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More "Ostentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hospitality of 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 truly said that even a quarter of a century ago a man might ride ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... 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 ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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 vanquished foe. All ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... witnesses, in its tyranny. It is the obsession of man by the flower. In the shape of the flower his own paltriness revisits him—his triviality, his sloth, his cheapness, his wholesale habitualness, his slatternly ostentation. These return to him and wreak upon him their dull revenges. What the tyranny really had grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where the most ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down and gathered ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... upon herself, and which Madame de Motteville characterised by the expressive term—"very august," restored to her somewhat of that importance which she was desirous of renouncing through humility. But the world is ever distrustful on the score of a repentance which has some tinge of ostentation about it. One historian remarks that "the Duchess de Longueville being unable to dispense with intrigues, after she had renounced those of love and politics, found sufficient to satisfy her in devotion." This sentence, read aright, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Himalayas seen from Mount Everest. My eyes ache with the diversity of their shapes, the eccentricity of their styles, the irregularity of their altitudes. No man viewing them can continue blind to the independence of the American citizen, to the ostentation of his right of personal selection, to his individual caprice. They stand, a brick-and-iron commentary upon the competing ambitions ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... controversialist. Another is a razor; and he is sarcastical.' We talked of Whitefield. He said he was at the same college with him[84], and knew him before he began to be better than other people (smiling;) that he believed he sincerely meant well, but had a mixture of politicks and ostentation: whereas Wesley thought of religion only[85]. ROBERTSON said, Whitefield had strong natural eloquence, which, if cultivated, would have done great things. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I take it, he was at the height of what his abilities ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... nothing in Mr. Falkland but matter of contempt, they appeared to be never weary of recounting his praises. Such dignity, such affability, so perpetual an attention to the happiness of others, such delicacy of sentiment and expression! Learned without ostentation, refined without foppery, elegant without effeminacy! Perpetually anxious to prevent his superiority from being painfully felt, it was so much the more certainly felt to be real, and excited congratulation ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Rue Saint-Lazare by this time. The contrast between the ostentation of wealth in the house, and the wretched condition of its mistress, dazed the student; and Vautrin's cynical words began ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a warrior who fought only in defense of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained with cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity, nor lifted up to insolence in the hour of triumph—there is no other name in English ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 talkers, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, and stains the hands of those ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... to take the hand of every caboceer, (which, as their household suites occupied several spaces in advance, delayed us long enough to distinguish some of the ornaments in the general blaze of splendour and ostentation). The caboceers, as did their superior captains and attendants, wore Ashantee cloths of extravagant price, from the costly foreign silks which had been unravelled to weave them, in all the varieties of colour as well ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... is garish or exaggerated more often than not; but it is a libel. She is aristocratic to the nth degree, and is never over done; courage she has, but no ostentation. There was, however, just a slight touch of over-emphasis in this singing-girl's presentation—that you were bound to say, if you considered her quite apart from her place in this nature-scheme. She was not wholly aristocratic; she was lacking in that high, social refinement ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to beguile, No clustering ornaments to clog the pile, From ostentation as from weakness free, Majestic ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... omnipotence, pride is insatiable, and, to mollify it, no barbaric act is too great.—The same appetite is visible in Collot d'Herbois, who, no longer on the stage, plays before the town the melo-dramatic tyrant with all becoming ostentation. One morning, at Lyons, he directs the revolutionary Tribunal to arrest, examine and sentence a youthful "suspect" before the day is over. "Towards six o'clock,[32153] Collot being at table enjoying an orgy with prostitutes, buffoons and executioners, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and I must needs think the savages of America live much more happy than the poorer sort of these, because as they have nothing, so they desire nothing; whereas these are proud and insolent and in the main are in many parts mere beggars and drudges. Their ostentation is inexpressible; and, if they can, they love to keep multitudes of servants or slaves, which is to the last degree ridiculous, as well as their contempt of all the world ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... personal gifts and prodigious eclat cannot possibly escape the poison of envy and detraction. He was attacked by calumny; his gifts denied and ridiculed; his munificence ascribed to vainglory, and his charity to pride and ostentation; yet none will ever know the extent of his private charities, and no one who knows anything of Liszt can be ignorant of the simple, unaffected goodness of heart ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... 