"Ostentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whose fortunes requyred, and whose spiritts made them superiour to ordinary obligations; which yett they were contented to receave from him, because his bountyes were so generously distributed, and so much without vanity and ostentation, that except from those few persons from whome he sometimes receaved the characters of fitt objectes for his benefitts, or whome he intrusted for the more secrett derivinge it to them, he did all he could that the persons ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... as he did, her pretty willfulness at last; she would understand what a true friend Stacy was to him. It was with unfeigned satisfaction that he followed them in to dinner as she leaned upon his guest's arm, chatting confidentially. He was only uneasy because her manner had a slight ostentation. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... be it except in name and motherly tenderness. When we had seen all, she stood a moment before us, and as one of the coarse woolen lappets of her cape had hidden it, she drew out a heavy crucifix of gold, and placed it in sight, with a heavenly little ostentation, over her heart. Sweet and beautiful vanity! An angel could have done it without harm, but she blushed repentance, and glided away with downcast ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... was at the head of a regularly constituted army and could only receive communications under his proper title of general. Those who knew General Washington, as I afterwards had the means of doing, were aware that this was not owing to pride or ostentation, but from the importance in the critical position in which he was placed of keeping up his character and of asserting the legality of the cause in which he was engaged. Whatever might have been then said of that truly great man, ample justice will be done him ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... and polite always, yet there was no flavor of servility in this most benign trait of character. It was bred in his bone and was fostered by the teachings of his church. Along with this went a bonhomie and a lightheartedness, a touch of personal vanity, with a liking for display and ostentation, which unhappily did not make for thrift. The habitant "enjoys what he has got," writes Charlevoix, "and often makes a display of what he has not got." He was also fond of honors, even minor ones, and plumed himself on the slightest recognition from ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... 'every three days' (Revised Version), and that the use of leaven in burnt offerings was prohibited by it, and also that to call for freewill offerings was to turn spontaneousness into something like compulsion, and to bring ostentation into worship. All these characteristics spoiled the apparent religiousness, over and above the initial evil of disobedience, and warrant Amos's crushing equation, 'Your worship rebellion.' All are driven ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... exchanged that respectable residence for a large mansion in Hamilton Place; and his sober dinners were succeeded by splendid banquets. Naturally, he had no taste for such things; his mind was too nervous, and his temper too hard, to take pleasure in luxury or ostentation. But now, as ever he acted upon a system. Living in a country governed by the mightiest and wealthiest aristocracy in the world, which, from the first class almost to the lowest, ostentation pervades,—the very backbone and marrow of society,—he felt that to fall far short of his rivals in ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... awhile: And let my counsell sway you in this case, Your daughter heere the Princesse (left for dead) Let her awhile be secretly kept in, And publish it, that she is dead indeed: Maintaine a mourning ostentation, And on your Families old monument, Hang mournfull Epitaphes, and do all rites, That appertaine ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the priest, except, perhaps, the entire absence of beard, the more remarkable upon so manly a countenance. His chin, newly shaved, rested on a large and elevated black cravat, tied with a military ostentation which reminded the beholder, that this abbe-marquis this celebrated preacher—now one of the most active and influential chiefs of his order, had commanded a regiment of hussars upon the Restoration, and had fought in aid of the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... multiply their likeness in statues of bronze and marble; nor are they satisfied unless those statues are covered with plates of gold, an honorable distinction, first granted to Achilius the consul, after he had subdued by his arms and counsels the power of King Antiochus. The ostentation of displaying, of magnifying perhaps, the rent-roll of the estates which they possess in all the provinces, from the rising to the setting sun, provokes the just resentment of every man who recollects that their poor ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... no intention of learning on our return that any feature of our respective wardrobes had been forgotten; since we had decided not to take either of our personal servants, for the reason that we thought to do so might possibly be regarded as an ostentation. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... of his words and deeds imagine that he intended his admonition in the sixth chapter of Matthew to be taken as a prohibition of public worship or of social prayer. Those words were simply a reproof of ostentation in worship. The Pharisees, whose conduct he is castigating, "loved to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they might be seen of men." It was a private and personal prayer, offered in a public place, to advertise the devotion ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... that something more was incumbent on him than merely doing his duty in this particular—he must, for the good of others, let it be known, without ostentation, that his duty was done. Abstaining, he said to himself, has done me good; the banishment of spirituous liquors would do my country good; what is every man's duty is my duty; and therefore, in love to my brethren, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... distributing the imports, ministering to the proprietors as domestic servants, or by acting, preaching, paving, lighting, housebuilding, and the rest; and some of these, as the capitalist comes to regard ostentation as vulgar, and to enjoy a simpler life, will employ fewer and fewer people. A vast proletariat, beginning with a nucleus of those formerly employed in export trades, with their multiplying progeny, will be out of employment permanently. They will ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... fellow-feeling there is between the unfortunate! The poor man will seek in vain for true compassion at the rich man's doors; what he receives is a sacrifice to ostentation and not true benevolence; and the man in sorrow should not look for pity from one to whom sorrow is unknown, if there be such ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... celebrated himself for his achievement. The exuberant excrescence of his diction I have often lopped, his triumphant exultations over Pope and Howe I have sometimes suppressed, and his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed; but I have in some places shown him, as he would have shown himself, for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... A pleasant custom Table manners Suggestions for table etiquette The table Its appearance and appointments The table an educator in the household A well ordered table an incentive to good manners Ostentation not necessary Setting the table The sub-cover Napkins The center piece Arrangement of dishes "Dishing up" Setting the table over night Warming the dishes The service of meals A capital idea Fruit as the first course at breakfast ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... greatness in any state, is to have a race of military men. Neither is money the sinews of war (as it is trivially said), where the sinews of men's arms, in base and effeminate people, are failing. For Solon said well to Croesus (when in ostentation he showed him his gold), Sir, if any other come, that hath better iron, than you, he will be master of all this gold. Therefore let any prince or state think solely of his forces, except his militia ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... should return to plain narration, And thus my narrative proceeds:—Dudu, With every kindness short of ostentation, Show'd Juan, or Juanna, through and through This labyrinth of females, and each station Described—what 's strange—in words extremely few: I have but one simile, and that 's a blunder, For wordless woman, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... grade of society that judge Clemens