"Ostentatious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... omnibus; 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 buy ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... subsequently altered to "Of False Taste." It was addressed to Pope's friend, Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington; and, under the style of "Timon's Villa," employed, for its chief illustration of wasteful and vacuous magnificence, the ostentatious seat which James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos, had erected at Canons, near Edgware. The story of Pope's epistle does not belong to this place. But in the print of The Man of Taste, William Hogarth, gratifying concurrently a personal antipathy, promptly attacked Pope, Burlington, and his own ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... speculating on the appetite that salt air awakens in dyspeptics, came the more pretentious and the more permanent structures of the restaurants and eating-places, with stairways and verandas, facades of ornate but inexpensive stucco, masking the frailty of such pomp under ostentatious names: The Paris Hotel and Restaurant, The Miramar, The Fonda del Buen Gusto; and between these pedants of summer-time gastronomy, the lunch-rooms of the natives, huts with roofs of matting, rickety tables ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in the days of 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 of ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... run in to see how she was gettin' on," by a series of formal afternoon calls. No such fashionable sight ever had been witnessed in the town as Mrs. Symes presented when, in a pair of white kid gloves and a veil, she picked her way with ostentatious daintiness across several vacant lots still encumbered with cactus and sagebrush, to the log residence of Mr. and ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... (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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of finer natures and moral tone. The court of France is a court of adventurers, of parvenus; and the palaces, the toilets, the equipage, the entertainments, of the mistresses outshine those of the lawful wives. Hence comes a style of dress which is in itself vulgar, ostentatious, pretentious, without simplicity, without unity, seeking to dazzle by ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... was tired of sitting on the sand and quite ready for a walk. Moreover, she was curious to know more of Pauline. She wasn't sure she should like a girl who asked her point blank if she were rich, and yet Pauline didn't seem ostentatious or vulgar, but was ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... they can take a greater Share of Honor than justly belongs to them. They will be pleasd with the Adulatory Addresses of other Men & flatter themselves that they are intitled to Power and Authority as well as the ostentatious Show of Superiority above their Equals. I confess I do not barely dislike the order. With you I think it dangerous & look upon it with the Eye of Jealousy. When the Pride of Family possesses the Minds ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... even if the case were worse, it is not evident that a remedy is at hand. As the President suggested, there are two kinds of rich youth at college. There are the sons of those who have been always accustomed to riches, and who are generally neither vulgar nor extravagant, neither ostentatious nor profuse; and the sons of the "new rich," who are like men drunk with new wine, and who ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... the pheasant proper placed upon his carriage and the buttons of his coachman, and both crest and motto on his writing-paper. The arms he hugged to himself, partly because, not having paid for them, he thought it would look ostentatious to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and partly because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he found it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... leader, Stonewall Jackson, in his piety. It was not ostentatious, but simply part and parcel of the man, due to his Presbyterian training. Haig did not swear or gamble or dance all night. He was more apt to be found in his tent, when off ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... thoughts? Was she not constantly drawing contrasts between him and the worldly beings by whom she was surrounded! Did not his touching voice thrill more musically in her mental ear, when the affected ostentatious tones of the votary of fashion and pleasure tried to attract her attention by a display of his accomplishments and breeding? There was a want of reality in all she heard and saw that struck painfully upon her heart; and after the first novelty ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... tiff between the two old comrades might have grown into something more serious, but for the fortunate interruption caused by the ostentatious approach of Colonel Titus and another one of the court retinue from the right county, to whom the General confided the coddled statesman and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... surrounded by perhaps a score of lookers-on—big fellows for the most part, of the true Western build, long in the leg, broad in the shoulder, and adorned (to a plain man's taste) with needless finery. A jaunty, ostentatious comradeship prevailed. Bets were flying, and nicknames. "The boys" (as they would have called themselves) were very boyish; and it was plain they were here in mirth, and not on business. Behind, and certainly in strong ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... morning seizure, forgetting to divulge to Hawke that the old nabob had already bribed him heavily to watch the inmate of the Silver Bungalow, and report to him her every movement. Nor, did the Hindu divulge his secret report to Madame Berthe Louison, after her ostentatious public carriage promenade. He further hid the fact that Madame Louison had deftly pressed a hundred pounds upon him, in return for a daily report of the secret life of the marble house. But he smiled blandly, when Major Hawke hastily ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... 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; she spoke of it, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... week of strenuous living had not prepared her for what followed. First, there was a short trip on the train, during which she conscientiously studied a map. Then followed a dinner at a large and ostentatious hotel. The decorations were more brilliant, the music louder, and the dresses gayer, than at any place Miss Lucinda had yet been. She viewed the passing show through her glasses, and experienced a pleasant thrill of sophistication. This, ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... 