"Ostensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleasanter out here." And as Mrs. Challoner assented, they were soon comfortably established on the tiny lawn; and Archie, very much at his ease, and feeling himself unaccountably happy, proceeded to deliver some trifling message from his sister, that was his ostensible reason for ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... instance; while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals. Make your decision therefore at once, either to submit before you are harmed, or if we are to go to war, as I for one think we ought, to do so without caring whether the ostensible cause be great or small, resolved against making concessions or consenting to a precarious tenure of our possessions. For all claims from an equal, urged upon a neighbour as commands before any attempt at legal settlement, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... Brant, the goldsmith, was a matter of common report, and glorious would be the fortune of him who could secure its reversion. This Ramiro wished to win; indeed, there was no ostensible reason why he should not do so, since Brant was undoubtedly a heretic, and, therefore, legitimate game for any honourable servant of the Church and King. Yet there were lions in the path, two large and formidable lions, or rather a lion and the ghost of a lion, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... They are here brought together and surveyed in a comprehensive whole. He is anxious to strip off the disguises of human nature, and to expose, in each of the persons arrayed before us, the "self-behind-the-frontage." "In the ostensible self who glowed under the approbation of Altiora Bailey, and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated, in the House and in smoking-room groups, you really have as much of a man as usually figures in a novel or an obituary ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... abandoned herself, without reserve, to everything which pleased the individual whom she loved, and simply because it was indispensable that she should love somebody. It was not even difficult to give her a lover by setting an eligible suitor to pay her court with an ostensible political motive; but as soon as she accepted him, she loved him solely and faithfully, and she owned to Mdme. de Rhodes and myself that, through caprice, she said, she had never really loved those whom she esteemed the most, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... in Spain—something about Andalusian wool—which his father made the ostensible reason for the journey. It would occupy him and distract his mind, besides giving him constant necessity of change. And, they say, travel is the best cure for the heart-ache. We hoped ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of Krishna's pastoral career. It expresses the devotion felt for him by the cowgirls. It stresses his loving delight in their company. It suggests the blissful character of the ultimate union. No further revelation, in fact, is necessary for this is the crux of Krishna's life. None the less the ostensible reason for his birth remains—to rid the earth of the vicious tyrant Kansa—and to this the ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... than other people's—his eyes more of a resort for uninvited flies and other irritating guests. But it was impossible to forbid Hans's coming to London. He was intending to get a studio there and make it his chief home; and to propose that he should defer coming on some ostensible ground, concealing the real motive of winning time for Mirah's position to become more confirmed and independent, was impracticable. Having no other resource Deronda tried to believe that both he and Mrs. Meyrick were foolishly troubling ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... over the dollar and called for the medicine, while the boy crunched his candy, glad to be relieved of the responsibility of the purchase. And then the successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat button—the extent of his winter trousseau—and, wrapping it carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding juvenility. Setting the youngster's face homeward, and patting him benevolently on the back—for Chicken's heart was as soft as those of his feathered namesakes—the speculator quit the market with a profit of 1,700 per cent. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... are at present concerned, however, had other purposes than the killing of deer. The latter ostensible object concealed more secret designs, and to these we may confine our attention. It was now near the end of August, 1715. At the beginning of that month, the Earl of Mar, in company with General Hamilton and Colonel Hay, had embarked at Gravesend, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Notwithstanding this ostensible sincerity and friendliness, various circumstances concurred to increase suspicion. When the court assembled, Alexander, instead of making his appearance according to his agreement, was found to be on a visit to the sachem of the Narragansets, his ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... worldliness, not seldom of unrighteousness and inhumanity, plead for a Tract society, a Bible, or a church; who compass sea and land to make a proselyte, and when he is made, are quite indifferent as to his being a practical Christian; who collect vast sums of money annually for the ostensible purpose of saving men's souls, practically to the effect of keeping their souls in subjection and blindness. As I read the New Testament, I find that Jesus charged infidelity upon none but such as these; ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... a low sigh. At that instant she turned her face away from him toward the window, a knock at the door being the ostensible reason. But if anyone had seen the smile with which she received the assurance that she was not to be tortured, he would have believed that there was no imminent danger of it. Had it been a question of torturing,—that was another thing. When she turned ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... wandered absently to the trousers, down one leg and up the other; superciliously jumped over the waistcoat and paused the infinitesimal part of a second on the necktie. Mauville learned in that moment how the eye may wither and humble, without giving any ostensible reason for offense. The attitude of this mincing fribble, as he danced twittingly away, was the first intimation Mauville had received that he would soon be relegated to the ranks of gay adventurers thronging the city. He who had watched his estates vanish with an unruffled countenance ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... eager to make one more sledding effort before the winter set in. The ostensible reason was to layout a depot of provisions to the south in preparation for the spring, but 'a more serious purpose was to give himself