and his family belonged, but his means no longer enabled him to provide either the comforts or the ostentation of his class. He settled his family and belongings in a portion of a house on Hill Street—the Pavey Hotel; his merchandise he established modestly on Main Street, with Orion, in a new suit of clothes, as clerk. Possibly the clothes gave Orion a renewed ambition for ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... that omitted no exertion or sacrifice. They showed a want of tact, however, in carrying their street demonstrations for their favorite to excess; they crowded together at the Richmond House, making that hotel the Seward headquarters; with too much ostentation they marched every day to the convention with music and banners; and when mention was made of doubtful States, their more headlong members talked altogether too much of the campaign funds they intended to raise. All this occasioned a reaction—a certain mental protest among ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... a Philosopher nor talk much among the unlearned about Principles, but do that which follows from them. Thus at a banquet, do not discuss how people ought to eat; but eat as you ought. Remember that Socrates thus entirely avoided ostentation. Men would come to him desiring to be recommended to philosophers, and he would conduct them thither himself—so well did he bear being overlooked. Accordingly if any talk concerning principles should arise among the unlearned, be you for the most part silent. For you run great ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... he had seen physicians' bills containing things of which no man who walked warily before God could approve. Concerning astrological predictions, physiognomy, divination by dreams, and otherwise, he would say, if it did not look like ostentation, he had seldom failed, but had often been of service; and to those who came to him he would guarantee satisfaction. Nor would he be ashamed to avow his willingness to practise rare secrets, for the help, conservation, and augmentation of beauty and comeliness; an endowment ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... thousand guineas for a foal, and bids twenty thousand pounds for one two-year-old filly; his house costs a million or thereabouts. Minor plutocrats swarm among us, and they all exhibit their wealth with every available kind of ostentation; yet that obstinate question remains to be answered—"Are we wealthy?" We may give the proletarians good advice and recommend them to employ no extreme talk and no extreme measures; but there is the new disposition, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... her front as straight as a string, her reserve regiments in columns doubled on the center, following in true subordination; no braying of brass to apprise the enemy, no fifing and drumming to amuse him; no ostentation of gaudy flags; no nonsense. This ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... bill such as he hoped might settle the long-agitated question, without doing more violence than was necessary to the feelings of those whose opposition or reluctance he was aware he should have to encounter: among whom was the King himself, who, though thirty years before he had, with an ostentation rather unbecoming, considering his position, put himself forward as an advocate of Emancipation, had subsequently changed his opinion, and had recently taken more than one occasion to declare that he had never doubted that, as the head and protector ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... simplest thing in the world. It is found in many a home with carpetless floors and pictureless walls. It knows neither rank, station, nor color, nor does it recognize wealth. It only demands that it live with a contented mind and pure heart. It will not live with ostentation; it flees from pretense; it loves the simple life; it insists upon a sweet, healthful, natural environment. It hates the forced and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... shell and richly gilded. In this he used to drive around, every afternoon, amid the gapes of the populace. It is evident that, once having tasted the fruit of notoriety, he was loath to fall back on simpler fare. He had become a prey to the love of absurd ostentation. A lively example of dandyism unrestrained by taste, he parodied in his person the foibles of Mr. Brummell and the King. His diamonds and his equipage and other follies became the gossip of every newspaper in England. Nor did a day pass without the publication of some ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... fevered mental condition which subjects all finer feelings and holier aspirations to the acquisition of gold and the gratification of carnal appetites, and which is manifest in such a startling degree in the gambler's world, which to dignify we call the realm of speculation; the desire for vulgar ostentation and luxurious indulgence, in a word the fatal fever for gold which has infested the social atmosphere, and taken possession of hundreds of thousands of our people, chilling their hearts, benumbing their conscience, choking all divine impulses and refined sensibilities; the cowardice ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... daily with her means of knowing the people round about her. She gave much time to them and thought; visited from house to house, without ostentation; was awestricken by that spectacle of the poverty which we have with us always, of which the sight rebukes our selfish griefs into silence, the thought compels us to charity, humility, and devotion. The priests of our various creeds, who elsewhere are ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... travellers reached Tagelel. From this place there was little danger in their proceeding singly, and it was agreed, in consequence of the low state of their finances, that they should separate, in order to try what each might be able to accomplish single-handed and without ostentation, till new supplies ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... ridiculous, in this strange confusion of two different states of being. These passions of masters, when they pass into the souls of menials, assume the natural dimensions of the place they occupy—they are contracted and lowered. What was pride in the former becomes puerile vanity and paltry ostentation in the latter. The servants of a great man are commonly most punctilious as to the marks of respect due to him, and they attach more importance to his slightest privileges than he does himself. In France a few of these old ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... great Master tells us, to be seen of Men; and for that Reason, probably, it is, that there are so few secret Corbans offered up to Heaven, and not to the World; and if this be so, 'tis plain, that People give more for the Ostentation of having given, than the good they hope to get done by it, and therefore you must have met ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... eating apples in school-time, for which he had been often rebuked. One day, having particularly pleased the master, the latter, who was eating apples himself, and who would now and then with great ostentation present a boy with some half-penny token of his mansuetude, called out to his favorite of the moment: "Le Grice, here is an apple for you." Le Grice, who felt his dignity hurt as a Grecian, but was more ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the liberty of recommending him to you, to shorten those formal approaches, which the same office would otherwise expose him to, in making your acquaintance. He is a great enemy to formality, etiquette, ostentation, and luxury. He goes with the best dispositions to cultivate society, without poisoning it by ill example. He is sensible, disposed to view things favorably, and being well acquainted with the constitution ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... woman, the Drinker of Life, but she had at least drunken without ostentation, and if she murdered with her own large hands, or staked men and women from a sheer lust of cruelty, there were none alive ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... of American life is for simplicity and absence of ostentation. We have no parade of office: our public men wear no robes, no stars, garters, collars, etc.; and it would, therefore, be in good taste in our women to cultivate simple styles of dress. Now I object to ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... up front, Ribiera," said Bell dryly. "No ostentation, please. Now, I hope your servants haven't summoned the police, because they might want to stop me from marching you out there with a gun in the small of your back. And that would be deplorable, Ribiera. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... began to exalt himself; others, that were big with desires of ostentation, did soon follow his example, making themselves captains and heads of the people, and built them strong holds for the supportation of their glory. But they did it, as I said, by Nimrod's example; wherefore it is said they went "out of that land." Just thus it was at the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... upon his carriage and the buttons of his coachman, and both crest and motto on his writing-paper. The arms he hugged to himself, partly because, not having paid for them, he thought it would look ostentatious to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and partly because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he found it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles on a sable ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fortune. The latter was at this time by no means ample; but, with the good sense and taste which mark his character, he preserved in his domestic arrangements the dignity of a literary and public man, without any of the ostentation of magnificence which often distinguished the candidate ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... undergone some changes of late years, mostly in the direction of simplicity. Meaningless display and ostentation should be avoided, and, if a girl is marrying into a family much better endowed in worldly goods than her own, she should have no false pride in insisting on simple festivities and in preventing her family from incurring expense that they cannot afford. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... directly under the garret. One day, without consulting Legree, she suddenly took it upon her, with some considerable ostentation, to change all the furniture and appurtenances of the room to one at some considerable distance. The under-servants, who were called on to effect this movement, were running and bustling about with great zeal and confusion, when Legree ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Authors, who are in a manner his makers and masters, sit there contented—why should not he? 'He is used to show himself.' That, then, is the very reason he should conceal his person at other times. A habit of ostentation should not be reduced to a principle. If I had seen the late Gentleman Lewis fluttering in a prominent situation in the boxes, I should have been puzzled whether to think of him as the Copper Captain, or as Bobadil, or Ranger, or Young Rapid, or Lord Foppington, or ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the plainness of the furniture. A bright log-fire is burning on the hearth. There are a few good books too, and a few handsome prints; while some really valuable nick-nacks are set out, with pardonable ostentation, on a little table covered with crimson velvet. It is only cotton velvet, if you look close at it; but the things are pretty enough to catch the eye of all visitors; and Mrs. Heale, the Doctor's wife (who always calls Mrs. Vavasour "my lady," though she does not ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... vulgarizing taint of oddity. Reflection may satisfy us, as in the present case it did satisfy those persons who were best acquainted with Lord Carlisle's public character, that this eccentric step had been adopted, not in ostentation, with any view to its eccentricity, but in spite of its eccentricity, and from impulses of large prospective benignity that would not suffer itself to be defeated by ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... assuming airs of vast importance, as "voyageurs" in a new company, that was to eclipse the Northwest. The effect was complete. A French Canadian is too vain and mercurial a being to withstand the finery and ostentation of the feather. Numbers immediately pressed into the service. One must have an ostrich plume; another, a white feather with a red end; a third, a bunch of cock's tails. Thus all paraded about, in vainglorious style, more delighted with the feathers in their hats than with the money in their ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Montagu gave Mrs. Williams a small annuity. Croker's Boswell, pp. 458, 739. Miss Burney wrote of her:—'Allowing a little for parade and ostentation, which her power in wealth and rank in literature offer some excuse for, her conversation is very agreeable.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 325. See post, April 7, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... should be plain and decent (for I don't think the ostentation of buildings necessary or suitable to works of charity), and be built somewhere out of town for the sake of ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... was not all, and Gertie began again, this time on a slightly higher note, and with a little color in her face. Frank waited, quite simply and without ostentation. She finished. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... utensils and the guard dogs. But the Roumis themselves were to depart from the church on camel-back directly the marriage was accomplished. Domini, who had a native hatred of everything that savoured of ostentation, had wished for a tiny expedition, and would gladly have gone out into the desert with but one tent, Batouch and a servant to do the cooking. But the journey was to be long and indefinite, an aimless wandering through the land of liberty towards the south, without fixed purpose ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Although this was the great Jubilee year, the festivals of the carnival began none the less for that, and were conducted in a manner even more extravagant and licentious than usual; and the conqueror after the first day prepared a new display of ostentation, which he concealed under the veil of a masquerade. As he was pleased to identify himself with the glory, genius, and fortune of the great man whose name he bore, he resolved on a representation of the triumph of Julius ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... generally eaten than the wheaten loaf; this, with salt fish and vegetables, was the common food of the population. Economy in domestic life was universal. In their manners, their dress, their private dwellings, they were little disposed to ostentation or display. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... costumes. Scene-painting ought to be more rigorously true than any other kind of picture. Let there be no distraction, no extraneous suggestion, to interfere with the impression intended by the poet. Have you a salon to represent? Let it be that of a man of taste and no more: no ostentation and no gilding, unless the situation ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... others does not admit of ostentation and hypocrisy. We never allow our left hand to know what our right hand does in charity, nor do we boast of our helpful attitude toward our fellow men. It is well to make a point of this fact—in this world are many "ne'er-do-wells" who fail to profit by ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... look so ill, with his accustomed sensibility.... We had a long and serious conversation about his present situation, and the approaching termination of all his earthly prospects. He spoke of his death without any of the ostentation of philosophy, but with firmness as well as feeling, as an event likely to happen very soon, and which gave him concern chiefly from leaving his four children so young and unprotected, and his wife hourly expecting a fifth. He ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Power, the other's in their want of Desire to oppose him. The one enjoys the Summit of Fortune with the Luxury of a Persian, the other with the Moderation of a Spartan: One is made to oppress, the other to relieve the Oppressed: The one is satisfy'd with the Pomp and Ostentation of Power to prefer and debase his Inferiours, the other delighted only with the Cause and Foundation of it to cherish and protect 'em. To one therefore Religion is but a convenient Disguise, to the other a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the end of May, all was ready. Not without a feeling of regret I left my little room among the white myrtle blossoms and the oleander flowers. I kissed with humble ostentation my kind host's hand in presence of his servants, bade adieu to my patients, who now amounted to about fifty, shaking hands with all meekly and with religious equality of attention, and, mounted in a "trap" which looked like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... of the subjects under consideration. He shared in a very great degree the taste of his times for outward show and splendor; but in him it took a direction which led to something far higher than mere ostentation. The works of sculpture and architecture produced under his reign are monuments of a pure and severe taste; the capital of Prussia has seen none more beautiful. He complacently indulged in the contemplation of the greatness founded by his father, the possession of a territory four times as large ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... attended by Major Baron von Moltke, who described the emperor, empress, and their court in letters to his friends. "The empress," he says, "is of astonishing beauty, with a slight, elegant figure, and dressing with much taste and richness, but without ostentation. She is very talkative and lively,—much more so than is usual with persons occupying so high a position. The emperor impressed me by a sort of immobility of features, and the almost extinguished look of ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... down on life's journey with so many bags and parcels and boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of wealth and fashion,—suppose instead of all this, they should turn to quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, "plain living and ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... close friends of Doctor Craig's, an elderly couple whose name, if the Warnes had known, was one of the old names of the city, standing for the bluest of blue Knickerbocker blood, though for only moderate wealth and for no ostentation whatever. Georgiana had begged that no other guests be asked, being anxious, on her father's account, to have the whole affair over with the least possible agitation for him. To this ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... by the handful, and spent it with a lavish ostentation. Paul continued his habit of riding about in cabs and dining in hotels. It was a bad commercial training, but he was not at the time of life to think of that. The days and nights were full. There were both labour and enjoyment in them. Every week showed him a new town ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Napoleon was, but a more consistent one, because in his egotism he never forgot himself, not even among his mistresses. As grand monarque, the arbiter of all fortunes, the central sun of all glory, was he always figuring before the eyes of men. He never relaxed his habits of ceremony and ostentation, nor his vigilance as an administrator, nor his iron will, nor his thirst for power; so that he ruled as he wished until he died, in spite of the reverses of his sad old age, and without losing the respect of his subjects, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... his hand in his breast-pocket, in which, with his love of ostentation, he always carried a bundle of notes and some loose gold, and, as he held out his hand to Derrick, there was ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches[72]." "No flesh may glory in his presence;" "he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." The sudden vengeance by which the vain-glorious ostentation of Herod was punished, when, acquiescing in the servile adulation of an admiring multitude, "he gave not God the glory," is a ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the five objects of sense, desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, body consciousness, courage,—all this in brief hath been declared to be Kshetra in its modified form. Absence of vanity, absence of ostentation, abstention from injury, forgiveness, uprightness, devotion to preceptor, purity, constancy, self-restraint, indifference to objects of sense, absence of egoism, perception of the misery and evil of birth, death, decrepitude and disease,[261] ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Friends, nor that of his Dishes, was the Result of Pride or Ostentation. He took Delight in appearing to be, what he actually was, and not in seeming to be what he was not; and by that Means, got a greater real Character than he actually ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... who lived and fought without any ostentation, but who had high courage and used rare judgment. The fact that he had command of the forces in the West had much to do with their successes in subduing the hostile red man. Indeed, had not our army taught the Indians that it was never safe, and usually extremely dangerous, to go ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... Psammetichus, Corinth afterward regained its freedom. The Corinthians, in spite of every change in the population, retained their luxury to the last, and the epistles of Alciphron, in the second century after Christ, note the ostentation of the few and the poverty of the many. At the time now referred to, Corinth—the Genoa of Greece—was high in civilization, possessed of a considerable naval power, and in art and commerce was the sole rival on the Grecian continent to the graceful genius and extensive ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... promise, and how he and his son afterwards sunk before the discipline and bravery of the Europeans. The scene of just punishment which he so faithfully exhibited might be owing to his policy, his internal sense of right, and to the ostentation of displaying it before an Englishman of sense and intelligence, or to all of these motives mingled together—but in what proportions it is not for us ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... education and travel, he united a peculiar elegance of mind and manners, and the advantages of a pleasing person. It is said he possessed a pretty taste for the fine arts, and had himself attained some proficiency in poetry, music, and painting. His knowledge appeared without ostentation, and embellished by a diffidence that rarely accompanies so many talents and accomplishments, which left you to suppose more than appeared. His sentiments were elevated and inspired esteem, they had a softness that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... it to him, I can tell you! 'That's all ostentation,' I said. 'Why can't Regina and I begin life modestly? What do we want with a carriage to drive out in, and champagne on the table, and a footman to answer the door? We want to love each other and be happy. There are thousands of as good gentlemen as I am, in England, with wives and ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... children, his servants, his masters, and thereby gain incomparably greater merit than he can find by fulfilling vows to do works chosen by himself and not commanded by God. The foolish opinion of the common people and the ostentation of the Bulls[29] have brought it to pass that these vows of pilgrimages, fastings, prayers, and other works of the kind far outweigh in importance the works of God's Law, although we never have sufficient strength to do these last works. For my part, I could wish that there should not henceforth ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... gorgeous flunkey in powder and bright livery, with my lord's gentleman superadded in undertaker's evening trim, while the Earl himself wore his star and garter! Of course too the buffet and the table were loaded, with resplendent plate. That, scene of ostentation has been on the gray matter of my brain ever since young manhood, and I relieve myself now of the reminiscence for the first and last time. In another page I speak of Prince Astor's pure gold service ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that was almost like a confession of failure. Surely she loved him, and was ready to forgive him much: not for worlds would she have confessed to disillusion. And yet, now and again, when the rush and ostentation of their new life, with its monotony of dinners and dances—so little like that which she had anticipated as the future lot of a painter's wife—had left her rather weary, a trifle sad, she had thought suddenly of her old friend Philip Rainham, and the thought had solaced her. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... later years of his life, while living at Bristol, his hand was in every good work; and it was often felt where it was not seen. For he carefully avoided ostentation, and preferred doing his good in secret. He strongly disapproved of making charitable bequests by will, which he observed in many cases to have been the foundation of enormous abuses, but held it ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... other hand, had been born a feeling of sympathy for her host, that, for the present, overcame the contempt with which he had inspired her—a contempt scarcely lessened by the repulsive ostentation of his mourning. She alone ventured to minister to his wants and to beg him to partake of food and drink. Perhaps her attitude was due in a measure to the horror with which she herself had listened to the morning's ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... to the sun and the moon, and guided the pen when they wrote. Longman, the third, looked at the others over his shoulder. Goldband, the fourth, had a gold sash round his waist; and little Playman did nothing at all, and was the more proud. There was too much ostentation, and ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... uneasy; but neither Whig nor Tory had so much to fear as the Trimmer, who might not improbably find himself the common mark at which both parties would take aim. For these reasons Halifax determined to avoid all ostentation of power and influence, to disarm envy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach to himself by civilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be useful in the event of a counterrevolution. The next three months, he said, would be the time of trial. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are properly engaged to him you may ask him round here on Sunday afternoons, and have tea with him in the kitchen;" for my Euphemia has a motherly conception of her duty towards her maid-servants. And presently the amethystine ring was being worn about the house, even with ostentation, and Jane developed a new way of bringing in the joint so that this gage was evident. The elder Miss Maitland was aggrieved by it, and told my wife that servants ought not to wear rings. But my wife looked it up in Enquire Within ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... city was without ostentation. He arrived one morning on the imperiale of the diligence, chewing an extinguished cigar, and already on good terms with the conductor, to whom, during his journey, he had related the passage of the Porte de Fer; full of indulgence, moreover, for the distractions ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... unfortunate, that all the world may feel that in the time called the Truce of God the thing common to all men is the best thing in life. How will it suit this intention, then, if in our way of exaggerated ostentation of charity the distinction between rich and poor is made to appear more marked than on ordinary days? Blessed are those that expect nothing. But are there not an increasing multitude of persons in the United States who have the most exaggerated expectations of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... these perversities, these rugged notches, virtues? Is there not in these excessive advertisements of self-abnegation and of honour a good deal of ostentation? It is all parade more than anything else. Why such exaggeration of solitude and exile? to carry nothing to extremes is the wise man's maxim. Be in opposition if you choose, blame if you will, but decently, and crying out all the while "Long live the King." The true virtue is common ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to Winchester, her progress being one of royal ostentation. Her entry to the town was like a Roman triumph. She was received with all honor, was voted queen in a great convocation of nobles, prelates, and knights, and seized the royal regalia and the treasures of her ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... such a prospect there was little to excite any but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little ostentation as was consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed, with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened on the plain. The fringe of alder by the watercourse began ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... dealing with things that were remote from her, and difficult to make real; but Veblen's theme, the idle rich, and the arts and graces whereby they demonstrate their power, was the stuff of which her life was made. The subtleties of social ostentation, the minute distinctions between the newly-rich and the anciently-rich, the solemn certainties of the latter and the quivering anxieties of the former—all those were things which Sylvia knew as a bird knows the way of the wind. To see the details of them analysed in learned, scientific fashion, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... newspaper. We landed in a blink of fine weather; but we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale, and the rain began to patter on our shoulders. We sat as close about the Etna as we could. The spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass caught flame every minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and before long, there were several burnt fingers of the party. But the solid quantity of cookery accomplished was out of ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... above his fellows left to the American—is wealth; consequently, the acquisition of wealth has become the great spring of action. But it is not sought after with the avarice to hoard, but with the ostentation to expend. It is the effect of ambition directed into a wrong channel. Each man would surpass his neighbour; and the only great avenue open to all, and into which thousands may press without much jostling of each other, is that which ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... taking the place of the simple majesty of the Early English style. It is just the sort of architecture that a merchant with a fortune would pay for. The middle class liked some show for its money; but again it was the ostentation without the vulgarity of wealth. Looking upon his beautiful house, or worshipping beside his family tombs, with the merchant's mark on the brasses, in St Katherine's aisle, Thomas Paycocke must often have blessed the noble ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... speculations of the future, till we wonder whether the traveller shall some day inspect, with unconcerned composure, the few scraps of stone and iron which may indicate the British occupation of India. Few, indeed, the remains would be—for we build for immediate use, not future ostentation in these days, and if we should ever cease to be a force in the world, all traces of us would soon be obliterated by time. Yet, perhaps, if that unborn critic of remote posterity would remember that "in the days ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... carry great obligations, and, for the most part, those who bear them to-day recognise those great obligations and endeavour without ostentation to fulfil them. ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... Bucolicks should require such Brevity, and be so essentially sparing in Expression, I see no other reason but this: It loves Simplicity so much that it must be averse to that Pomp and Ostentation which Epick Poetry must show, for that must be copious and flowing, in every part smooth, and equal to it self: But Pastoral must dissemble, and hide even that which it would {42} show, like Damon's Galatea, who flies then when she most ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... ducats; [70] and of this sum a small part was the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock was improved in quick and perpetual circulation: but the riches of the Greeks were displayed in the idle ostentation of palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of the guitar, and sing to the music, not always Danish melodies, but the songs of a strange land. It was 'Live and let live,' here. Stranger guests came from far and near, music sounded, goblets clashed, and I," said the Wind, "was not able to drown the noise. Ostentation, pride, splendor, and display ruled, but not ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... where one gives out of pity to you, fifty give out of kindness to themselves, to rid them of your troublesome application; and for one that gives out of real compassion, five hundred do it out of ostentation. On these principles, trouble people most who are most busy, and ask relief where many see it given, and you'll succeed in your attempt. Remember that the streets were made for people to walk, and not to converse ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... confinement. He carried about with him in the simple modesty of his everyday life the heart that at a moment's notice was ready to still its beating at the call of duty; and with the same simplicity, with the same freedom from ostentation, with the same delicious smile, he would have walked into the jaws of death if it had become him as a gentleman to ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... Devil's Ware-house, he has two constant Warehouse-keepers, Pride and Conceit, and these are always at the Door, showing their Wares, and exposing the pretended Vertues and Accomplishments of the Man, by way of Ostentation. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... gratitude, some of the wealthier citizens purchased and presented to Grant a house in Washington. Resolutions of gratitude, honorary degrees, presents of value and significance, came to him in abundance. Through it all, he maintained his reputation as a man of few words, devoid of ostentation, and with no ambition to court public favor ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... be checked and curbed in discourse, and would rather be subdued into silence-and even, if that proves a gratification that secures peace and gives pleasure, into apparent insensibility ; but to receive a favour through the vehicle of insolent ostentation—no! no! To submit to ill humour rather than argue and dispute I think an exercise of patience, and I encourage myself all I can to practice it : but to accept even a shadow of an obligation upon such terms I should think mean and unworthy ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... of the characteristic traits which we are accustomed to recognize as marking the Irish. Every feature reappears: the laziness in the culture of the fields; the delight in tippling and brawling; the ostentation—we may recall that sword of Caesar hung up in the sacred grove of the Arverni after the victory of Gergovia, which its alleged former owner viewed with a smile at the consecrated spot and ordered the sacred property ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of introduction to you or to anybody. Yet I take the liberty of recommending him to you, to shorten those formal approaches, which the same office would otherwise expose him to, in making your acquaintance. He is a great enemy to formality, etiquette, ostentation and luxury. He goes with the best dispositions to cultivate society, without poisoning it by ill example. He is sensible, disposed to view things favorably, and being well acquainted with the constitution of England, her manners and language, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... filled the kennel with water, was La Font long in bringing me to the house I sought. It stood on the outskirts of the St. Honore Faubourg, in a quarter sufficiently respectable, and a street marked neither by squalor nor ostentation—from one or other of which all desperate enterprises take their rise. The house, which was high and narrow, presented only two windows to the street, but the staircase was clean, and it was impossible to cross the threshold ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the Port Elizabethans was a thing to be remembered with great pleasure. No sooner had we landed than invitations poured in on us. This was not merely complimentary it was the outcome of genuine kindness and a desire to be helpful. There was no ostentation, but just the natural expression of a simple desire to welcome and assist the stranger newly arrived within the gates. Hospitality was one of the cardinal South African virtues in those days. It has been ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... from reo, to fall, because the scarlet petals have so fragile a hold on their receptacles; and the plant has been endowed with the sobriquet, "John Silver Pin, fair without and foul within." In the Eastern counties of England any article of finery brought out only occasionally, and worn with ostentation by a person otherwise a slattern, is called "Joan Silver Pin." After this sense the appellation has been applied to the Scarlet Poppy. Its showy flower is so attractive to the eye, whilst its inner juice is noxious, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and esteem ourselves fortunate to regain our native country; leaving our enemies to triumph on the inconsiderable mischief they had suffered from a squadron which had filled them with such dreadful apprehensions. We had reason to imagine the Spanish ostentation would remarkably exert itself on this subject, though our disappointment and their security neither originated in their valour nor our misconduct. Such were the desponding reflections which at this time arose, on the review and comparison of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the remote streets, in which those who would live in comfort and without ostentation, and who love serious reflection, delight to find a home. There were no shops along the dimly lighted street; one heard no sounds but of distant carriages, and of the steps of some of ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... laugh on in their happy ignorance of a better lot, while round them is gathered all that their lord can command of luxury and pleasantness. His wealth is hoarded for them alone; he permits himself no ostentation, except the respectable one of arms and horses; and the time is weary that he passes apart from his home and hareem. The sternest tyrants are gentle there; Mehemet Ali never refused a woman's prayer; and even Ali Pasha was partly humanized by his love ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... selected the upper Rio Grande for the scene of my attempt. Merritt's cavalry and the Fourth Corps still being at San Antonio, I went to that place and reviewed these troops, and having prepared them with some ostentation for a campaign, of course it was bruited about that we were going to invade Mexico. Then, escorted by a regiment of horse I proceeded hastily to Fort Duncan, on the Rio Grande just opposite the Mexican town of Piedras Negras. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... dusted a chair with needless ostentation and then focused her regard on her brother who stood before her a self-confessed culprit, conscious guilt as manifest in his attitude as in the flaming confusion of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... this, nature and truth get along as best they can. It would be great good luck if any remnants of either should survive in this cataclysm of false art, false style, false poetry. This is what has caused the errors of several of our distinguished reformers. Disgusted by the stiffness, the ostentation, the pomposo, of this alleged dramatic poetry, they have concluded that the elements of our poetic language were incompatible with the natural and the true. The Alexandrine had wearied them so often, that they condemned it without giving it a hearing, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... study, making of gifts, acceptance of gifts, rites of expiation, auspicious acts, the wish to have this and that, affection generated by the merits of the object for which or whom it is felt, treachery, deception, disrespect and respect, theft, killing, desire of concealment, vexation, wakefulness, ostentation, haughtiness, attachment, devotion, contentment, exultation, gambling, indulgence in scandal, all relations arising out of women, attachment to dancing, instrumental music and songs—all these qualities, ye learned Brahmanas, have been said to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a butcher in a poor neighbourhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... old Covenanters are written deeply in the modest stones which mark the green graves of their faithful dead during a period of fully two hundred years. The vainglory of a graven stone to exalt the virtues of imperfect men and women was to them a forbidden thing; the ostentation even of a name carved on a slab was at variance with doctrine; the cravings of a poor humanity to be remembered after death had to be satisfied with bare initials, and initials are all that were written on the gravestones ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... is a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we venture to lay ourselves so open, that we dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that we swell in each other's eyes to such a vast proportion. For ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seen, had been cordially detested in his day of ascendency. All a reign's odium naturally condenses itself upon a royal favourite. His elaborate courtesy did not produce the effect of affability. His lavishness was thought ostentation. His good nature, for he was good natured, had too much an air of condescension. The scorn of rivals or his superiors in rank he met with scorn. His exploits by land and sea, as impartial critics noted, heightened ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... that I ought to tell the customary pleasant lie, and say I tore myself reluctantly away from every noted place in Palestine. Every body tells that, but with as little ostentation as I may, I doubt the word of every he who tells it. I could take a dreadful oath that I have never heard any one of our forty pilgrims say any thing of the sort, and they are as worthy and as sincerely devout as any that come here. They will say it when they get home, fast enough, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "That which we proposed is completed. We have driven the troops of the House of Austria from Bavaria, and re-established our ally in the sovereignty of his States. That army which, with as much ostentation as imprudence, came forward to place itself on our frontiers, is annihilated. But what matters it to England? Her purpose is answered; we are not at Boulogne, and the subsidy which she grants to Austria will be neither ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... that had a hard sparkle, and, when her face was in repose, unusually firm lips. She wore the latest and most pronounced type of dinner dress with a few jewels of value, but they gave her no air of ostentation. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... miracles and the devil's wonders. For Christ and his saints have their miracles always tending to fruit and profit. The devil and his witches and necromancers, all their wonderful works tend to no fruitful end, but to a fruitless ostentation and show, as it were a juggler who would for a show before the people play feats of ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... horse-play, there is always something carnivorous about their aspect. They are sharp in a certain line, but true intelligence is rarely found among them. Strange to say, they are often generous with money if their sentimental side is fairly touched, but their very generosity is the lavishness of ostentation, and they seem to have no true kindness in them, nor do they appear capable of even shamming to possess the genuine helpful nature. Eternally on the watch for prey, they assume the essential nature of predatory animals; their notion of cleverness is to get the better ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... felt at ease even while we were loaded with favours. This house is indeed, as Sneyd and William described it, a palace; and it is plain that the convenience of the inhabitants has everywhere been consulted: the ostentation ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Liberty found ready formed, as if moulded by herself. Roland had simple manners, austere morals, tried opinions; enthusiastically attached to liberty, he was capable of disinterestedly devoting to her cause his whole life, or of perishing for her, without ostentation and without regret. A man worthy of being born in a republic, but out of place in a revolution, and ill adapted for the agitation and struggle of parties; his talents were not superior, his temper somewhat uncompliant; he was unskilled in the knowledge and management of men; and ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... it is force; it is the ostentation and infatuation of force: it does not insinuate itself; it does not seek to convert. . . . Even when it commands what is good, it hinders and spoils it, just because it commands it, and because every command provokes and excites the legitimate revolts of liberty; and ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... are well termed by Sir Walter Scott a revival of the great Bard of Avon. Forcible and energetic in style, her strain never becomes turgid or diverges into commonplace. She is masculine, but graceful; and powerful without any ostentation of strength. Her personal history was the counterpart of her writings. Gentle in manners and affable in conversation, she was a model of the household virtues, and would have attracted consideration ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... oddly in the article upon 'The Relation of Novels to Life,' contributed to the 'Cambridge Essays.' He has no fear of modern aesthetes before his eyes. His opinion is that life is too serious a business for tomfoolery and far too tragic for needless ostentation of sentiment. A novel should be a serious attempt by a grave observer to draw a faithful portrait of the actual facts of life. A novelist, therefore, who uses the imaginary facts, like Sterne and Dickens, as mere pegs on which to hang specimens of his own sensibility ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... came and went; a beautiful, bright, sunny day, but with no signs of the merry boy whom all had begun to love, nor of the big black dog. The children had made all the needful preparations with much ostentation and bustle, and were in a state of excited happiness, ready for any gale. But the last hope had to be given up, as the old clock ticked away hour after hour. And at last Polly had to put Phronsie ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... distance or hand to hand, just as need requires. Nay, the horsemen also are content with a shield and a javelin. The foot throw likewise weapons missive, each particular is armed with many, and hurls them a mighty space, all naked or only wearing a light cassock. In their equipment they show no ostentation; only that their shields are diversified and adorned with curious colours. With coats of mail very few are furnished, and hardly upon any is seen a headpiece or helmet. Their horses are nowise signal either in fashion or in fleetness; nor taught to wheel and bound, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... large began two weeks before the Sacrament, when persons whose attendance had been, to say the least, irregular slipped in among the fathers without ostentation, and dropping into a conversation on the weather, continued, as it were, from last Sabbath, used it skilfully to offer an apology for past failures ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... drinking. If, he added, this careful picking out of dishes is not done from greediness or gluttony, but from a desire to choose the worst food, it smacks of affectation, which is as inseparable from ostentation as smoke from fire. The conduct of people who do this is not unlike that of guests who take the lowest seats at the table, in order that they may, with the greater eclat, be summoned to the higher places. The following incident will show his own indifference. One day poached ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... these Ambassadors travelling some hundred miles, without any other object but to gratify his impertinent vanity. Every spot where Charlemagne had walked, sat, slept, talked, eaten or prayed, was visited by him with great ostentation; always dragging behind him the foreign representatives, and by his side his wife. To a peasant who presented him a stone upon which Charlemagne was said to have once kneeled, he gave nearly half its weight in gold; on a priest who offered him a small crucifix, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... its merits. It has the directness, the perspicuity, and the liveliness of Caesar's Commentaries or of the Duke of Wellington's Despatches. Montesquieu[1317] says of it:—"Hanno's Voyage was written by the very man who performed it. His recital is not mingled with ostentation. Great commanders write their actions with simplicity, because they receive more honour from facts than words." If we may take the work as a specimen of the accounts which Phoenician explorers commonly gave of their travels in unknown ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... cocked-hatted coachman, and the two gorgeous flunkies hanging on behind. Sir Gorgeous Midas has beaten the dukes in mere gorgeousness, flunkies and all—burlesqued the vulgar side of them, and unconsciously shamed it out of existence; made swagger and ostentation unpopular by his own evil example—actually improved the manners of the great by sheer mimicry of their defects. He has married his sons and his daughters to them and spoiled the noble curve of those lovely noses that Leech drew so well, ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... opposed the innovation, but, by degrees, the interests of the clergy prevailed, and the popes at length made this procession of Corpus Christi obligatory. In Spain, it is celebrated with all the pomp and ostentation imaginable. In the poor towns and villages, the priest carries the consecrated host in his hands; but in rich cathedral towns, an expensive tabernacle or canopy of silver, generally a master-work of art, is provided for ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... ourselves down to sleep, the elder Tahitian fell on his knees, and with closed eyes repeated a long prayer in his native tongue. He prayed as a Christian should do, with fitting reverence, and without the fear of ridicule or any ostentation of piety. At our meals neither of the men would taste food, without saying beforehand a short grace. Those travellers who think that a Tahitian prays only when the eyes of the missionary are fixed on him, should have ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... others; to be humble, but without meanness; to be proud, but without arrogance; to abjure every sentiment of hatred and revenge; to show himself magnanimous and liberal, without ostentation and without profusion; to be the enemy of vice; to pay homage to wisdom and virtue; to respect innocence; to be constant and patient in adversity, and modest in prosperity; to avoid every irregularity that stains the soul and distempers ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... not impair his authority, nor his severity render him less beloved. To mention integrity and freedom from corruption in such a man, would be an affront to his virtues. He did not even court reputation, an object to which men of worth frequently sacrifice, by ostentation or artifice: equally avoiding competition with, his colleagues, [33] and contention with the procurators. To overcome in such a contest he thought inglorious; and to be put down, a disgrace. Somewhat less than three years were spent in this office, when ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... with elections as to neglect their business for a while. But I apprehend that puddings and stockings, to say nothing of nurseries, suffer much greater detriment from the present expenditure of time and thought upon the heartless ostentation of parties, and the flounces and fripperies of fashion, than can possibly accrue from the intellectual cultivation of women, or their participation in public affairs. Voting is a mere incident in the lives ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of the Academie des Sciences in 1697, Fontenelle pronounced during forty years the panegyrics of those who had been its members. These Eloges des Academiciens are masterpieces in a difficult art, luminous, dignified, generous without ostentation, plain without poverty of thought or expression. The discreet Fontenelle loved tranquillity—"If I had my hand full of truths, I should take good care before I opened it." He never lost a friend, acting on two prudent maxims, "Everything is possible," and "Every one is right." "It is not a ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... carriages, who, recognising her figure at a distance, were raising their hats to her and saying to one another that there was never anyone so well turned out as she. But instead of simplicity it was to ostentation that I must assign the first place if, after I had compelled Francoise, who could hold out no longer, and complained that her legs were 'giving' beneath her, to stroll up and down with me for another hour, I saw at length, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... exhibition of superior wealth in places set apart for common enjoyment of refined pleasure is not in good taste." Mr. White wrote in 1881; would he have been able to be so complimentary to the opera audiences of 1908? What relation does the present extravagance of dress, the vulgar ostentation which Mr. White would have us believe was foreign to the taste of New York's cultured society in 1847, bear toward the support which opera has received since the Metropolitan Opera House was opened? The factors which are to determine ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Demon. Who can tell? Nature herself is a grand destroyer. See that pretty bird, in its beak a writhing worm! All Nature's children live to take life; none, indeed, so lavishly as man. What hecatombs slaughtered, not to satisfy the irresistible sting of hunger, but for the wanton ostentation of a feast, which he may scarcely taste, or for the mere sport that he finds in destroying! We speak with dread of the beasts of prey: what beast of prey is so dire a ravager as man,—so cruel and so treacherous? ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bencher, who disliked the sound of footsteps on the stairs outside his door. Time was when the Inns comprised numerous detached houses, some of them snug dwellings, and others imposing mansions, wherein great dignitaries lived with proper ostentation. Most of them have bean pulled down, and their sites covered with collegiate 'buildings;' but a few of them still remain, the grand piles having long since been partitioned off into chambers, and the little houses striking the eye as quaint, misplaced, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... qualities of a moralist, good sense, caution, sobriety, and perpetual reference to convenience and practice; and who certainly is thought less original than he really is, merely because his taste and modesty have led him to disdain the ostentation of novelty, and because he generally employs more art to blend his own arguments with the body of received opinions, so as that they are scarce to be distinguished, than other men, in the pursuit of a transient popularity, have exerted to disguise the most miserable common-places in ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... sense of enchantment that surrounded them. Their disappearance made little void in the crowd that filled the parlor, a gay and merry throng, full of the spirit of fun and hearty enjoyment, and thoroughly genuine in their mirth, not a grain of airiness or ostentation marring their pleasure, though in its way it was as refined ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... not one of London's smart houses as that word is commonly understood in this great capital. But No. 6 Grosvenor Square, in the spaciousness of its rooms, the simple beauty of its furnishings, and especially in its complete absence of ostentation, made it the worthy abiding place of an American Ambassador. And the people who congregated there were precisely the kind that appeal to the educated American. "I didn't know I was getting into an assembly of immortals," exclaimed Mr. Hugh Wallace, when ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Love of Power, Ostentation, Ambition, Business Energy, Adhesiveness, Self-sufficiency, Playfulness, Approbativeness, Oratory, Honor, Magnanimity, Repose, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... and locked from within with a great noise of rattling keys. The sound of the keys made Anna feel faint; Axel was on the other side of that ostentation of brute force. She leaned against the wall shivering. The children tittered; she was a very fine lady, they thought, to have friends ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... hospitality with the beating of drums, the clashing of cymbals, and the flowing of champagne. This cordial friendly people had welcomed them kindly, and must have their courtesy returned in fitting style. Mrs. Smith suggested a simpler entertainment, fearing contrast, and any appearance of ostentation, but the general gauged his neighbors better. They were at once too well bred, and too self-satisfied for any idea of comparison to occur to them. They would eat his fruit-cake, or make him welcome to their corn-bread with the same hearty unconcern. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... sufficient to warrant him in anticipating a speedy revenge. Perhaps a further insight into the real character of Assur-bani-pal may have induced him to venture on hostilities. For the king's contemporaries had begun to realise that, beneath his apparent bravery and ostentation, he was by nature indolent, impatient of restraint, and fond of ease and luxury. When not absorbed in the routine of the court and the pleasures of the harem, he spent his leisure in hunting on the Mesopotamian plains, or in the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sculptors who succeeded him lost influence in their turn. With the development of sculpture, which during Michael Angelo's lifetime acquired a technical skill to which Donatello never aspired, the tomb became a vehicle for ostentation and display; and there was a reaction towards the harsher symbols of death. Instead of the quiet mourner who really mourns, we have the strident and professional weeper—a parody of sorrow. Tier upon tier these prodigious monuments rise, covering great spaces of ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... fortune was about $40,000,000. He employed 10,000 men at Essen, and over 7,000 at other places. He owned nearly 600 iron and coal mines, 6 smelting works, 14 blast furnaces, 5 steamers, and 140 steam-engines. He was a plain, industrious man, shunned all ostentation, refused titles, and took good care of his workmen. Yet was his business an honorable one? If the man who supplies alcoholic beverages to drunkards is condemned by the general sentiment of the temperate community, what should we think of one who supplies slung-shot, poison, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... institute is located was purchased of Lindly M. Pickering, at one hundred dollars less than he could otherwise have obtained for it. It was selected for its improvements and its fine location, unsurpassed in the country. In conclusion, we desire to refer to the good management with which without ostentation its affairs are vigorously pushed forward, believing that the ever-living, ever-aggressive principle of right will sustain them and secure the success which so commendable an enterprise deserves. May heaven prosper the work of the nation's truest spirits ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the widow must be got handsomely aforehand; and no doubt but she is. The elegance of her house and furniture, and her readiness to discharge all demands upon her, which she does with ostentation enough, and which makes her neighbours, I suppose, like her the better, demonstrate this. She will propose to do handsome things by her two nieces. Sally is near marriage—with an eminent woollen-draper in the Strand, if ye have a mind to it; for there are ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson |