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, enriched with diamonds ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... lost sight of the black veil. Some gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their mouths all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone, wrapped in silent meditation; some talked loudly and profaned the Sabbath-day with ostentatious laughter. A few shook their sagacious heads, intimating that they could penetrate the mystery, while one or two affirmed that there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper's eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp as to ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... believing discretion to be the better part of valor, had apologized for the acts of his undiapered babes and the excesses of his hungry beggars before his neighbors could stiffen his backbone with their ostentatious insolence. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... time, Ferdinand availed himself of this critical moment, while Granada was distracted with factions and dissensions, and before he had concluded any treaty with Boabdil, to make a puissant and ostentatious inroad into the very heart of the kingdom at the head of his most illustrious nobles. He sacked and destroyed several towns and castles, and extended his ravages to the very gates of Granada. Muley Abul Hassan did not venture to oppose him. His city was filled with troops, but he was ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... charging them, full tilt, brought up his mustang on its haunches and rigid forelegs, with a sweeping bow of his sombrero, within a foot of their artfully simulated terror! In this way they at last reached the clearing in the forest, the church with its ostentatious spire, and the Reverend Mr. Windibrook's dwelling, otherwise humorously known as "The Pastorage," where Cissy intended ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... expression of its ease and variety. Economy is rejection of whatever is superfluous; it is not Miserliness. A liberal expenditure is often the best economy, and is always so when dictated by a generous impulse, not by a prodigal carelessness or ostentatious vanity. That man would greatly err who tried to make his style effective by stripping it of all redundancy and ornament, presenting it naked before the indifferent public. Perhaps the very redundancy which he lops away might have aided the reader to see the thought more clearly, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... conclusion of the entertainment threatened to be necessary. May, who had previously decided that Mr. Quisante would be much better in company, was travelling to the conclusion that he was not nearly so trying when alone; to be weaselly is not so bad as to be inconsiderate and ostentatious. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... In every age, such copies, so congenial to human feelings, have been cherished by the zeal of private friendship, or public esteem: the images of the Roman emperors were adored with civil, and almost religious, honors; a reverence less ostentatious, but more sincere, was applied to the statues of sages and patriots; and these profane virtues, these splendid sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men, who had died for their celestial and everlasting country. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... approached the circle in the middle of which 'La Pataude' and 'Grille d'Egout' were holding high carnival. At every ostentatious display of hosiery the ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... showy, but which showed from its outside, that it was not inhabited by high-bred people. There were pink linings to lace curtains at the windows, and quantities of green vines drooped from the balconies, as if to attract attention from the passers-by. Madame Strahlberg, with her ostentatious and undulating walk, which caused men to turn and notice her as she went by, went swiftly up the stairs to the second story. She put one finger on the electric bell, which caused two or three little dogs inside to begin ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... strength in trying to be some one else, nor hide our talent in the napkin of ignorance or false humility. There is quite as much harm done to Christian character and Christian service by our failure to recognise what is in our power, as by ambitious or ostentatious attempts at what is above our power. We have to be ourselves as God has made us in our natural faculties, and as the new life of Christ operating on these has made us new creatures in Him not by changing but by enlarging our old natures. It matters nothing what the special form of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... inward monitor. "How about money, where is that to come from?" And all at once the wealth displayed in the Countess de Restaud's drawing-room rose before his eyes. That was the luxury which Goriot's daughter had loved too well, the gilding, the ostentatious splendor, the unintelligent luxury of the parvenu, the riotous extravagance of a courtesan. Then the attractive vision suddenly went under an eclipse as he remembered the stately grandeur of the Hotel de Beauseant. As his fancy wandered among these ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... companions, also young men dressed expensively and wearing arms, were exchanging jokes with that sort of ostentatious laughter which implies a desire to prove that the laughter is not mortified though some people might suspect it. There were good reasons for such a suspicion; for this broad-shouldered man with the red feather was Dolfo Spini, leader of the Compagnacci, or Evil ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... offenders; and the tribune was regarded by all the people as the destined restorer of Rome and Italy. Most of the Italian republics, and some of the princes, sent embassadors, and seemed to recognise pretensions which were tolerably ostentatious. The King of Hungary and Queen of Naples submitted their quarrel to the arbitration of Rienzi, who did not, however, undertake to decide it. But this sudden exaltation intoxicated his understanding, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... was thus established as the family vault of the Medici race. Giovanni lies here; Cosimo lies here; and Piero; while Lorenzo the Magnificent and Giuliano and certain descendants were buried in the Michelangelo sacristy, and all the Grand Dukes in the ostentatious chapel ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... once, and Dora, after a whispered word or two to her team, selected her first bats. One was a business-like looking girl who hummed a tune as she came, with ostentatious carelessness; the other, stout and dark, blinked her eyes nervously. It was manifestly impossible to judge their capacities beforehand. Betty Carlisle was to take the first over. She had a high overhand action, and sent the ball down the pitch at a good pace. Lottie Moir, the dark-haired ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... looks and disreputable suggestions, those who dwelt in Geneva Square would not have seen it furbished up and occupied for any money. They spoke about it in whispers, with ostentatious tremblings, and daunted looks, for No. 13 was supposed to be haunted, and had been empty for over twenty years. By reason of its legend, its loneliness and grim appearance, it was known as the Silent House, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... other, with sudden change to ostentatious indifference. "It's time the farce stopped. I, for one, have had enough of it. If you like, I will tell Lady Ogram myself, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... large amount of petty vanity in his composition which manifested itself by an ostentatious and overdone disregard of all personal considerations. He straightened his lips and looked rigidly at the roll of papyrus, while his heart filled with bitterness against the whole race of ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Reformation" was chiefly due to the ostentatious patronage of it by the lay chiefs of the Irish oligarchy. Mr. Synge, in Clare, Lord Lorton, and Mr. McClintock at Dundalk, were indefatigable in their evangelizing exertions. The Earl of Roden—to show his entire dependence on the translated Bible—threw ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... shown the victories of Lewis, painted by Le Brun, and asked whether the king of England's palace had any such decorations: "The monuments of my master's actions," said he, "are to be seen every where but in his own house." The pictures of Le Brun are not only in themselves sufficiently ostentatious, but were explained by inscriptions so arrogant, that Boileau and Racine thought it necessary to make ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Switzerland. Mrs. Mencke was so confirmed in her opinion that Violet was not living that she assumed mourning for her, and while she remained in Mentone her deeply bordered handkerchiefs were never out of her hands, and were frequently brought into ostentatious use. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... with lance and ring. This solitary conduct got him the name of a hermit, whose food was thought to be more of venison than anything else, but in fact his men kept him supplied with provisions. When John had indulged in this ostentatious seclusion for a time, he allowed himself to be drawn out of it by the charming discourse of a noble Italian named Theodore Palaloga, who just then was Rider to Henry, Earl of Lincoln, and went to stay with him at Tattershall. This was an ancient town, with a castle, which belonged to the Earls ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lawyers. On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in keeping ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... timidity which seems to arise from a fear of the person who listens being disposed to take advantage of the distressing position confided to his honour. She seemed neither humiliated nor bold; she had hope, and she did not boast of her courage. Her virtue was by no means ostentatious, but there was in her an air of modesty which would certainly have put a restraint upon anyone disposed to fail in respect towards her. I felt the effect of it myself, for in spite of her beautiful eyes, her fine figure, of the freshness of her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "There's nothing at all ostentatious about the girls' dressing, dear," said his mother's voice in his ear. "And I noticed they all put on their simplest clothes for to-night—as ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... turning point in many a young man's career. But it is true that the lack of thrift is one of the greatest curses of modern civilization. Extravagance, ostentatious display, a desire to outshine others, is a vice of our age, and especially of our country. Some one has said that "investigation would place at the head of the list of the cause of poverty, wastefulness inherited ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... too ostentatious and flaunted their new, green finery impudently and hid Neptune's satellite or—'twas cloudy, I could not see. Come, come, I must and thou, too, have sleep if the God thereof doth not wantonly spend too much time with thy mistress;—but thou shalt soon offset him and I may have, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... improper for Mr. Tutt to hurry off to the Tombs and bail out old Danny Lowry, a self-confessed lawbreaker, giving his own bond and the house on Twenty-third Street as security. Still more so, as more unblushingly ostentatious, was his taking the criminal over to Pont's and giving him the very best dinner that Signor Faccini, proprietor of that celebrated ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... garnished with grass green shutters, doors, and verandah. No doubt the interior is furnished with corresponding taste. There is generally one or more of these smart buildings in a Canadian village, standing forth with ostentatious splendour above its more ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... that I love. Instead of his bond for the money, I shall ask his promise never to have any thing more to do with race-horses or Newmarket; and his promise I shall think as good as if it were his bond. Now I am not throwing money away; I'm not doing an idle ostentatious thing, but one that may, and I hope will, be essentially useful. For, look you here, my good—look here, Mrs. Beaumont: a youth who finds himself encumbered with debt on coming to his estate is apt to think of freeing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 do ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... not ostentatious, and seemed well adapted as a social setting for Joseph Crawford and his family. It should have been inhabited by men and women in gala dress and with ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... had no desire for display or ostentatious extravagance, but he loved to please his children, and was sufficiently rewarded by their enjoyment of the ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... decent sort of kid, much (in the School House estimation) above the standard of Buller's day-room. He was a little rowdy and ostentatious, but had the justification of being really good at something. He was a promising half-back, and his cricket was so good that there was talk of his getting a trial for the School Eleven. Gordon and he got on rather well. But he was very young; under fifteen, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... inflammation and swelling that told the story of torn tendons and 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 ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... a mistake, is not it?" he says, somewhat gloomily, but loading himself at once, with ostentatious haste (in memory of my former reproof), with ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... There is no example of modesty, restraint, thrift, duty, or culture. Everything is sensual and ostentatious, and ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... and he ridiculed the 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.