and those who had not been away already a practical insight into the difficulties of sledge traveling. But as this party would have to include ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... ideal impulses are recognized, but in this, that there is no further examination into the more remote causes of their activity. The philosophy of history, on the contrary, particularly as it was treated by Hegel, recognizes that the ostensible and even the real motives of the men who figure in history, are by no means the final causes of historical events, that behind these events stand other moving forces which must be discovered; but it seeks these forces ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... left were more attractions: another menagerie, a heap of ostensible gold representing the five milliards paid by France, a gallery of astonished wax soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" confectionery. Farther on, in the Theatre Casti, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... at top with wicker-work, to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it, are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the spirits and 'compounds.' They are assisted by the ostensible proprietor of the concern, a stout, coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much on one side to give him a knowing air, and to display his sandy whiskers to the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... favored it before; but united his troops to the army on the Rapidan. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. p. 143.] He kept up for a time a nominal duality of organization, not putting Burnside under Meade or Meade under Burnside. This made an ostensible reason for the next step, which was to take the field there in person and try what effect his own inflexible will might have in giving an aggressive impetus to that army. It seemed to him to be a choice between that and a continued dead-lock to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the formation of an opposing faction made up of the best Negroes of the town. It would have looked too much like what it was for the gentlemen to show themselves in the matter, and so they took into their confidence Mr. Isaac Morton, the principal of the coloured school, and it was under his ostensible leadership that the new faction ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that this was in response to the protests of the women themselves, who objected to being deprived of this right. There was some talk in the Legislature of passing it over his veto, but this was finally abandoned. The women took the ground that while the ostensible object was to relieve them of an onerous duty, the real one was to protect the gamblers and other law-breakers to whom women jurors show ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... which it could become available. The mere act of getting it away from the island piecemeal, little by little, was surrounded by difficulties, by the dangers of imminent detection. He had to visit the Great Isabel in secret, between his voyages along the coast, which were the ostensible source of his fortune. The crew of his own schooner were to be feared as if they had been spies upon their dreaded captain. He did not dare stay too long in port. When his coaster was unloaded, he hurried away ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... emptiness. It was in contact with one of the seeming squad ships, which ceased to be. But immediately two more ships appeared at widely different spots. A second flash—giant and terrible nearby—a pin point of light among the stars. Another ostensible human ship vanished in atomic flame—but still another appeared magically from nowhere. A third and then a fourth flash. Three ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... rather of every public servant with whom the people shall be held as having any concern. But nevertheless, I think it will come to pass that a cabinet will gradually form itself at Washington as it has done at London, and that of that cabinet there will be some recognized and ostensible chief. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... matter of taking Gootes and leaving you alive, and while I know the world suffered not the least hurt by his translation to whatever baroque, noisy and entirely public hell is reserved for reporters, at least he attempted to forge some ostensible return ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... There the cause was noble, though the outward sign was below its dignity. But in the Iliad, if we may give that name to the total expedition against Troy and the Troad, the relations were precisely inverted. Its outward sign, its ostensible purpose, was noble: for it was woman. But the real and sincere motive which collected fifty thousand Grecians under one common banner, was (I am well assured upon meditation) money—money, and money's worth. No less motive in that age was adequate to the effect. Helen ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... however, they were the ostensible cause of one of those sudden storms which, as we have said, from time to time assailed the board-room or even periodical assemblies of the proprietors. On this occasion it was, indeed, a bolt from the blue. A few days before ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays 'Dixie' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with your ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Prince Umbelazi arrived, and with him Saduko and a few other notable men. They came quite quietly and without any ostensible escort, although Scowl, my servant, told me he heard that the bush at a little distance was swarming with soldiers of the Isigqosa party. If I remember rightly, the excuse for the visit was that Umbezi had some of a certain rare breed ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... mornin' Cicely wus better, and we sot sail for Mount Vernon. It was about ten o'clock A.M. when I, accompanied by Cicely and the boy, sot sail from Washington, D.C., to perform about the ostensible reason of my tower,—to weep on the tomb of the noble ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... that of another person, testing our inclination by solid reason? Perhaps no one could have told Philip what he ought to do, but every one who knew him, and the circumstances, knew what he would do. He was, in fact, already doing it while he was paltering with his ostensible profession. But he never would have confessed, probably he would then have been ashamed to confess, how much his decision to break with the pretense of law was influenced by the thought of what a certain dark little maiden, whose image was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the house. How little any expectation of the moonlight prospect—which was the ostensible reason of their pilgrimage—had to do with Knight's real motive in getting the gentle girl again upon his