cat, and at times he would devour mice, spiders, nails, excrements, and the sputum of the other patients. He committed acts of self-abuse publicly, with ostentatious indecency; was in the habit of snatching at bright objects and frequently tore his clothes. His obstinate mutism procured him the nickname of "the mute," but he talked in his sleep and replied to ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... culmination of his System. Richard had destroyed his participation in that. He now looked for a pretty scene in recompense:—Richard leading up his wife to him, and both being welcomed by him paternally, and so held one ostentatious minute ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... oneself forward; fish for compliments; give oneself airs &c. (assume) 885; boast &c. 884. render vain &c. adj.; inspire with vanity &c. n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward;, vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c. (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical[obs3], overwise[obs3], pretentious, priggish; egotistic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to doubt the veracity of tradition in these matters, an incident from the writer's boyhood in New England may be instanced. The house of an unpopular gentleman was assailed—not in the ostentatious manner just described, yet in a way that gave him a good deal of trouble. Dead cats appeared mysteriously in his neighborhood; weird noises arose under his windows; he tried to pick up letters from his doorstep that became mere chalk-marks at ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... apparently detached herself from a tree and the ostentatious perusal of an old election poster, and sauntered down towards the office door. Like her mother, she was plainly dressed; unlike her, she had a pale, rather refined face, with a demure mouth and downcast eyes. This was all ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... mouth primming, shoulder-setting and elbow-holding are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are acquired; and where children the most promising are presently transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to perk up their heads, turn out their toes, and exhibit the ostentatious opulence of their relations, in a tawdry ball night dress, is ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... expectations; as if what was yours, was not your own, and not given you to possess, but to bestow on wanting merit. But this is a topic which I must cast in shades, lest I offend your modesty, which is so far from being ostentatious of the good you do, that it blushes even to have it known; and therefore I must leave you to the satisfaction and testimony of your own conscience, which, though it be a silent panegyric, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... head. She had but slight confidence in her husband's insight into character, and sighed in an ostentatious way. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... three common characteristics—absence of representation, absence of technical swagger, sublimely impressive form. Nor is it hard to discover the connection between these three. Formal significance loses itself in preoccupation with exact representation and ostentatious cunning.[2] ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... no personal ease or comfort that they might see or minister to the suffering woman ; they denied themselves no luxury for her sake. Yet the money they spent in giving a single party would have kept this family for a twelvemonth. The cost of their ostentatious greenhouse would have paid for a nurse, and educated the two orphan boys until able to go to trades. They had seen these twin boys tied to the washtub in their own bleak shed, that the mother might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... recognition. Pauline returned it with ardent eye and an animated face that betokened the joy and pride she felt in the service which her friend was called upon to perform. Zulma affected not to see Hardinge and looked away over to the American side with an ostentatious air of offence. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... carpenter is discovered building a toy Kremlin for his five children. We can take for granted that the excellent homicide, having done so simple a bit of the day's work as that of decapitating a fellow-creature, proceeds tranquilly to other innocent pleasures and duties; we do not require the ostentatious theatrical group, with limelight effects on the Kremlin and the honey-coloured beard, displayed for our benefit just before the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of perfect astonishment, in which you could have heard the swish of a bird's wing. As the horse's head touched the line of men, they slunk aside as if they knew not what they did, their eyes falling abashed before Sedgwick's quiet glance and air, as devoid of a trace of fear as it was of ostentatious defiance. The calm, unquestioning assumption that no one would presume to stop him, was a moral force which paralyzed the arm of the most reckless ruffian in the crowd. And so, checking his horse when he would have gone faster, his features as composed as if he were sitting in the Senate, and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... productivity on the picked men who direct it, cannot bring himself to renounce, when he is making his appeal to the masses, the old doctrine that they are the sole producers; and accordingly having started with the ostentatious admission that directive ability is as essential to production as labour is, he endeavours by his verbal jugglery with the case of a printed book to convey the impression that labour produces all values after all; and he actually manages to wind ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... some of their pictures to the churches, but those by Rubens and Raphael are at Paris. In the cabinet of natural history there is the skeleton and the skin of a man who was guillotined, as fine white leather as ever you saw. The preparations for these Ecoles Centrales are all too vast and ostentatious: the people are just beginning to send their children to them. Government finds them too expensive, and their number is to be diminished. The librarian of this Ecole Centrale at Bruges is an Englishman, or rather ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... this insolent tyranny. Murat was ready for the move; the conflict was short, but it was sharp, for he lost several hundred soldiers, perhaps half as many as the patriots, in whose ranks some eight hundred fell. The aspirant to royal honors yielded with ostentatious grace to the first representations of the junta, and promised a general amnesty; but he also thought it best to make an example before the eyes of his future subjects, and in spite of his plighted word two ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... in the unnecessary mystery and fuss he made; his affectation of careless indifference to Ben's movements and his clumsy attempts to watch every one of them; his dodgings up and down stairs, ostentatious clanking of keys, and the elaborate traps he set to catch his thief, such as throwing his ball in at the dressing-room window and sending Ben up the tree to get it, which he did, thereby proving beyond a doubt that he alone could have taken the money, Thorny thought. Another deep discovery ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... returned from our journey I wrote a second article, a review of Professor Cairnes' book, published in the Westminster Review. England is paying the penalty, in many uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her ruling classes stirred up in the United States by their ostentatious wishes for the ruin of America as a nation; they have reason to be thankful that a few, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing firmly by the Americans in the time of their greatest difficulty, effected a partial diversion of these ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Syria and the frontiers of Armenia, afforded the enemies of the church a very plausible occasion to insinuate, that those troubles had been secretly fomented by the intrigues of the bishops, who had already forgotten their ostentatious professions of passive ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... was seen animating the town-hall with his goings and comings. He was absolutely alone in the large, empty building, whose lofty halls reechoed with the noise of his heels. All the doors were left open. He made an ostentatious show of his presidency over a non-existent council in the midst of this desert, and appeared so deeply impressed with the responsibility of his mission that the doorkeeper, meeting him two or three times in the passages, bowed to him with an air of mingled surprise and ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... were still talking on the terrace, when a man passed them, who lifted his hat slightly, and then sighed audibly, looking upward with an ostentatious contrition, as though he apologized to heaven for such a bowing-down to Rimmon. This was the Rev. James Fullarton, British chaplain at Dorade. A difficult and anomalous position—in which the unlucky divine, in addition ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... or the wish to acquire extensive and accurate knowledge. Though a Parisian belle, she had read with attention some of those books which are generally thought too dry or too deep for her sex. Consequently her benevolence was neither wild in theory, nor precipitate nor ostentatious in practice. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... enclosed in small cases of calf-skin, and attached to the forehead or the left arm; originally connected with acts of worship, they were eventually turned to superstitious uses, and employed sometimes as charms and sometimes by way of ostentatious display. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Ethel before this trip had been planned, and as she knew her better she liked her more. Ethel Banks, though the only daughter of a millionaire, was not in the least proud or ostentatious. She was a sweet, simple-minded girl, with friendly ways, and a good comradeship soon developed between ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... resolved, for some time at least, to set up the staff of his rest. Though an East-Indian, he was not partial to an ostentatious display of wealth. In fact, he was too proud a man to be a vain one. He resolved, therefore, to place himself upon the footing of a country gentleman of easy fortune, without assuming, or permitting his household to assume, any of the faste ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... through the house, Amy returned. A glance at her triumphant face furnished sufficient proof that her undertaking had been successful, even without the silent testimony of a large object concealed by a napkin, and carried with ostentatious care. "Oh, Amy, what have you there?" cried Priscilla, finding some difficulty in making her voice heard above the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... native clime, early and rapidly, it is sad to know that it also fades prematurely. One looks in vain for that serene loveliness combined with age which so frequently challenges our admiration at the North. Their costume is never ostentatious, though often costly, and sometimes a little too mixed or variegated when seen in public. At home, however, nothing of this sort is observed. There the dress is usually composed of the most delicate muslin, the finest linen, and richest silks. We must admit that one rarely ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... carefully conceal any knowledge or learning they may happen to possess. I own, with submission, that I do not see either the necessity or propriety of this advice. For if a young lady has that discretion and modesty, without which all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be intent on acquiring more, than on displaying what ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... construction; and she was now an experienced matron, and knew how to be as charming as ever, yet check or parry all approaches to gallantry on the part of her admirers. Then Griffith observed how delicate and prudent his lovely wife was, without ostentatious prudery; and his heart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... good taste to make an ostentatious display of the gifts, and if they are exhibited, the cards of the donors should be removed, and ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... probably saw Sebaste, a work of Herod the Great, a showy city, whose ruins would lead to the belief that it had been carried there ready made, like a machine which had only to be put up in its place. This ostentatious piece of architecture arrived in Judea by cargoes; these hundreds of columns, all of the same diameter, the ornament of some insipid "Rue de Rivoli" these were what he called "the kingdoms of the world and all their glory." But this luxury of power, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Government agents who were apt to resort to police force in their fight against orthodoxy. Feeling secure beneath the protecting wings of the Russian authorities, they often went out of their way to hurt the susceptibilities of the masses by their ostentatious disregard of the Jewish religious ceremonies. When the communities refused to appoint rabbis of this class, the latter obtained their posts either by direct appointment from the Government or by bringing the pressure of the provincial administration ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Wealth, and Power, and Fame, and Name, Which generally leave some flowers to bloom Even o'er the grave, I have nothing left, not even A little love, or friendship, or esteem, No, not enough to extract an epitaph From ostentatious kinsmen; in one hour I have uprooted all my former life, And outlived everything, except thy heart, The pure, the good, the gentle, which will oft 110 With unimpaired but not a clamorous grief[fs] Still keep——Thou turn'st so pale!—Alas! she faints, She has no breath, no pulse!—Guards! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... a wedding as ostentatious as possible. Old Hasluck knew how to advertise, and spared neither expense nor labour, with the result that it was the event of the season, at least according to the Society papers. Mrs. Hasluck was the type of woman to have escaped observation, even had the wedding been ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... princes to practise an arbitrary and irregular exercise of power, by which their people are reduced to a condition of miserable slavery. Indeed, very few of them, in the course of ages, are capable of conceiving any other means of maintaining the ostentatious state, the luxurious and indolent pride, which they mistake for greatness. I heartily wish that this observation and censure may not, in some instances, be applicable to great landed proprietors in some parts of Britain."—Travelling Memorandums, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... beauty is so ill achieved. Much beauty there must needs be where there are vegetation and the seasons. But even the seasons, in park scenery, are marred by the little too much: too complete a winter, too emphatic a spring, an ostentatious ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... the breaking down of the morals of the country at large, resulting from the sudden building up of ostentatious wealth in a few large cities, and from the gambling, speculative spirit spreading from these to the small towns and rural districts. From this was developed an even more disgraceful result,—the ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... willing, and so they made their way from the rathskeller into the sunlight. The Polo Club occupied a magnificent modern building in a prominent location. They passed in at a door which was opened by a man in uniform, ostentatious in its soberness; at the end of a room, rich in rugs and paintings, they encountered another man, stout ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up, in a garret, at the funeral of a needy prostitute. The whole may be intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive funerals, which were then more customary than they are now. Mr. Pope has ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... in the presence of the alderman he was not, the great man of the day, observing the irritation under which his rival was suffering, resolved to augment it as much as possible: wherefore he immediately raised his threatening double-glasses to his eyes, and in a tone of ostentatious condescension, looking down the table to Titmouse, called out, "Mr. Titmash—may I have the honor of drinking wine ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... 885; boast &c 884. render vain &c adj.; inspire with vanity &c n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward; vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical^, overwise^, pretentious, priggish; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... foundation. The criticism exercised by reason, then, on common sense may be as severe as it pleases, but it must be as patient as it is severe. Hasty, dogmatical, self-satisfied reason is worse than idle fancy or bigoted prejudice. It is systematic, ostentatious in error, closes up the avenues of knowledge, and 'shuts the gates of wisdom on mankind.' It is not enough to show that there is no reason for a thing that we do not see the reason of it: if the common feeling, if the involuntary prejudice sets in strong ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... crusade, and within a few months he was again in favour. "Thus," says Roger of Wendover, "the king set the worst of examples, and encouraged future rebellions." Randolph of Chester came out with the spoils of victory. He secured as the price of his ostentatious fidelity the custody of the Honour of Huntingdon, during the nonage of the earl, his ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... entertainment almost sumptuous—in my imagination. A cup of water cheerfully given to the weary and thirsty traveller, by him who has no more to part with, is worth a cask of wine grudgingly bestowed by the stingy or the ostentatious churl. Notwithstanding we preferred sleeping on our own blankets, these poor people would not suffer us to do it, but spread their own pallets on the earth floor of their miserable hut, and insisted so strongly upon our occupying them, that we could ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... her not only above the ordinary weaknesses of her own sex, but made her superior to the men around her. Almost before she knew it, the operation was over, and she regarded with equal curiosity the ostentatious solicitude with which the doctor seemed to be wiping his fateful instrument that bore an odd resemblance to a silver-handled centre-bit. The stertorous breathing below the bandages had given way to a fainter but more natural respiration. There ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... write that was in many ways a mere buffoon, who praised his wares with the vulgar glibness of a quack. He was vain and ostentatious, intemperate and boastful. Listen: ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... an end at last, and the whiskered waiter presented his bill and evacuated the apartment and closed the door behind him with an almost ostentatious discretion. Ramage stood up, and suddenly turned the key in the door in an off-hand manner. "Now," he said, "no one can blunder in upon us. We are alone and we can say and do what we please. We two." He stood still, looking ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... important of all, the parlor, a mysterious and hermetically sealed apartment, which almost seemed to me an unconsecrated spot in this little temple of the homely virtues and affections,—a room furnished in a style somewhat ostentatious and decidedly uncomfortable, swept and dusted on Saturday afternoons by Hepsy Ann's own careful hands, sat in by the Captain and her for an hour or two on Sundays in awkward state, then darkened and locked for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... that the woman rocking the cradle was laughing with an ostentatious affectation of covert slyness, and a responsive twinkle gleamed in the eyes of John Ronackstone. As he caught the grave and surprised glance of his visitor he made a point of dropping the air of a comment aside, which ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the girl; "and if the Pilgrims landed in such a vulgar, ostentatious spirit as this, I'm glad my name ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the fact as it happened, the piece is in the purest Pre-Raphaelite spirit. Ruskin insisted that, while composition was necessarily an affair of the imagination, the figures and accessories of a picture should be copies from the life. In the early days of the Brotherhood there was an ostentatious conscientiousness in observing this rule. We hear a great deal in Rossetti's correspondence about the brick wall at Chiswick which he copied into his picture "Found," and about his anxious search for a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... wonderful simplicity which Mrs. Hastings had adopted as the keynote of her New York parties. She had taken, in fact, simplicity under her wing and made a new thing of it. There were more flowers than silver, and cut glass than heavy plate. There seemed to be an almost ostentatious desire to conceal the fact that Mr. Hastings had robbed the American public of a good ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bit his lip. He felt keenly the humiliation of his position. But it was so evident that the Earl was not himself—so evident that the tirade to which he had just listened was one of those outbursts, noble in sentiment, but verging on the impracticable and the ostentatious, in which Lord Chatham was prone to indulge in his weaker moments, that he felt little inclination to resent it. Yet to let it pass ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... aside her knitting with ostentatious abnegation, and began rocking herself back and forth in her chair, which seemed not of itself to sway fast enough, and Mrs. Blair's voice rose again, ever ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... follies of an enlightened nation that could pay adoration to cold inanimate pieces of marble. His public entry into Rome gained him the hearts of the people; for he appeared on foot, and showed himself an enemy to parade and ostentatious equipage. His wish to listen to the just complaints of his subjects, caused his royal abode to be called "the public palace"; and his people learned to love him as ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... legislature had passed the once famous Jesuits' Estates Act. This Act was then before Sir John's Cabinet and he was under strong pressure to disallow it. While Sir John had no love for Mercier or his Government, and while he thought the preamble of the Jesuits' Estates Act, with its ostentatious references to the Pope, highly objectionable, he had no doubt that the Act was wholly within the competence of the {163} Quebec legislature and was not a subject for disallowance. Obviously Quebec could do what it liked with ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity. This is true in all the parts of administration, as well as in the whole. If any individual were to decline his appointments, it might give an unfair advantage to ostentatious ambition over unpretending service; it might breed invidious comparisons; it might tend to destroy whatever little unity and agreement may be found among ministers. And, after all, when an ambitious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rare gestures. None thought to dispute or to make excuses; the service was arrested; Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table whimpering without disguise; and his lordship opposite munched his bread and cheese in ostentatious disregard. Once only, Mrs. Weir had ventured to appeal. He was passing her chair on his ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Rohan, though one of the highest dignitaries of the Church, and of the most illustrious rank, was a young man of vain and shallow mind, of great profligacy of character, and perfectly prodigal in squandering, in ostentatious pomp, all the revenues within his reach. He had been sent an embassador to the court of Vienna. Surrounding himself with a retinue of spendthrift gentlemen, he endeavored to dazzle the Austrian capital with more than regal ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Well, I hope I shall be as rich as a Jew to-morrow. (Bursal counts money, in an ostentatious manner, into ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... presented, standing in the middle of the death-chamber, is not often to be found in tragic scenes. Her shoulders were bent beneath the burden of an enormous bundle of bed clothing, and her arms were dragged down by the weight of two large baskets of provisions. She was much too absorbed in her own ostentatious benevolence to look at once towards the bed and see what had happened there. Probably, if she glanced at the group at all, she supposed that Hannah was only bathing Nora's head; for instead of going forward ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... something different which, in her extreme sensitiveness, she was quick to see and feel. There was a new expression in the eyes of the passersby with whom she exchanged glances. Eyes which for years had stared at her with impudence, indifference, or ostentatious blankness now held a sort of friendly inquiry, something conciliatory, which told her they would have spoken had they not been met by the immobile mask of imperturbability that ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... them of political ease and security, though their people were but just emerged from actual famine, and were ready to be plunged into a gulf of penury and beggary, that your philosophic lords chose, with an ostentatious pomp and luxury, to feast an incredible number of idle and thoughtless people, collected with art and pains from all quarters of the world. They constructed a vast amphitheatre in which they raised a species of pillory.[3] On this pillory they set their lawful king and queen, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... limits of the island, the warlike people employed in civil strife those arms which had been the terror of Europe. The means of profuse expenditure had long been drawn by the English barons from the oppressed provinces of France. That source of supply was gone: but the ostentatious and luxurious habits which prosperity had engendered still remained; and the great lords, unable to gratify their tastes by plundering the French, were eager to plunder each other. The realm to which they were now confined would not, in the phrase of Comines, the most judicious ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... equivalents. But the alliteration is weak and sometimes not present at all, the lines are of less extreme lawlessness in point of length than their older Saxon representatives, and, above all, there is a creeping in of rhyme. It is feeble, tentative, and obvious, confined to ostentatious pairs like "brother" and "other," "might" and "right," "fare" and "care." But it is a beginning: and we ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... yard was descried by several young Mosses, who immediately ran in with the exciting news to their mother, so that Mrs. Moss was again on the door-step when her brother rode up. She had been crying, but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... painful and ostentatious respect marked Sissy's manner to her parent. She stood markedly,—while the others scrambled into their chairs and Wong, the Chinese servant, sped about placing everything on the table at once,—waiting for her father ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... disapproved. They were carrying a hurdle from which Mr. Tapster quickly averted his eyes. But, though he was able to shut out the sight he feared to see, he could not prevent himself from hearing certain sounds, those, for instance, made by the two loafers, who breathed with ostentatious difficulty as if to show they were unaccustomed to bearing even so comparatively light a burden ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... joys of the pastoral kind To a Bride—town-made—with a heart and a mind With simplicity ever at battle? A bride of an ostentatious race, Who, thrown in the Golden Farmer's place, Would have trimm'd her shepherds with golden lace, And gilt the horns ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... you would sit in the stalls instead of the upper circle; you would give quantities of money to poor people; and you would buy as many second hand books as you pleased. There are rich people, I believe, ostentatious people, who buy new books. But you, my dear, have been better brought up. No books are worth buying till they have stood the criticism of a whole generation at least. Never ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... of enthusiasm upon his friend; and Antonio could not refrain from acknowledging to himself that here in the garb of lowly simplicity he found more than had ever delighted him from Apone's mouth, even at the time of his greatest admiration for that ostentatious philosopher. Indeed he was already become fully convinced that the knowledge which people call supernatural may be easily united with piety and a ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... so much self-indulgence. The lazy habits of wealthy men and women who insist on getting an unnecessary number of paid persons to do for them what they could very well do for themselves, are chiefly to blame for all our tiresome and ostentatious social conditions. Servants must, of course, be had in every well-ordered household—but too many of them constitute a veritable hive of discord and worry. Why have huge houses at all? Why have enormous domestic retinues? A small house is always cosiest, and often prettiest, and the fewer servants, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Those who were present at the funeral tell me with evident surprise that you put on no mourning, and that you bedizened up neither yourself nor your maids with the trappings of woe, and that there was no ostentatious expenditure of money at the funeral, but that everything was done orderly and silently in the presence of our relations. I am not myself surprised that you, who never made a display either at the theatre or on any other public ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Affairs, and, this failing, to induce a majority of the servile portion of that committee to refuse any longer to serve with him; their purpose being exactly that of Mr. Marshall, to remove him from the councils of the nation, or to silence him, for the sake of intimidating all others by "an ostentatious display of a common determination not to serve with any man who would not submit to the gag-rule, and would persist in presenting abolition petitions." Mr. Adams then illustrates the powerful effect of such movements to overawe ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... blood-vessels too long neglected, and of the hardships of the journey. Slaves were sent scurrying, in this direction and that, to compound lotions and spread poultices, while Agathocles himself proceeded to the ostentatious mixing of some cooling draught calculated to ward off, if possible, the fever that was already claiming ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... Washington White, who happened to be in the machine shop at that moment, and overheard what the scientist said, "'scuse me, but did I done heah yo' promulgate de ostentatious fact dat yo' is ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... England for her son to read. My friend recommended Hume's. But, upon recollecting that its usher was a superlative panegyrick on one, who endeavoured to sap the credit of our holy religion, he revoked his recommendation. I am really sorry for this ostentatious alliance; because I admire The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and value the greatest part of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Why should such a writer be so forgetful of human comfort, as to give any countenance to that dreary infidelity which would' ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... an ostentatious welcome, each town entertaining him with all the magnificence it could display. He was presented with the keys of the gates, the prisoners were set at liberty, and he was shown all the honor due to the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... of Londonderry is to be buried to-morrow in Westminster Abbey. It is thought injudicious to have anything like an ostentatious funeral, considering the circumstances under which he died, but it is the particular wish of his widow. She seems to consider the respect which is paid to his remains as a sort of testimony to his character, and nothing will pacify her feelings or satisfy ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... marry a man of good fortune, she will wear them for my sake: if she do not marry an opulent husband, I hope she will sell the jewels without scruple, as they are intended for her convenience, and not as an ostentatious bequest. It is fit that she should be as independent in her circumstances as she is in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... times into a selfishness the most pitiful. He did not, it is true, forego or forget any of those habits of freedom and intercourse in his household and with those about him, which form so large a practice among the people of the south. He could give a dinner, and furnish an ostentatious entertainment—lodge his guest in the style of a prince for weeks together, nor exhibit a feature likely to induce a thought of intrusion in the mind of his inmate. In public, the populace had no complaints ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... restrain the grace you shew; As ostentatious priests, when souls they woo, Promise their heaven to all, but grant to few. But do for me, what I have dared for you: I did no argument from duty bring; Duty's a name, and love's a ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... from there this morning, but I am on my way from London to Tideshead." Somehow this announcement sounded ostentatious, and Betty, being modest, ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... in my rescue. While gathering fruit, they found me asleep, went home, held a council, came the next day with their elephants and horses, overwhelmed the few giants watching me, and carried me off. Jubilant over their victory, the smaller boys were childishly boastful, the bigger boys less ostentatious, while the girls, although their eyes flashed more, were not so talkative as usual. The woman of ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... can you talk such nonsense?" said Mrs. Peyton impatiently. "But I have no fear of that," she added, with a slightly ostentatious confidence. "I only wish I ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... in the species of ostentatious carelessness which essays to travel through life as a child might wander among hives of bees without taking any precautions ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... dry, and his brain was a mere swirl of gray and white matter. Almost without knowing how, he found himself seated in the ladies' parlor, to which the boy had conducted him. It was a barren little place, in spite of its excessively florid gilt and crimson paper, and its ostentatious harsh red-plush furniture. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... Napoleon, when princes and kings were as ninepins to be set up and knocked down at the tyrant's pleasure, the asylums of France were full of such great folk? Potentates there galore! If she had Mr. Saffron's "record" before her, she would expect to read of a vain ostentatious man, ambitious in his own small way; the little plant of these qualities would, given a morbid physical condition, develop into the fantastic growth of delusion which she had now diagnosed in the case of Mr. Saffron—diagnosed with the assistance ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... one of those ostentatious acts of generosity which are dictated by the policy of princes, at least as much as by their compassion; but the grief of Marie Antoinette was profound, and lasted several days; nothing could console her for the loss of so many innocent victims; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was not of the largest, for he had never been ostentatious of his wealth, and much of it was represented by large tracts of land, where he generously experimented for the benefit of the country. As with several rich South Africans, he had his stud farm and his agricultural farm; and ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... Diaz, of Andino, and Vascarrondo's, and all those conspicuous countrymen that irrigated with their blood Martin Pena and Rio Piedras camps could measure either the vigor or the haughtiness of an enemy who has not yet exhibited his face after so many ostentatious and angry vociferations. No! and thousand times no! The light fishermen of Porto Rico's shores, merchants, lawyers, musicians, mechanics, journeymen, all persons who may have strength to grasp a gun must ask for it. All united, with a solid front we shall ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... holiday? Was there perhaps a youthful female of his species somewhere for whom he was waiting and upon whose tryst she was now breaking? Was he—terrible thought!—the outlying picket of some family picnic? His dress, neat, simple, free from ostentatious ornament, betrayed nothing. She waited for ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... been, as all men know and no one will dispute, a most perceptible tendency of late years towards what is known as the array of one portion of the community—the preponderating, voting portion—against another—the more ostentatious property-holding portion. It is the natural result, I may say the necessary as well as logical outcome, of a period of too rapid growth,—production apportioned by no rule or system other or higher than greed and individual aptitude ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... is not merely a more common-sense treatment that we want; for here is sufficient simplicity, but a simplicity barren of all satisfaction. And singularly enough, it seems, with all its meagreness, to pass easily into an ostentatious display. In these houses there is no thought of "architecture"; that is considered as something quite apart, and not essential to the well-building of the house. But for this very reason matters are not much changed when the owner determines to spend something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... lineaments of the grand picture of a Wisdom crying in the streets, even while it is true of Him that 'He does not strive nor cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets'; for the crying, which is denied to be His, is ostentatious and noisy, and the crying which is asserted to be hers is the plain, clear, universal appeal of divine love as well as wisdom. The light of Christ 'lighteth every man that cometh into ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sky, a group of rustics under the windows of the salon employed themselves in shouting disagreeable songs. Why is it that this tuneless shrieking of false notes and scoffing words delights these people? Why is it that this ostentatious parade of ugliness, this jarring vulgarity and grimacing is their way of finding expression and expansion in the great solitary and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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
... use of the scourges that hung at their girdles. One—a "crown bearer"—had a face streaming with blood, from the crown of thorns which he had vowed to wear day and night in memory and imitation of the Redeemer's sufferings, and which on this great occasion he pressed hard into the flesh with ostentatious martyrdom. One, who, in his monastery, had earned the name of the "oil-jar," supported himself on his neighbors' arms, for his emaciated legs could hardly carry his dropsical carcass which, for the last ten years, he had fed exclusively on gourds, snails, locusts ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the Renaissance will probably never return, or, if it should, it will come as a folk-spirit, neither springing from nor governed by the colleges, but carrying them along with it. Hence, our colleges may content themselves with playing a less ostentatious part, and the most zealous alumnus need not think less of his alma ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... the lives of Bacon and More. Bacon sought office with as much desire as More avoided it; Bacon used as much solicitation to obtain it as More endured to accept it, and each, when in it, was equally true to his character. More was simple, as Bacon was ostentatious. More was as incorruptible as Bacon was venal. More spent his private fortune in office, and Bacon spent the wages of corruption there. Both left office poor in worldly goods; but while More was rich in honor and good deeds, Bacon was poor in everything; poor in ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... place without a swift glance at the disturbing cause of her wonted self-approval. But Van Berg took pains to manifest his indifference by standing with his back towards her when she knew that he must be aware of her departure, from her slightly ostentatious leave-taking of her cousin, in which, of course, the spoiled beauty had no other object than to attract attention ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Paul and his agent to go out on the road in hope of encountering brigands, who were reported numerous and bold. They would enter some low cabriolet that was suspected of harboring these knights of the mountains. With carbines concealed under their coats, they would make an ostentatious display of rolls of Italian paper money, expecting that some of the robbers would follow them out on the road and stir up a little excitement. The brigands were either too busy at something else, or they regarded ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... years before the birth of Christ, in one of the apogees of the town which, in the course of its interminable duration, experienced so many fluctuations, some ostentatious kings thought fit to build on this ground, already covered with temples, that which still remains the most arresting marvel of the ruins: the hypostyle hall, dedicated to the God Amen, with its forest of columns, as monstrous as ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... without a cloth, in the inn-parlor, kitchen, laundry, and dining-room, all in one, just over against the end of the lake; and enjoy a rasher of bacon and eggs with as much gusto as if we were in the midst of a palace of fresco. Ornamental eating has become with us a species of gaudy, ostentatious vulgarity; and a dining-room a sort of fool's paradise. I never think of the little simple meal at St. Peter's now, without ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... will to subjugate Matter to his own ends. The subjugation itself was the point, the fight was the be-all, the fruits of victory were mere results. It was not for the sake of money that Gerald took over the mines. He did not care about money, fundamentally. He was neither ostentatious nor luxurious, neither did he care about social position, not finally. What he wanted was the pure fulfilment of his own will in the struggle with the natural conditions. His will was now, to take ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... force at Manila Bay superior to that of any other power. The German fleet had for a considerable part of the time since the destruction of the Spanish squadron been in a menacing attitude. The Germans were ostentatious in discourtesy during ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Great as is the power of assimilation which the Jewish race possesses, the charm and grace of manner seem to have been among the qualities they most slowly and most imperfectly acquire. It is natural that men who have been excluded from honours but not from wealth should value money and the ostentatious display of riches more than their neighbours. In the professions in which the Jews chiefly excel, men rise most rapidly from low origin and culture to conspicuous wealth. Direct money-making has some tendency ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... forty-five, married him secretly. She was, or thought herself, more and more persecuted by Napoleon; she feared that Rocca might be ordered off on active duty, and she fled first to Vienna, then to St Petersburg, then to Stockholm, and so to England. Here she was received with ostentatious welcome and praises by the Whigs; with politeness by everybody; with more or less concealed terror by the best people, who found her rhapsodies and her political dissertations equally boring. Here too she was unlucky ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... to, mother. But lately, she's been a whole lot nicer. You know Doll made her sort of popular, and after that, she helped along, herself, by being ever so much more pleasant and chummy with us all. She used to be stuck up and disagreeable; ostentatious about being rich, and all that. But nowadays, she's more simple, and more ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... prolong his predecessor's stay on deck, after that officer's watch had expired. But in fine, steady weather, when the Captain would emerge from his cabin, Selvagee might be seen, pacing the poop with long, bold, indefatigable strides, and casting his eye up aloft with the most ostentatious fidelity. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Giovanni Galeazzo gave away 150 beautiful horses, and his kinsman, Bernabo, jewels and golden coins to a large amount, the whole sum disbursed on this occasion would appear so enormous as to make one doubt whether a petty sovereign could really afford such ostentatious prodigality. But when we consider that the flourishing state of the commerce of Italy attracted thither all the wealth of Europe, we are no longer surprised at an expenditure which, however great, might at that time have been borne not by a reigning duke of Milan or Florence alone, but even by many ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... looked around this morning she could see the workmen busily engaged in restoring the gardens to their original symmetry and beauty. The Hartleys were by no means purse proud or ostentatious, and their sudden acquisition of a great fortune in no way changed their simple, pleasant attitude toward life. But they were now enabled to live in their dear old home, without financial anxieties, and moreover, were able to ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... all day every day of the week, and then read it all night, and every night of the week, for his own soul. Let every minister know his Bible down to the bottom, and with his Bible his own heart. He who so knows his Bible and with it his own heart has almost books enough. All else is but ostentatious apparatus. When a minister has neither understanding nor memory wherewith to feed his flock, let him look deep enough into his Bible and into his own heart, and then begin out of them to write and speak. And, then, for the outside knowledge of the passing day he will read the newspapers, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... odd volume of the "Spectator" coming into his hands, he read the essays over and over and took them deliberately as a model in language. This was before the date of Johnson's well-known dictum: "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." His method of work was "to make short hints of the sentiments in each sentence," lay these by for a few days, and then having reconstructed the essay from his notes to compare his version with the original. Sometimes he jumbled the collection ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... write or speak grammatically. The body is more to be regarded than raiment; and the substance of an interesting message, may make the manner of it a little thing. Men of high purposes naturally spurn all that is comparatively low; or all that may seem nice, overwrought, ostentatious, or finical. Hence St. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, suggests that the design of his preaching might have been defeated, had he affected the orator, and turned his attention to mere "excellency of speech," or "wisdom of words." But this view of things presents no more ground ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... produce the right effect by a sigh. "What would I not give to inspire such devotion as yours! I don't envy Emily; I only wish—" She paused in confusion, and opened her fan. "Isn't it pretty?" she said, with an ostentatious appearance of changing the subject. Alban behaved like a monster; he began to talk ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... to Jerry Blazes and hung over him with ostentatious anxiety, while Simmons, weeping with pain, was carried away. " 'Ope you ain't 'urt badly, Sir," said Slane. The Major had fainted, and there was an ugly, ragged hole through the top of his arm. Slane knelt down and murmured. "S'elp me, I believe 'e's dead. Well, if that ain't ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... for by the ministers and he came before them pale and trembling, declaring that his son had very nearly been assassinated the day before, near the palace. The mob had insulted him on account of the ostentatious luxury of his wife, whose house was hung with red velvet edged with gold fringe. This lady was the daughter of Nicholas de Camus, who arrived in Paris with twenty francs in his pocket, became secretary of state, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which we all are poor as Capucines?] On the following day he was elected honorary churchwarden of the parish of St. Roch, upon which occasion he made it a present of the sum of five hundred thousand livres. His charities, always magnificent, were not always so ostentatious. He gave away great sums privately, and no tale of real distress ever ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... friend. 250 But when both sat, Ulysses in his air Had more of state and dignity than he. In the delivery of a speech address'd To the full senate, Menelaus used Few words, but to the matter, fitly ranged, 255 And with much sweetness utter'd; for in loose And idle play of ostentatious terms He dealt not, though he were the younger man. But when the wise Ulysses from his seat Had once arisen, he would his downcast eyes 260 So rivet on the earth, and with a hand That seem'd untutor'd in its use, so hold His ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of his good nature, refused to sign an order for granting me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at school—viz., 100 pounds per annum. Upon this sum it was in my time barely possible to have lived in college, and not possible to a man who, though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious disregard for money, and without any expensive tastes, confided nevertheless rather too much in servants, and did not delight in the petty details of minute economy. I soon, therefore, became embarrassed, and at length, after a most voluminous negotiation with the Jew (some parts ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... of the dust. At the thought of the humiliation it is in her power to inflict she smiles quite pleasantly, displaying a complete double row of beautifully stopped teeth. And she says, as she fumbles in a chatelaine bag of golden links, studded with turquoises, and with elaborately ostentatious dignity produces therefrom a card-case, as precious as regards material, and emblazoned with a monogram and coronet, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... The affair teemed with professional interest, and then he liked the man himself. He had a taste for the type, for the man who knows how to cut a figure in the great world without being vulgar or ostentatious. He liked Edmund's manner, his tact, his gift for putting people at their ease. Rumour said that the baronet had shown pluck since the news had come, and had behaved handsomely to underlings. Most men become agitated, irritable, and even cruel ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... seems to have been prouder of this new dignity than became so great a man. For this reason, most of his speeches have a sort of parliamentary preamble to them: there is an air of affected modesty, and ostentatious trifling in them: he seems fond of coqueting with the House of Commons, and is perpetually calling the Speaker out to dance a minuet with him, before he begins. There is also something like an attempt to stimulate ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... your gods," said Surface, "that you never have such reason to hate your fellow-men as I have had, my boy. For that has been the keynote of my unhappy life. God, how I hated them all, and how I do yet!... Not least Weyland, with his ostentatious virtue, his holier-than-thou kindness, his self-righteous magnanimity tossed even to me ... the broken-kneed idol whom others passed with averted face, and there was none so poor to ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... world had driven him to become what he had been. I had the further conviction, that he was attached to me, and, in my situation, anything like affection was most precious. His funeral was handsome, without being ostentatious, and I paid every demand upon him which I knew to be just—many, indeed, that were not sent in, from a supposition that any claim made would be useless. His debts were not much above L200, and these debts had never been expected to be liquidated by those who had given him ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... giving his final order that the waiter brings the wrong dish. The insistent thought now replaces the doubting folly, and the diner would as soon think of eating grass as the article offered. I have known him impatiently to leave the table under these circumstances, and to play the ostentatious martyr, rather than partake of the food he had at the outset given weighty consideration. I have seen another omit his lunch because water had been spilled upon the cloth, and still another leave the dining-car, ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... before, and occupied at the time of its destruction by the aristocracy of Rome. Triumphal arches were erected there in honor of Caligula and Nero, who probably honored it by visits. It possessed costly temples, handsome theatres and other public buildings, luxurious residences, and all the ostentatious magnificence arising from the wealth of the proud ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... has been brought up in complete liberty and servitude is the greatest ill he understands. He pities these miserable kings, the slaves of all who obey them; he pities these false prophets fettered by their empty fame; he pities these rich fools, martyrs to their own pomp; he pities these ostentatious voluptuaries, who spend their life in deadly dullness that they may seem to enjoy its pleasures. He would pity the very foe who harmed him, for he would discern his wretchedness beneath his cloak of spite. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Caesar's, announcing, in the same breath, the sight and conquest of his enemy. Marion and his little troop of twenty men, made but a sorry figure in the presence of the Continental General. Gates was a man of moderate abilities, a vain man, of a swelling and ostentatious habit, whose judgment was very apt to be affected by parade, and the external show of things. Some of his leading opinions were calculated to show that he was unfit for a commander in the South. For example, he thought little of cavalry, which, in a plain country, sparsely ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... "a fussy, ostentatious, irrepressible busybody, without the faintest conception of delicacy or modesty, who seems to think he has a heaven-born right to patronize Gainsborough, and to take charge of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... the literary point of view is his almost unique faculty of diversifying dry and technical argument with outbursts of rhetoric. These last are not mere purple patches; they do not come in with the somewhat ostentatious usherment and harbingery which, for instance, laid the even more splendid bursts of Jeremy Taylor open to the sharp sarcasm of South. There is nothing theatrical about them; they rise quite naturally out of the level of discussion and sink ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... suspicion, and all but misanthropic. Had she been vulgar-minded, she would have been purse-proud; if cold-hearted, she would have become only the more selfish. Vanity would have made her ridiculously ostentatious and conceited; a jealous temper would have ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... approach them. What is weak, Distempered, or has lost prolific powers, Impaired by age, his unrelenting hand Dooms to the knife. Nor does he spare the soft And succulent that feeds its giant growth, But barren, at the expense of neighbouring twigs Less ostentatious, and yet studded thick With hopeful gems. The rest, no portion left That may disgrace his art, or disappoint Large expectation, he disposes neat At measured distances, that air and sun Admitted freely may afford their aid, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... play in the old States, it has no place or part in new States. The realisme impitoyable which good critics find in a most characteristic part of the literature of the nineteenth century, is to be found also in its politics. An ostentatious utility must characterise ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... themselves with beautiful things, and any but the simplest comforts. Some people are of that opinion still, but I do not agree with them. Your own good sense will be the best criterion of what is unduly ostentatious; but never hesitate to have anything you may wish because you fear the verdict of others. In short, be independent, and think for yourself if you wish to be happy. Your Aunt Helen has undertaken the charge ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... am beginning to feel like an unpopular man at a dance. I regard the people wallowing at the windows with a growing hate; they are the elect—but that is no reason why they should parade it in that ostentatious way—bad taste!... Can't get any rooms along these terraces—I subdue my pride, and try ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various |