... Egyptian disaffection might always be counted on, whichever of the two great powers held temporary possession of the country; and Mi-Ammon-Nut further courted the favour of the Egyptian princes, priests, and people, by an ostentatious display of zeal for their religion. Assyria had allowed the temples to fall into decay; the statues of the gods had in some instances been cast down, the temple revenues confiscated, the priests restrained in their conduct of the religious worship. Mi-Ammon-Nut proclaimed ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Ann's self; and finally, but most 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 the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... me away. Only, they made such a fuss about the watching"—she caught her breath—"it might be ostentatious from that point of view, too. Oh, George"—she reached for his hand—"we're two little orphans moving in worlds not realized, and we shall make some bad breaks. But we're going to have ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 go to intercept the invader. Behind ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... than this was 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 decay of a true sense of national ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... one would not have imagined, was grown excessively luxurious in his habits having given himself over to self-indulgence and pleasure, and from a moderate and temperate, became suddenly a sumptuous and ostentatious liver, so that this very thing gained Pompey great reputation and goodwill, as he made himself somewhat specially an example of frugality, although that virtue was habitual in him, and required no great industry to exercise it, as he was naturally inclined to temperance, and no ways inordinate in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... laid particular stress, and I thank her here publicly for her pertinacity. It has saved me from the slough of utter carelessness.) Barring the single blue necktie and the pajamas, I drifted into and have stuck to blacks and browns and the least ostentatious cuts until my own wife and children have felt called upon to ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... This modest character for his long-cherished project did not suit Mr. Macaulay, and unmindful of the adage that there may be a slip betwixt the cup and the lip, he not merely delayed the execution of his visit, but he made ostentatious preparations for an elaborate mission, and he engaged many persons with scientific qualifications to accompany him, with the view of examining the mineral resources of Tibet. The Chinese themselves did not like, and had never contemplated, such a mission, but their dissatisfaction was slight ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Even the enlightened Jew placed a great deal of stress upon the ceremonies of his law, saw in them a great deal of virtue and efficacy; the gross and vulgar had scarcely anything else; and the hypocritical and ostentatious magnified them above measure, as being the instruments of their own reputation and influence. The Christian scheme, without formally repealing the Levitical code, lowered its estimation extremely. In the place of strictness and zeal in performing ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... his polished guests—miserable worms like himself—of uttering a word of thanksgiving to the great Dispenser of all the blessings bestowed on him? Should a bishop, or some high dignitary of the church, be present, then perhaps, in an ostentatious tone, he is requested to ask a blessing on the banquet; and grace for once is uttered in an audible voice. Far be it from me to say that this is always the case, but who can deny that it is too often so? My young friends, I have learned many things in my voyage ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of superfluous and ostentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what is possible, than what ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... comfortable life for another fifteen years, or even more. I could add no information to this beyond anatomical or medical details, which would leave expectation at precisely the same point." Lydgate's instinct was fine enough to tell him that plain speech, quite free from ostentatious caution, would be felt by Mr. Casaubon ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Wiggins 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
... and communities that are seldom disturbed by grave offences against the criminal law, but none which can insure itself against the affronts, enmities, wounded sensibilities, rankling grievances, occasioned by incivility and rudeness. Moreover, there are persons entirely free from vice, perhaps ostentatious in the qualities which are the opposites of vices, and not deficient in charitable labors and gifts, who cultivate discourtesy, are acrid or bitter in their very deeds of charity, and carry into ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... ancients understood it in the delicate plaits of Greek chiton and tunic, in the grand folds of Roman toga, the fifteenth century could not show; it knew only the stiff, scanty raiment of the active classes, the shapeless masses of lined cloth of the merchants and magistrates, the prudish and ostentatious starched dress of the women, and the coarse, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... old car he got the oars of the old flat bottom boat belonging to the troop. He also procured a black marking stick used for marking scout signs on rocks, and a pasteboard target on the back of which he printed in ostentatious lettering. ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... included in Sattwa or Goodness are gladness, cheerfulness, enthusiasm, fame, righteousness, contentment, faith, sincerity, liberality, and lordship. The nine properties included in Rajas or Passion are belief in the deities, (ostentatious) charity, enjoyment and endurance of happiness and sorrow, disunion, exhibition of manliness, lust and wrath, intoxication, pride, malice, and disposition to revile. The eight qualities included ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of his table that he was agreeable and brilliant. He was, in fact, a man who had no domestic life; a courtier, like Lord Hervey, but without Lord Hervey's consistency. He was, in truth, a type of that era in England: vulgar in aims; dissolute in conduct; ostentatious, vain-glorious—of a low, ephemeral ambition; but at the same time talented, acute, and lavish to the lettered. The public is now the patron of the gifted. What writer cares for individual opinion, except as it tends to sweep up ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... is applied to three cases, of which we have to deal with two. Our Lord speaks first of ostentatious almsgiving. Note that we are not to take 'blowing the trumpets' as actual fact. Nobody would do that in a synagogue. The meaning of all attempts, however concealed, to draw attention to one's beneficence, is just what the ear-splitting blast would be; and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... proportion as the Puritans laid them down; and as the tresses of the Cavaliers waved more luxuriantly, the hair of the Roundheads was more scrupulously shorn. And the same instinctive exaggeration was constantly extending into manners and morals also. Both sides became ostentatious; the one made the most of its dissoluteness, and the other of its decorum. The reproachful names applied derisively to the two parties became fixed distinctions. The word "Roundhead" was first used early in 1642, though whether it originated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... description; but as though wishing to show him the double aspect of his life, Balzac, after willingly exhibiting in detail all the luxury of his boudoir, led him to a corner recess, necessitated by the rounded form of one side of the room; and there, hidden behind the ostentatious decoration, there was nothing but a narrow iron cot, a table and a chair; ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... for his total freedom from cant. He is a rough self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is not. There is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go much upon humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors, what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about himself, 'the respect due unto thee.' In a life-and-death ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the friars to the back, and made his own and the queen's rooms the most prominent part of the whole building, and one cannot but feel that, though a monastery had to be built to fulfil a vow, the king was actuated not so much by religious zeal as by an ostentatious megalomania which led him to try and surpass the size ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... that should be shown without ostentation." Beatrice laughed. "And you are decidedly ostentatious at the present moment. It would interest mamma and me very much to know the object ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... the unendurably long meal, served with ostentatious profusion, was at an end. Miss Meadowcroft rose with her ghostly solemnity, and granted me my dismissal ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... people, on the other hand, must have been braggers born. Never was such boasting! Such ostentatious display of practice! It was a wonder they did not challenge all England. Yet we firmly resolved not to decline the combat; and one of the most spirited of the new growth, William Grey by name, and a farmer's son by station, took ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... money according as you think proper, and if you wish to favor me do not bestow any of it toward public collections. I dislike this ostentatious ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... of wealth, the men who control these great corporations— these great mills—give millions away in ostentatious charity. They send missionaries to foreign lands. They endow schools and universities and allow the men who earned the surplus to die in want. I believe in no charity that is founded on robbery. I have no admiration ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... improved in respect, at least, to appearances, may be fairly concluded from the fact that no example of a similar ostentatious display of luxury is ever now exhibited by persons in the same position as Mademoiselle Duthe; and that if the same folly that enabled her to indulge in such extravagance still prevails, a sense of decency prevents all public display of wealth so acquired. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... marquis carefully concealed his gifts, and expressed uneasiness when they were known or blazed abroad; being more anxious to serve the necessities of those to whom he made them, than to make an ostentatious display of his munificence. One example of this is worthy of being mentioned. He learnt that one of his soldiers had lost a horse, on which occasion he went to a tennis-court belonging to his house, expecting to meet the soldier in that place, carrying ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... was banging doors and slatting tin pails about furiously to keep up an ostentatious show of ill humor. She tried her best to grunt with displeasure when Gay, seated in a wash-tub, crowed and beat the water with her dimpled hands, so that it splashed all over the carpet; but all the time there ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... public equanimity is prone to violent antic bobbings on occasions when, for example, an ostentatious garment shall appear disdainful our class and ourself, and coin of the realm has not usurped command of one of the scales: thus a fairly pleasant answer, cast in persuasive features, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... uncommon vigour, vigilance, and address. He detected the chevalier's scheme while it was yet in embryo, and gave such early notice of it as enabled the king of Great Britain to take effectual measures for defeating the design. All the pretender's interest in France expired with Louis XIV., that ostentatious tyrant, who had for above half a century sacrificed the repose of Christendom to his insatiate vanity and ambition. At his death, which happened on the first day of September, the regency of the kingdom devolved to the duke of Orleans, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the Royal Museum (1586-1615) designs of considerable dignity, in some respects superior to his papal residences in Rome. In suburban villas, like the Albani and Borghese villas near Rome, the ostentatious style of the Decline found free and ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... offenders. They fix the idea that this or that alleged statesman, this or that President or politician or set of politicians, have been the dominating factors in the decision and sway of public affairs. No greater error could be formulated. Behind the ostentatious and imposing public personages of the different periods, the arbiters of laws and policies have been the men of property. They it was who really ruled both the arena and the arcana ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... sham things, of what kind soever, militate against good taste,) or else, to make the most of our scarf, we fill up the aperture of the waistcoat with an ambitious quantity of drapery, and we stick therein an enormous and obtrusively ostentatious pin. This is both vulgar and foolish. If we want a stock, it should be perfectly plain—a la militaire, for it is, in truth, an article of military attire, worn for the express purpose of giving stiffness and smartness to the figure. If we want a scarf, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... 