arm, Elfride no less than ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... into our charmed and charming circle only if we have made up our minds to believe in the ghosts; otherwise their introduction would not be a square deal. It would not be fair, in other words, to propose a conundrum on a basis of ostensible materialism, and then, when no other key would fit, to palm off a disembodied spirit on us. Tell me beforehand that your scenario is to include both worlds, and I have no objection to make; I simply attune my mind to the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Council of State as to the mode to be adopted for invoking and collecting the suffrages of the people. For this purpose au extraordinary meeting of the Council of State was summoned on the 10th of May. Bonaparte wished to keep himself aloof from all ostensible influence; but his two colleagues laboured for him more zealously than he could have worked for himself, and they were warmly supported by several members of the Council. A strong majority were of opinion that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... they were so eager to talk to the Germans. Then I offered to go across myself and learn what I could, and finally the German General asked me to send one of our officers over to them. This I did, and gave the latter as an ostensible reason the Daily Telegraph of December 22nd, which I had got hold of, and which contained a very fair account of the troubles in Austria-Hungary and Berlin. He went out with this paper, met some German officers, and discovered a certain amount. They were very anxious to know ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... to laugh. There was no ostensible reason why she should laugh; there was nothing about Jack's make-up to cause it. Indeed, she thought he had never looked so handsome, even if his hair were plastered to his temples under his water-soaked hat and his clothes daubed ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... him to the last stage of weakness; and he was sinking under the malady of which he was soon to die. But it was believed that the words of such a man, pleading for the Church, would sway the mind of the King. The ostensible purpose of the Legate's journey was to break off the match with Navarre, and to bring France into the Holy League. He gained neither object. When he was summoned back to Rome it was understood in France that he had reaped nothing but refusals, and that he went away ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... this imitation of a hateful original [the oriental despot] were heightened by the demeanor of Cleopatra, who followed her lover to Rome at his invitation. She came with the younger Ptolemaeus, who now shared her throne, and her ostensible object was to negotiate a treaty between her kingdom and the Commonwealth. While the Egyptian nation was formally admitted to the friendship and alliance of Rome, its sovereign was lodged in Caesar's villa on the other side of the Tiber, and the statue of the most fascinating of women was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Science appearance was after the last of the Bradlaugh-Hyndman debates at St. James's Hall, where the two champions never touched the ostensible subject of their difference—the Eight Hours Day—at all, but simply talked Socialism or Anti-Socialism with a hearty dislike and contempt for one another. G. V. Foote was then in his prime as the successor of Bradlaugh; and as neither the Secularists nor the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... to assert their rights in a thoroughly barbarous fashion, by murdering all the white settlers they could fall on unprepared. It is difficult to say by whom they were instigated to revolt. The possession of certain lands claimed by settlers was the ostensible cause of each outbreak; and the natives invariably commenced hostilities, by murdering some settlers whom they attacked unawares. Such was the commencement of the last New Zealand War. One of their chiefs had been proclaimed king by the rebel ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... of this alliance was rivalry and hatred against Louis. The ostensible pretext was this monarch's having made war against the duke of Brittany, Charles's old ally in the short contest in which he, while yet but count, had measured his strength with his rival after he became king. The present union between England ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... The ostensible cause of the riots of 1863 was hostility to the draft, because it was a tyrannical, despotic, unjust measure—an act which has distinguished tyrants the world over, and should never be tolerated by a free people. Open hostility to oppression was more than once ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... in his direction. I was always on my guard to resist it, and that was really the inception of my neglect of him. From I don't know what stupid motive of pride, I was anxious that he shouldn't discern the interest he had excited in me; so I paid less ostensible attention to him than to the others, who excited none at all. I tried to appear unconscious of him as a detached personality, to treat him as merely a part of the group as a whole. Then I improved such occasions as presented themselves to ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... that in his proper social environment he was not apt to make social mistakes. This environment, however, could not but be constituted, in the main, of convicts either actual or potential; and there was probably no citizen, however high his standing or spotless his ostensible record, who in this official's estimate might not have prison gates either before him or behind him, or both. To be able to maintain, under the shadow of convictions so harsh, a disposition so sunny, was surely ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the two-fold tax, in order to proceed a little more quickly. The stations are short, being rarely above five or six miles, and one is therefore constantly changing horses. Arrived at a station, it either happens that there is really no horse to be had, or that this is an ostensible excuse. The traveller is told that the horse has to be fetched from the mountain, and that he can be served in one and a half or two hours. Thus he rides one hour, and waits two. It is also necessary ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... THE more ostensible qualifications should be carefully regulated, or they will be in danger of putting to flight the modest train of retreating virtues, which cannot safely subsist before the bold eye of public observation, or bear the bolder tongue of ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... get away from it. He had failed to make friends with the farmers, his principal parishioners, and the vulgar squabbles of Otterburn had grown into such a notorious scandal that the bishop was only too thankful to promote his removal. Mrs. Wiley's health was the ostensible reason, and though Otterburn knew better, Beechhurst accepted it in good faith, and gave its new rector a cordial welcome—none the less cordial that his wife came on the scene a robust and capable woman, ready and fit for parish work, and with no air of the fragile invalid ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Chancellor of the Exchequer, at once set himself the task of meeting the difficulty, and there were weapons to his hand. He planned not only an elaborate scheme of reform, but also the means of putting it into execution in face of the House of Lords. The ostensible function of the Budget is to provide a schedule of taxation for the coming year in order to meet the current needs of the country. Lloyd George's plan was to put forward his own conception of "the needs ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... struck by the meek manner of the boldest and roughest of the Mormon leaders in their dealings with the parties of Missouri militia who, with the ostensible purpose of defending Missouri homesteads from Mormon violence, drove the stricken multitude as with goads. She had learned from her husband what the strength of true meekness could be, the lightness of heart which commits itself to God, who judgeth righteously, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... any other account whatsoever; indeed I heard as much in town. Rose and Steele may laugh at such details, but they are necessary; and the constituent will not believe the member's assiduity unless he sees a real or ostensible answer. I gave my L100 to the Westminster election, in consequence of a letter from Rose; I could ill spare it, but finding others were dosed in the same manner, I ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... and to such there is no object too trifling, no fact too remote, not directly or indirectly to minister to the unwritten history which vaguely shapes itself to his intelligence. In his reading and travel it is by no means to the ostensible monuments and trophies of the past that his observation and inquiry are confined: the Letters of Madame de Sevigne give him authentic hints for the social tendencies of France and their influence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the prospect of a lesson in driving, especially as Bart, because of his lameness, did not venture to take his over-spirited steed Thunder. She sincerely hoped, however, that he would confine his thoughts and attentions to the ostensible object of the drive, for his manner at times was embarrassingly ardent. Burt was sufficiently politic to fulfil her hope, for he had many other drives in view, and had discovered that attentions not fraternal ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... chief Spanish spy in England, was sorely puzzled. Drake's ostensible destination was Egypt, and his men were openly enlisted for Alexandria. The Spaniards, however, saw far enough through this to suppose that he was really going back to Nombre de Dios. It did not seem likely, though quite possible, that he was going in search of the Northwest ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... might not find him. Ah, what a complicated affair! She could not explain everything in a few words. The object of the visit was, of course, still that for which Donna Rosetta Albacina had laboured for three days, her ostensible reason for so doing being the interest she took in the ideas and the person of the Saint of Jenne; her real reason being the pleasure she took in managing an intrigue, without scruples of conscience. She had taken a fancy to Jeanne at Vena di Fonte Alta, but knew nothing ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... that it is no longer possible for a writer to tell the plain, ostensible truth concerning human nature, without having a storm raised about his head for it? George P. Bradford and Martin F. Tupper are similar instances, and like Boswell have suffered the penalty which accrues to men of small stature for ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... exclusively by the ostensible interests of France, which were directly opposed to the interests of British commerce and of British enterprise.... From this it follows that alliances, nay, even political agreements, with Continental powers, which may coerce us to take steps that are, at a given moment, harmful to our national ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was one of those clumsy, old-fashioned, English pieces known generally as Tower Hill muskets, and, for aught I know, might have been left on the island by Wallace, Carteret, Cook, or Vancouver. The stock was half rotten and worm-eaten; the lock was as rusty and about as well adapted to its ostensible purpose as an old door-hinge; the threading of the screws about the trigger was completely worn away; while the barrel shook in the wood. Such was the weapon the chief desired me to restore to its original condition. As I did not ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... The ostensible object of spending a night on San Salvatore is to see the sun set and rise. The mountain is not high, just touching three thousand feet, an easy ascent of two hours. But it is a place glorious in the early morning and solemn in the quiet evening. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... the game of chess, although all others of the suite played well. Similar observations have been made since the Automaton has been purchased by Maelzel. There is a man, Schlumberoer, who attends him wherever he goes, but who has no ostensible occupation other than that of assisting in the packing and unpacking of the automata. This man is about the medium size, and has a remarkable stoop in the shoulders. Whether he professes to play chess or not, we are not informed. It is quite certain, however, that he is never ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was, and must always be. She then wondered what Monsignor thought of the stage, and from the moment her curiosity was engaged on this point it did not cease to trouble her till it brought her to the door of the presbytery. The ostensible object of her visit was to make certain proposals to Monsignor regarding the music she was ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... month, a large assemblage of Indians from the neighborhood of the straits Juan de Fuca, and Gray's Harbor, formed a great camp on Baker's Bay, for the ostensible object of fishing for sturgeon. It was bruited among these Indians that the Tonquin had been destroyed on the coast, and Mr. M'Kay (or the chief trader, as they called him) and all the crew, massacred by the natives. We did not give credence to this rumor. Some days ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... suddenly, heralded by clattering sounds and a gride of wheels, Dangle had flared and thundered across the tranquillity of the summer evening; Dangle, swaying and gesticulating behind a corybantic black horse, had hailed Jessie by her name, had backed towards the hedge for no ostensible reason, and vanished to the accomplishment of the Fate that had been written down for him from the very beginning of things. Jessie and Hoopdriver had scarcely time to stand up and seize their machines, before this tumultuous, this swift and wonderful passing of ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... The ostensible western terminus of this road is at Windsor, opposite our city, but it is practically as much a Detroit road as any that can be named. The connections with the other routes centering here is made by a number of ferry boats of the most staunch ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... are a remarkably persevering and industrious people, amongst the trading classes, particularly the women, who often take as ostensible a part in business as their husbands; except that it is an establishment upon a very large scale, the wife is usually the cashier, and you will find her as stationary at the counter almost as the counter ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... rule, they gradually tighten the cords which exclude all opening for quarrel; not otherwise is the result, and therefore the usefulness, of war amongst nations. All the causes of war, the occasions upon which it is likely to arise, the true and the ostensible motives, are gradually evolved, are examined, searched, valued, by publicists; and by such means, in the further progress of men, a comprehensive law of nations will finally be accumulated, not such as now passes ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... letter to you, I must ask you to be assured that I wrote it without ostensible object. To you alone I wanted to speak on a topic started by yourself, because I did not desire to support an opinion in a general way, but to effect something real, viz., the foundation of an original theatre. I therefore did not want to address the public—which ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... by partial and unsound motives, that some of these objects of attention are allowed to usurp the place of others. He who acts, not from the high principles of moral duty, but from a desire of notoriety, or the applause of men, may devote himself to much benevolence and usefulness of a public and ostensible kind; while he neglects duties of a higher, though more private nature,—and overlooks entirely, it may be, his own moral condition. The ascetic, on the contrary, shuts himself up in his cell, and imagines that ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... parliamentary influence, or county patronage, or votes, or office, to be got: position, berths, favours, profit. The other's thoughts run upon husbands and settlements, wives and dowries. Worthless for their ostensible purpose of daily bringing human beings into pleasurable relations with each other, these cumbrous appliances of our social intercourse are now perseveringly kept in action with a view to the pecuniary and matrimonial results which ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... fill any ostensible office near the person of the queen, but is a lady of high rank in the court—the wife of the Lord Antigones. She is a character strongly drawn from real and common life—a clever, generous, strong-minded, warmhearted ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... copyright undivided would enable us, calculating upon similar success to that of the Novels, to make at least L500 per cent. Longman & Co. have indeed an excellent bargain, but then so will we. We pay dear indeed for what the ostensible subject of sale is, but if it sets free almost the whole of our copyrights, and places them in our own hands, we get a most valuable quid pro quo. There is only one-fourth, I think, of Marmion in Mr. Murray's hands, and it must be the deuce ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Hernan lingered. Was it that he was unwilling to tear himself away from a spot where he had spent some of the brightest moments of his existence? Had he other less ostensible ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... men dressed alike in suits of the finest broadcloth, the coats of which were lined with red silk, and the vests of embroidered white. These men walked with a sort of arrogant importance. We later found that they were members of that dreaded organization known as The Hounds, whose ostensible purpose was to perform volunteer police duty, but whose real effort was toward the increase of their own power. These people all surged back and forth good-naturedly, and shouted at each other, and disappeared with great importance ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... ostensible purpose of Anaxinus' visit was to make purchases for Olympias, Philip's wife. Aeschines states that Anaxinus had once been Demosthenes' own host ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... attribute his conduct to the circumstance of his being governed by one leading idea, and to his incapability of taking enlarged and comprehensive views of political affairs, such as embrace not only the complex relations of the present, but the ostensible probabilities of the future. His judgment, instead of being determined by profound habits of reflection, an extensive knowledge of history, and accurate acquaintance with human nature, seems to be wholly influenced ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... yourself in the use of such Instruments should be enrolled as a Member of this Craft." In his reply, accepting the Freedom of the Company, Airy wrote thus: "I shall much value the association with a body whose ostensible title bears so close a relation to the official engagements which have long occupied me. I have had extensive experience both in arranging and in using optical and mathematical instruments, and feel that my own pursuits are closely connected with the original employments ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... letter supposed to be addressed to himself after the death of Theodoric[33]: 'Non enim proprios fines sub te ulla dignitas custodivit;' and that this was the fact we cannot doubt. Whatever his nominal dignity might be, or if for the moment he possessed no ostensible office at all, he was still virtually what we should call the Prime Minister ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... to the manufacture of sago, he went to the leeward side of the island, a search for turtles being his ostensible object. When the trees hid him he quickened his pace and turned to the left, in order to explore the cavity marked on the tin with a skull and cross-bones. To his surprise he hit upon the remnants of a roadway—that is, a line through the wood where there were no well-grown trees, where the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... London was in the August of 1599 barricaded for a fortnight. A fleet was put in commission under Lord Thomas Howard as Admiral. Ralegh was Vice-Admiral, and 'took leave at Court of all the ladies' about August 18. He stayed in the Downs for three weeks or a month. The ostensible, and doubtless the true, reason was the threat of a Spanish descent upon the Isle of Wight. But not a few believed that it was a precaution, less against the Spaniard than against an apprehended invasion by Essex from Ireland. Wild as was the rumour, it was favoured by the reckless talk of Essex ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... to be both or neither, you were wise; whiskey and railroading don't go together very well. But about this other matter. Some years ago there was a building and loan association started here in Angels, the ostensible object being to help the railroad men to own their homes. Ever ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... that Parson Milliton cried their banns in Axcester Church on the following Sunday, and the bride-elect received a month's wages and three weeks' notice of dismissal, with a hint that the reason for her short retention—to instruct her successor in Miss Dorothea's ways—was ostensible rather than real. With Raoul's fate he declined to meddle. "Here," he said in effect, "is my report, including the prisoner's confession. I do my simple duty in presenting it. But the young man was captured in my ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... conciliate the Pope's Holiness. And this time he went about his negotiations in a manner better calculated to serve his ends, since his need was grown more urgent. He sent the Prince of Altamura again to Rome for the ostensible purpose of settling the vexatious matter of Cervetri and Anguillara and making alliance with the Holy Father, whilst behind Altamura was the Neapolitan army ready to move upon Rome should the envoy fail ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... colonists wished to join the New England Union, but were refused on the ostensible plea that they had no charter. Williams accordingly visited England and obtained a charter uniting the two plantations. On his return the people met, elected their officers, and (1647) agreed on a set of laws guaranteeing ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... in two ways. On searching through her papers, it appeared that besides her ostensible cargo she was also employed in what may be termed a kind of religious smuggling. Some Portuguese copies of the New Testament were discovered, together with a number of tracts in the same language, tied up in large bundles, on the back of one of which was the endorsement:—"Portuguese Tracts; ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... trouble. The local physician had been consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks science from the heights of eternity. No physician but fate itself ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I remind you that there is no place too obscure to escape from the ill-nature of gossip, and you must own that my niece incurs the chance of its notice if she be seen walking alone in these by-paths with a man of your age and position, and whose sojourn in the neighbourhood, without any ostensible object or motive, has already begun to excite conjecture. I do not for a moment assume that you regard my niece in any other light than that of an artless child, whose originality of tastes or fancy may serve to amuse you; and still less do I suppose that she is in danger of misrepresenting any ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of this extravagance, is furnished by a publication of the epoch at which Longchamps was in its most palmy state, when a certain Mademoiselle Duthe, whose means of indulging in inordinate expense were not solely derived from her ostensible profession as one of the performers attached to the Opera, figured in the promenade in a carriage of the most sumptuous kind, drawn by no less than six thorough-bred horses, the harness of which was of blue morocco, studded with polished steel ornaments, which ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... saw ostensible 'possum at a French restaurant in New York. It was advertised as Opossum, Southern style, and it was chopped up fine and cooked in a sort of casserole effect, with green peas and carrots and various other things mixed in along with it. The quivering sensations which were felt throughout ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... minded about the failure of Spini's plot, but he felt an awkward difficulty in so adjusting his warning to Savonarola on the one hand, and to Spini on the other, as not to incur suspicion. Suspicion roused in the popular party might be fatal to his reputation and ostensible position in Florence: suspicion roused in Dolfo Spini might be as disagreeable in its effects as the hatred of a fierce dog ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... been the effect of a rude jostle of his own. This had represented his first blow-out, as he called it, with his patrons; his first successful attempt—though there was little other success about it—to bring them to a consideration of his impossible position. As the ostensible eve of a costly journey the moment had struck him as favourable to an earnest protest, the presentation of an ultimatum. Ridiculous as it sounded, he had never yet been able to compass an uninterrupted private interview with the elder pair or with either ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... as, of the ten individuals in all who were at the head of the Roman Church during its revolution, the five who followed next after Clement lived only forty-two years, whilst their five successors lived fifty-nine years. Thus, there is at least some ostensible ground for the inquiry whether any arrangement was made, about the time of Hyginus, which may ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... people to help me—Ann Woolper and yourself. Ann Woolper I hold only by a feeble bond. I think she will be true to us; but I am not sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She is the ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room; you must contrive to be the real guardian. You must keep custody over the custodian. How is your room situated in relation to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... us at the meeting of the Zoological Institute in London. That mission was to test the truth of Professor Challenger's statements. Those statements, as I am bound to admit, we are now in a position to endorse. Our ostensible work is therefore done. As to the detail which remains to be worked out upon this plateau, it is so enormous that only a large expedition, with a very special equipment, could hope to cope with it. Should we attempt ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... realized the foolishness of her disfranchisement on the ground that she was never a soldier to destroy life. There may be some young woman in railroad office, stenographer, bookkeeper or clerk, who meekly approves an order for the discharge of all women employees for the ostensible reason that they marry too soon but for the real reason that they ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... probability that the old Imperial dignity, if preserved in name, would soon be transferred to some client of Napoleon or to Napoleon himself. Such an apprehension was, however, not one that could be confessed to Europe. Instead of the ruin of Germany, the grandeur of Austria was made the ostensible ground of change. In language which seemed to be borrowed from the scriptural history of Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor Francis declared that, although no possible addition could be made to his own personal dignity, as Roman Emperor, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... instrument of gain by their worthless masters; those vagrants who disguise their vagabondage under the pretext of imaginary professions, collecting cigar stumps and rag picking; those little girls who sell flowers at the doors of houses of bad repute, often concealing under this ostensible occupation infamous transactions with panders who keep them in their pay. A determined warfare was declared against the Italian padroni, who thrive upon the toil of the little unfortunates to whom they pretend to teach music, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... parts of her rigging, some laughing, and holding low converse with messmates who lay indolently on the neighbouring spars, and others leisurely performing the light and trivial duty that was the ostensible employment of the moment. More than as many others loitered carelessly about the decks below, somewhat similarly engaged; the whole wearing much the appearance of men who were set to perform certain immaterial tasks, more to escape the imputation ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... was acknowledged over a region extensive enough to form a respectable kingdom. But though he exercised all the rights of sovereignty, he prudently abstained from assuming the title: he left to the emir of Lamtuna the ostensible exercise of temporal power; and when, in A.D. 1058, that emir fell in battle, he nominated Abu-Bekr ben Omar to the vacant dignity. His own death, which was that of a warrior, left Abu-Bekr in possession of an undivided sovereignty. The power and consequently the reputation of the emir, spread ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... confidence in his favorite agent, for in his arrangements for the formation of a new ministry under the ostensible headship of George Grenville in the spring of 1763, he not only employed Shelburne in negotiations with no less than seven politically important personages, but he even wished to get him the seals of secretary of state. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... three ostensible exciters of the Cockade Conspiracy, protected by an invisible hand, have escaped from justice and fled to Cranenberg, a village in the Duchy of Cleves. The Court having sent its officers to arrest them at the peril of the complainants, the Regency of Cleves, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Norbert had a long conversation together on this day in a spot which had become so dear to them both, and it was only the approach of a peasant that recalled the girl to the sense of her rash imprudence, and she insisted on going on her ostensible errand of charity. Norbert, as before, escorted her, and even went so far as to offer his arm, upon which she pressed when the road ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... resolved to break her chains and leave Paris. He regarded this resolution as a mere threat. "No," he wrote, "you have not bid farewell to all earthly joys. If you go, you will return." She did go, however, taking with her Ballanche and her adopted daughter, whose delicate health was the ostensible cause of her departure. What it cost her to leave Paris may well be conjectured, and nothing is more indicative of her power of self-control than this voluntary withdrawal from a companionship which fascinated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bull amongst the Sinis, O foremost one of the Kurus, laughing said unto his charioteer, "Our foes, O Suta, had already been consumed by Kesava and Phalguna. In vanquishing them (again), we have only been the (ostensible) means. Already slain by that bull among men, viz., the son of the celestial chief, we have but slain the dead." Saying these words unto his charioteer, that bull amongst the Sinis, that foremost of bowmen, that slayer of hostile heroes, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... once adjusted, Jennie settled down into the routine of home life. Lester, busy about his multitudinous affairs, was in and out. He had a suite of rooms reserved for himself at the Grand Pacific, which was then the exclusive hotel of Chicago, and this was his ostensible residence. His luncheon and evening appointments were kept at the Union Club. An early patron of the telephone, he had one installed in the apartment, so that he could reach Jennie quickly and at any time. He was home two or three nights a week, sometimes oftener. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... army now assembled upon the Wabash, with the ostensible view of opposing the Shawnese, is a strong additional motive in my mind in support of this measure; for I have no doubt that, the instant their service in the field terminates, a large portion of the regulars will be detached to strengthen the garrison of Detroit. ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... truth and righteousness. It needs less the priest, too often with his back to the future and too often the pliant tool of the organisation whose chief concern is, and ever has been, the preservation of itself under the ostensible purpose of the preservation of the truth once delivered, the same that Jesus with his keen powers of penetration saw killed the Spirit as a high moral guide and as an inspirer to high and unself-centred endeavour, and that he characterised with such scathing ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... obvious things with an air of mystery. He never admitted anything; his closest approach to committing himself on even so apparent a proposition as the sunrise, was that it had risen "ostensibly"; he became known to the reporters as "Old Ostensible." ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... outcasts, admitted to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... was suffering the worst of the disasters of the recent war in South Africa the Russian government sent a secret embassy to Lhassa, carrying rich presents and large sums of money to the Grand Lamal for the ostensible purpose of securing permission to construct a branch from its Siberian Railway to Lhassa across Chinese Turkestan. The Grand Lama afterward sent an embassy to return the visit at St. Petersburg, which was received with great honors and presented with rich ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... contribution I have folded up my tent like an Arab, and silently stolen away from Porticobello House, this independent hook being taken under the ostensible and colourable pretext of a medical opinion that the climate of Bayswater was operating injuriously upon my internal arrangements, but the real causa causans and dessous des cartes being a growing disinclination for the society of select male ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... eclipse. Could he deduce nothing from the tanner's grin? He spent the day at the Settlement without ostensible reason, and only at nightfall did he return home, and by a devious route, very different from that indicated by ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... imitative one, and the few outside the clergy who essayed writing at all copied the worst models of the Johnsonian period. Verse was still welcome, and the verse-makers of the colonial time were many. Even venerable clergymen like Peter Bulkley gave way to its influence. Ostensible poems were written by more than one governor; John Cotton yielded to the spell, though he hid the fact discreetly by writing his English verses in Greek characters, and confining them to the blank leaves of his almanac. Debarred from ordinary ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... porcelain stoves so inaccessible; the windows always shut; every nook and corner blazing with little ornaments; the lady of the house so severely conscious of every movement; even the little earthen pans near the stove, filled with white sand nicely smoothed over to represent salt-cellars—the ostensible spittoons of the establishment—staring one in the face with a cold, steady gaze amounting to a positive prohibition—no, the thing was impossible! I saw plainly that a good, old-fashioned squirt of tobacco-juice would ruin such a country as this, where every room in every house was inimical to the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... several of them—dumb, good-natured, elderly men with no ostensible purpose in the world; elderly ladies, who called Father Payne "dear"; some simple and homely married couples, who seemed to be living in another century. But Father Payne welcomed them, chattered ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... will be my moral and intellectual condition? How should I support this exile of four years? Imagine the effect that four years of isolation in the mountains will produce. But this is not all. Besides this ostensible end that I have pursued since I left my village, I have my special work that I can carry out only in Paris. Without having overwhelmed you with the details of medicine, you know that it is about to undergo a revolution that will transform ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... Warburton's doctrine was, that "they held nocturnal assemblies because of the persecution of their enemies." One was the fact, and the other the consequence. But the Chancellor of Lincoln was to be outrageously degraded among the dunces! that was the real motive; the "nocturnal assemblies" only the ostensible one. A pamphleteer, in defence of the chancellor, in reply, thought that in "this literary persecution" it might be dangerous "if Dr. Taylor should be provoked to prove in print what he only dropped in conversation." How innocent was this gentleman of the arts and stratagems of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Rehearsal" is said to have been meditated by its authors (for it was the work of several hands) so early as a year or two after the Restoration, when Sir William Davenant's operas and tragedies were the favourite exhibitions. The ostensible author was the witty George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham whose dissipation was marked with shades of the darkest profligacy. He lived an unprincipled statesman, a fickle projector, a wavering friend, a steady enemy; and died a bankrupt, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... seven figures seen in our illustration, two only have any ostensible purpose to serve. One seems to be lighting a candelabrum with a flambeau; another carries a bowl which may be used for incense. The others are idlers. If they have any duties as acolytes, these are for the moment forgotten. ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... wish to trammel you with instructions; I will state, however, that if Smith holds out, without even an ostensible government to receive orders from or to report to, he and his men are not entitled to the considerations due to an acknowledged belligerent. Theirs are the conditions of outlaws, making war against the only Government ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... watch it," the latter decisively replied. Then remembering that the ostensible object of the undertaking was sport and native trade, he went on, "You see, Holmes, it's going to be a hard business. Not just three or four months up in the bush-veldt and so forth, but—well, Heaven only knows where the thing will end, let ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... The ostensible object of the Bill of Residence was to compel the clergy to reside on their livings. By this bill, any person taking a benefice, with cure of souls, of the annual value of L100, was forced, if the land attached to that benefice had no house fit for residence, to build one thereon, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... Cologne professors and purported to be from his former students and admirers. In these letters the writers take pains to exhibit the most shocking ignorance and stupidity. They narrate their scandalous doings with the ostensible purpose of obtaining advice as to the best way to get out of their scrapes. They vituperate the humanists in comically bad Latin, which is perhaps the best part of the joke.[269] In this way those who later opposed Luther and his reforms were held up to ridicule in ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... incredulity yielded to penitence. Sally sat up with a little gesture of contrition and appeal—an outflung hand instantly withdrawn; this was not a woman whose susceptibilities were to be touched by such means; even now, beneath her ostensible generosity, one divined a nature ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... entered, and she could occasionally see them from her hiding-place, gliding about, and stealthily inspecting every part of the room, though without making any ostensible search, until, apparently satisfied that there was no one concealed, they ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... courtesy," she said, happening to remember her ostensible errand. "I shall send you the paper soon, and may some day see you ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry |