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 mater for observing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... collapse of his invalid figure. When she had satisfied herself that his sleep was natural, she busied herself softly in arranging the miserable apartment. With a few feminine touches she removed the slovenliness of misery, and placed the loose material and ostentatious evidences of his work on one side. Finding that he still slept, and knowing the importance of this natural medication, she placed the refreshment she had brought by his side and noiselessly quitted the apartment. Hurrying ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... 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, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... root to root, dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with a suspicious eye. He has a very perk, almost comical look. His tail stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, clear his throat; but sits there on the log and pours out his music, looking straight before him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... with thick ivy and wall flowers. The pedlar sat on a large gray stone, with his red cap on and his brown fingers adorned with splendid rings, and he spread them out and waved his hands to the people with ostentatious ceremony. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... antagonists. They are both models of manly beauty. The blacksmith, though more awkward in his motions, has a cool, determined look about him. The Brahmin, conscious of his reputation, walks quickly up, with a smile of rather ostentatious condescension on his finely cut features, and offers his hand to the blacksmith. The little man is evidently suspicious. He thinks this may be a deeply laid trap to get a grip upon him. Nor does he like the bland patronising manner of 'Roopuarain,' ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... it was Raffles's hand that they had, but now I was in the hall among them. A red-faced barrel of a boy did all the holding, one hand round the wrist, the other palm to palm, and his knees braced up against the panel. Another was rendering ostentatious but ineffectual aid, and three or four others danced about in their pyjamas. After all, they were not more than four to one. I had raised my voice, so that Raffles might hear me and take heart, and now I raised it again. ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Eliza" letters, the list of ladies who seem to have kindled flames in that susceptible breast is almost as long and more real than the roll of mistresses immortalized by Horace. How Mrs. Sterne at first bore herself under her husband's ostentatious neglect there is no direct evidence to show. That she ultimately took refuge in indifference we can perceive, but it is to be feared that she was not always able to maintain the attitude of contemptuous composure. So, at least, we may suspect from the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... most ostentatious of patricians, and autocrat of bons-vivants, had a mountain cut through in the neighborhood of Naples, so as to open a canal, and bring up the sea and its fishes to the centre of the gardens of his sumptuous villa. So Cicero ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... eloquence was specious, dignified, and persuasive. And he blended with it a lofty enthusiasm, that awed those, whom familiarity might have emboldened, and silenced his enemies. He was simple of demeanour, and ostentatious of munificence. And under these plausible virtues he screened the indulgence of his constitutional propensities. The number of his concubines and his wives has been ambitiously celebrated by Christian writers. He sometimes acquired them by violence and injustice; and he frequently dismissed ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... and after he had been seated some little time, another person was ushered into the same pew with him. The stranger pulled out of his pocket a prayer-book, and offered to share it with the Cantab, though he perceived he had one in his hand. This courtesy proceeded from a mere ostentatious display of his learning, as it proved to be in Latin. The Cantab immediately declined the offer by saying, "Sir, I read nothing ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... no more at present, but I think it works in the dark. The study was dark, remember, save for the bright patch beneath the reading-lamp. I have observed that the rear of this house is ivy-covered right up to and above your bedroom. Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my removal, at any rate—if ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... the weather, Mr Pottle?" said I to the quarter- master, as he left the boatswain and strolled aft from the waist, where the two had been jogging fore and aft together for the last half-hour, and regarding the sky every few minutes with somewhat ostentatious glances of anxiety. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... began with a cocktail, and the young man was the only one of the brilliant company who did not drink it. He was not ostentatious in his refusal, but merely lifted the glass to his lips and then set it down with the others. Nor did he take any wine throughout the dinner. The incident was noticed by only a few, and those few chanced to meet at a club the next ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... I said to him one day, on his making an ostentatious display of change, as he called it; he sneered with a most unchildish expression of countenance, and replied, "I guess 'twould be a bad job for I, if that was all I'd ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... as is natural in the case of persons not altogether happy or well suited in their conditions, too apt to prove the folly of contentment, if he found any one who confessed to that weakness. In the office his rather ostentatious efficiency annoyed those who took their own work more lightly, and, if they foretold his advancement, it was not altogether sympathetically. Indeed, he appeared to be rather a hard and self-sufficient young man, with a queer temper, and manners ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the wonderful difference between the servile manner in which he had offered his hand in my new prosperity, saying, "May I?" and the ostentatious clemency with which he had just now exhibited the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... till bedtime came, and disrobement, and prayers even more mechanical than usual, and lastly bed itself without so much as a giraffe under the pillow. Harold had grunted himself between the sheets with an ostentatious pretence of overpowering fatigue; but I noticed that he pulled his pillow forward and propped his head against the brass bars of his crib, and, as I was acquainted with most of his tricks and subterfuges, it was easy for me to gather that a painful ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... had dressed them for their first real party—not a play-party, as the saying went down our way, but a regular dancing party, corresponding to a debut in some more ostentatious and less favoured communities. It was Aunt Sharley who had skimped and scrimped to make the available funds cover the necessary expenses of the little household in those two or three lean years succeeding their mother's ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... begun to like 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 her ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... four miles out of town,—and stage coach routes were established to transport the heads of such families to and from business either the year around or for the summer months. These stages or the private carriages of the more ostentatious were, of course, horse-drawn which limited the distance which ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... struggles of Opposition grew more resolute as the hope of success came nearer, and the Government began to feel the effects of this perpetual assault, in the sudden neutrality of some of its most ostentatious champions, and in the general reserve of its supporters in the House. Even the superb perseverance of Pitt was beginning to be weary of a contest, in which victory lost its fruits on the one side, while defeat seemed only to give fresh vigour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... income, which were usually squandered in rivalry with the boyardesses, in jewellery, dress, and other luxuries.[160] It is said that one of the princesses, being offended with a lady of rank for excelling her in the ostentatious richness of her dress and personal adornments, caused her to be exiled; and that when she had secured a sufficiently large sum to purchase a more magnificent apparel than her rival, she allowed her to return to court, in order that she might enjoy her humiliation. The complaints of the oppressed ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... amuse yourself by sending postal orders to people whose addresses look pathetic in the telephone book, or by forgetting to take away the parcels you have bought in poor little shops? Or by standing and looking with ostentatious respect at boy scouts on the march, always bearing in mind that these, in their own eyes, are not little boys trotting behind a disguised curate, but British Troops on the Move? Just two pleased eyes in a crowd, just a hundred pounds dropped from heaven ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... the iron of the Philistine giant in the effort to bring him to reason. These are the ostentatious violences of a missionary, who would fain save his enemy alive, where a grimmer purpose is glad to employ a more silent weapon and strike but once. The callousness of a thick-witted auditory lays the need for coarse method on the gentlest soul resolved to stir them. But he whose message is for ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... object of the conference, but the great concern of life.[382] Two nations, floundering in hopeless bankruptcy, yet found money enough to lavish upon costly but unmeaning pageants, while many a noble, to satisfy an ostentatious display, made drafts which an impoverished purse was little able to honor. The banquets and jousts, the triumphal arches with their flattering inscriptions, the shows in which allegory revelled almost to madness—all have been faithfully narrated with a minuteness worthy of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... said the old gentleman, also rising, and placing Phronsie on her feet, observing ostentatious care to keep her hand. "My house is open to you, Eunice," with a wave of his disengaged hand in old-time hospitality, "but of course you ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... Casaubon interprets this in the mildest sense, and confesses his author was not good at turning things into a pleasant ridicule, or, in other words, that he was not a laughable writer. That he was ineptus, indeed, but that was non aptissimus ad jocandum; but that he was ostentatious of his learning, that by Scaliger's good favour he denies. Persius showed his learning, but was no boaster of it; he did ostendere, but not ostentare; and so, he says, did Scaliger (where, methinks, Casaubon turns it handsomely upon that supercilious critic, and silently ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... they are rivall'd by more of the same Ambition, who will not let the rest of the Company be particular: But in the Name of the whole Congregation where I was, I desire you to keep these agreeable Disturbances out of the City, where Sobriety of Manners is still preserv'd, and all glaring and ostentatious Behaviour, even in things laudable, discountenanced. I wish you may never see the Phantom, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... them, and was preparing for their reception at Dover, not soldiers, but the friendly assistance of his servant, Mr. Day, the Clerk of the Passage. In true Cavalier fashion the Earl of Rochester and his comrades approached our shores, with ostentatious contempt of danger. They came not in a small party, dropping over one by one, selecting different and out-of-the-way spots for landing, but almost in a body, in quick succession, they alighted at Dover. That was the most public port they could have chosen; and being courtier Cavaliers, long resident ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... 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, and ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... only Irish and agreeable, it is also frank and as it were inviting conference. This goes with a style and gesture which can only be described as at once very casual and very emphatic. He assumes that bodily supremacy which goes with oratory, but he assumes it with almost ostentatious carelessness; he throws back the head, but loosely and laughingly. He is at once swaggering and yet shrugging his shoulders, as if to drop from them the mantle of the orator which he has confidently assumed. Lastly, no man ever used voice or gesture better for the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... who now entered, was a small, pug-nosed, chubby man, of ostentatious manners, and high pretensions to skill and knowledge in his profession; though, in fact, he was but a quack, and of that most dangerous class, too, who dip into books rather to acquire learned terms than to study ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... oracle announced that the Emperor must shortly die unless a voluntary victim could be found to take upon himself the doom with which he was threatened; and that Antinous unhesitatingly laid down his life for his patron. "Greater love hath no man than this," and Hadrian's ostentatious lamentation, and even his deification of his friend, seems puerile in comparison with the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... was almost perfection in its way; but there was something of that ostentatious simplicity whereby the parvenu endeavours sometimes to escape from the vulgar glitter of his wealth. The chairs and tables were of unpolished oak, and of a rustic fashion. There were no pictures, but the walls of the dining-room were covered with majolica panels of a pale gray ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... bagwigs of composers. Handel's was not a bagwig, which was simply so named from the little stuffed black silk watch-pocket that hung down behind the back of the wearer. Such were Haydn's and Mozart's—much less influential on the character: much less ostentatious in themselves: not towering so high, nor rolling down in following curls so low as to overlay the nature of the brain within. But Handel wore the Sir Godfrey Kneller wig: greatest of wigs: one of which some great General ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... though it has yet a great part to 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 ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... 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 ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... that the journey was to be commenced on the morrow, without much preparation, or any thing like an ostentatious style of travelling; they themselves would set out in the old family coach, accompanied by his secretary, Senor Roberto, and would be followed by another carriage containing their maid, Fernando, his valet, and Anselmo, a trusty servant. He intended to take with them a supply of comforts indispensable ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... Gramercy Park, was one of those dignified, old-fashioned residences that still remain in New York to remind our vulgar, ostentatious nouveaux riches of the days when culture and refinement counted for something more than mere wealth. Overlooking the railed-in square with its green lawns, pretty winding paths and well-dressed children romping at play, it had a high stoop which opened ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... 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 or tendering any sympathy or assistance, she just let her huge bundle drop from her shoulders ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... would do that," said Percy Saville, who had just done it. "Certainly there is a good deal of truth in the sketch of the ostentatious, over-dressed Johnsons who, as everybody knows, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... remained haughty and inaccessible as a goddess. At seventeen Vaninka's education was finished, and her governess who had suffered in health through the severe climate of St. Petersburg, requested permission to leave. This desire was granted with the ostentatious recognition of which the Russian nobility are the last representatives in Europe. Thus Vaninka was left alone, with nothing but her father's blind adoration to direct her. She was his only daughter, as we have mentioned, and he thought her ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... slipped away, Barker felt his heart sink. Carter had not only bluntly forestalled him with the news and taken away his excuse for a confidential interview, but had put an ostentatious construction on his visit. What could she think of him now? He stood ashamed and embarrassed ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... she had given up eating sweets, because both were murderous to her complexion. Not that Hippisley gave her any cause. He had ceased to cultivate the society of young and pretty ladies, and devoted himself with almost ostentatious fidelity to Lena. Their affair had become irreproachable with time; it had the permanence of a successful marriage without the unflattering element of legal obligation. And he had kept his secretary. Lena had left off ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... be perfectly right. But the esteem, the inclination of the public for science, and the frequent lively expression of that sentiment, are of high importance to it, and play a great part in its history. The times for that sympathy, somewhat ostentatious and frivolous as it may be, have always been, as regards sciences, times of impulse and progress, and, regarding things in their totality, natural history and chemistry profited by the social existence of M. de Buffon and of M. Lavoisier as much as by their discoveries" [M. Guizot, Melanges biographiques, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... desire a more splendid theatre. I can here be useful to my family—to my district. I can live cheaply, increase my fortune, be upon a par with the best of my neighbors, which I prefer to the feasts of your ostentatious mayor or the more real luxury of Phil Brasher's Table. Our population is small, our society contracted, but we are growing rapidly in numbers; and the society we have is in my opinion and to my taste fully equal to anything ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... and a great deal of red in the hangings and furniture covering will make a cheerful or pleasant room. Red absorbs light and is also an irritant to the eyes and nerves, and, unless it is used with great skill, it is apt to look extremely commonplace and ugly or like an ostentatious hotel or public building. Few of us have large enough houses to make it possible to use red in great amounts, and it is well for the average person to shun it and remember that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a red wall will ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... 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 to materialise and lower the character, and Jews have ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... daisy? The little word already had a wonderful and living sound—soft, sweet, and beautiful. But to tell the truth about this ordinary masterpiece was no easy matter. An ostentatious lily, a blazing rose, a wayward hyacinth, a mass of showy wisteria— advertised, notorious flowers—presented fewer difficulties. A daisy seemed too simple to be told, its mystery and honour too humble for proud human minds to understand. So he answered gently, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood |