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 vigorous Motive ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... might have been a little ostentation at bottom, from which, with great delicacy be it spoken, English travellers are not always exempt; though to say the truth, he had nothing of it in his manner. He moved about taciturn and reserved ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... fearless, a brother to all worthy souls whatsoever. Come when you might, here is he open-hearted, rich in cheerful fancies, in grave logic, in all kinds of bright activity. If perceptibly or imperceptibly there is a touch of ostentation in him, blame it not; it is so innocent, so good and childlike. He is still fonder of jingling publicly, and spreading on the table, your big purse of opulences than his own. Abrupt too he is, cares little for big-wigs and garnitures; perhaps laughs more than the real fun he has would order; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... would have disciplined himself to accuracy. But what was the end of it all? A larger plant with more machines to buy and more men to work them and to be overseen and to be paid, a few more figures in a Bank Book—what else? Jack's tastes were simple. He despised the ostentation of wealth in the accumulation of mere things. He had only pity for the plunger and for the loose liver contempt. Why should he tie himself to a desk, a well appointed desk it is true, but still a desk, in a four-walled room, a much finer ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... open the cabin door and showed an interior, equally simple but well joined and fitted,—a marvel of neatness and finish to the frontier girl's eye. There were shelves and cupboards and other conveniences, yet with no ostentation of refinement to ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... excellent artillery and bells are cast; and various articles are exquisitely wrought in filigree of gold and silver. All things necessary to human life [are found there] and even articles of superfluity, ostentation, pomp, and luxury. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... celebrations. There were, of course, numerous ranges of seats around the margin of this lake for the accommodation of the spectators. Nero took possession of this structure for some of his carousals, in order to obtain greater scope for ostentation and display. The water was drawn off on such occasions and the gates shut, and then the bottom of the reservoir was floored over to make space for ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Madre, who would never 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 eyes ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... time the troops instinctively felt that this absence of ostentation meant hard work. They began to realise the magnitude of the obligations they had assumed. Soldiering was evidently something more than a series of brilliant spectacles and social gatherings. Here was a man in earnest, who looked upon ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... which the number of soldiers, the fearful burden of their ships, the commanders' names of every squadron, with all others, their magazines of provision, were put in print, as an army and navy irresistible and disdaining prevention; with all which their great and terrible ostentation, they did not in all their sailing round about England so much as sink or take one ship, barque, pinnace, or cock-boat of ours, or even burn so much as one ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... labour only to ostentation; and are ever more busy about the colours and surface of a work than in the matter and foundation, for that is hid, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Reformation, owing to the new conditions which had arisen and had brought about in a few decades the hitherto unparalleled rise in prices, combined with the unprecedented ostentation and extravagance more than once referred to in these pages, the lord was supplied with the requisite incentive to the exercise of the power which his feudal system gave him. Consequently, the position of the peasant rapidly changed for the worse; and although at the outbreak ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... laureate have been more liberally recompensed even by royal bounty. But the gifted spirits of that day mistook the road to immortality. Disdaining the untutored simplicity of their predecessors, they sought to rise above them by an ostentation of learning, as well as by a more classical idiom. In the latter particular they succeeded. They much improved the external forms of poetry, and their compositions exhibit a high degree of literary finish, compared ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... certain of his guests had talked mysteriously, that letters had passed from hand to hand and that the assembly had seemed to have a secret purpose quite apart from the literary discussion carried on with so much ostentation. What was all that to Scarron? At his house rebellion could be planned with impunity, for, as we have said, since that morning he had ceased to be ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Juan recognized no material distinction between midnight and noon-day. All was glitter, glow, life, excitement along the streets; the gloomy overhanging mountains were pouring untold wealth into her lap, while vice and crime, ostentation and lawlessness, held high carnival along the crowded, straggling byways. The exultant residents existed to-day in utter carelessness of the morrow, their one dominant thought gold, their sole acknowledged purpose those carnal ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... of money displayed itself in gaiety of appearance, and wantonness of expence, and introduced me to the acquaintance of those whom the same superfluity of fortune had betrayed to the same licence and ostentation: young heirs who pleased themselves with a remark very frequently in their mouths, that though they were sent by their fathers to the university, they were not under the necessity of ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... uncertainty and suspicion, the form and substance of a new esprit de corps, among the "Clarion" men, and established the system of Talk-it-Over Breakfasts which made a close-knit, jealously guarded corporation and club out of the staff. Free of all ostentation or self-assertiveness was Hal's talk; simple, and, above all virtues, brief. He didn't tell his employees what he expected of them. He told them what they might expect of him. The frankness of his manner, the self-respecting modesty of his attitude toward ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... there was little danger in their proceeding singly, and it was agreed, in consequence of the low state of their finances, that they should separate, in order to try what each might be able to accomplish single-handed and without ostentation, till new supplies should ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... characteristic absence of all ostentation in His works. We can scarcely suppose this miracle done for the sake of showing His divinity. It was pure goodness and sympathy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Ghent. Francois was strongly tempted to break his royal promises, as he had done once before, and retain so valuable a prisoner, but confined himself to hints as to what he might do, and displayed on the part of his court and his capital an ostentation of luxury almost equal to that of the Field of the Cloth of Gold twenty years before, when he had met Henry VIII of England—"that spot of blood and grease on the pages of history." The capital, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... money. It brings with it a certain personal enlargement. It adds to the romance of himself in his own eyes, as well as in the eyes of others. It procures the flattering ears of journalists, and a place on front pages, and, if one inclines toward ostentation, even the ownership of ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... neither ought it to be finely spun out, or harmonized into periodical cadences, but, rather, it should be simple and natural, promising neither too much by words nor countenance. A modest action, also, devoid of the least suspicion of ostentation, will better insinuate itself into the mind of the auditor. But these ought to be regulated according to the sentiments we would have ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... affair was not brought before the Court. But perhaps it was suppressed out of delicacy for Fionn, for if Goll could be accused of ostentation, Fionn was open to the uglier charge of jealousy. It was, nevertheless, Goll's forward and impish temper which commenced the brawl, and the verdict of time must be to exonerate Fionn and to let the blame go where ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... 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 mentioned, with seeming pride and satisfaction, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... in the mean time, her anticipations were fixed on the great 12th. She was aware of what the entertainment would consist, but was in honour bound to conceal her knowledge from Virginia and Louisa, who on their side affected great excitement and curiosity, and made every ostentation of guessing and peeping. Gifts were smuggled into the house from every quarter—some to take their chance, some directed with mottoes droll or affectionate. Clara prepared a few trifles, in which she showed that ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a peculiar charm of their own, the outcome of originality in ideas, while the art has, through many centuries, been fortunate enough to have been fostered and encouraged by the great and powerful of the land. As a people the Japanese are entirely free from anything that savours of ostentation, and this fact is emphasised in their art just as it is in their homes. The charm of the ceramic ware of Japan, in my opinion, consists in the beauty of its colouring rather than in its figuring. This ceramic ware, as my readers ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... of a comma, without inserting the panegyrick in which he celebrated himself for his achievement. The exuberant excrescence of his diction I have often lopped, his triumphant exultations over Pope and Howe I have sometimes suppressed, and his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed; but I have in some places shown him, as he would have shown himself, for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... understand, sir," said the undertaker, "you don't want any show and that—I'm not a believer in ostentation myself, mind you—but you want it done gentlemanly-like. You leave it to me, I'll do it as cheap as it can be done, 'aving regard to what's right and proper. I can't say more ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Douglas wishes without ostentation to make himself clear in his friendship and support of Lincoln. No envy, no pique, no chagrin. He has often prophesied this war. For years he has warned the country against sectionalism. He does ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... ends to every stick. It was the Stapletons and others of their sort, rather than any soft-handed Musgraves, who converted a wilderness, a little by a little, into the America of to-day. The task was tediously achieved, and without ostentation; and always the ship had its resplendent figure-head, as always it had its hidden, nay! grimy, engines, which propelled the ship. And, however direfully America may differ from Utopia, to have assisted in the making of America ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... wrote my wife copied afterwards. In this way was composed the greater part of Barchester Towers and of the novel which succeeded it, and much also of others subsequent to them. My only objection to the practice came from the appearance of literary ostentation, to which I felt myself to be subject when going to work before four or five fellow-passengers. But I got used to it, as I had done to the amazement of the west country farmers' wives when asking them ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... in the midst of a forest very well peopled with deer, wild boars and wolves." "The great proprietors," says another contemporary,[1340] "attracted to and kept in our cities by luxurious enjoyments know nothing of their estates," save "of their agents whom they harass for the support of a ruinous ostentation. How can ameliorations be looked for from those who even refuse to keep things up and make indispensable repairs?" A sure proof that their absence is the cause of the evil is found in the visible difference between the domain worked under absent abbe-commendatory and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... mansion which he had built, putting to shame every other house in the place, gave an effect of ostentation to the Maddens as a family; it seemed only to accentuate the air of humility which enveloped Jeremiah as with a garment. Everybody knew some version of the many tales afloat which, in a kindly spirit, illustrated the incongruity between ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... their right to their own bodies? Why do they take them, if they do not desire them? They COVET them for purposes of gain, convenience, lust of dominion, of sensual gratification, of pride and ostentation. They break the tenth commandment, and pluck down upon their heads the plagues that are written in the book. Ten commandments constitute the brief compend of human duty. Two of these brand ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... protest against building for the sake of the exterior,—against sacrificing thoroughness and interior comfort to outside display,—against using labor and material in such fashion that they are worse than thrown away, their whole result being false and tasteless,—against every kind of ostentation and humbug. The truth is, we have all gone astray, literally, like sheep. We follow, for no earthly reason than because some one, not a whit wiser than we, happens to have rushed blindly in ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... loaded him with new proofs of favour. The revenues of two sees whose tenants were foreigners fell into his hands; he held the bishoprick of Winchester and the abbacy of St. Albans. He spent this vast wealth with princely ostentation. His pomp was almost royal. A train of prelates and nobles followed him as he moved; his household was composed of five hundred persons of noble birth, and its chief posts were occupied by knights and barons of the realm. Two of the houses he built, Hampton Court and York House, the later ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... which he maintained with so much dignity in his march through life, was not assumed from vanity and ostentation, but was the natural and constant effect of those extraordinary powers of mind, of which he could not but be conscious by comparison; the intellectual difference, which in other cases of comparison of characters, is often a matter of undecided contest, being as clear in his case as the ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... 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 ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... What need to tell you more? You know all about the other shows; they had not even the charm which moderate shows commonly have. The ostentation with which they were furnished forth took away all their gayety. What charm is there in having six hundred mules in the Clytemnestra or three thousand supernumeraries in the Trojan Horse, or cavalry and infantry in foreign equipment in some battle-piece. The populace ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... better for them to go at once to the apartment or house prepared for them. I dare say you will think my plan lacking in fashion and display, but I cannot help that. For myself, I must say that I like absence of all ostentation. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... that would not be set aside. The young man had said that the Clouds were very wealthy. That Leslie was especially so. That when she was of age she would have a vast inheritance. There had been no sign of great wealth or ostentation in their living but if that were so then there was an insuperable wall between him ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... their wants, than pleased with my readiness to succour them: and others, whose exigencies compelled them to admit my kindness, have never been able to forgive their benefactress. Many, however, have been sincerely grateful, without the ostentation of gratitude, or the hope of ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... minister of Ipswich, described by Hutchinson as "a man of learning, and of a candid and benevolent mind, accompanied with a good degree of catholicism." He is described by another writer as "a man of singular modesty, learned without ostentation." He will be remembered with honor for his long and devoted service in the Christian ministry, and as the historian of New England and of the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... judgment clear, and his reason strong, accompanied with an imagination full of spirit, of great compass, and stored with refined ideas. He is a critic of the first rank and, what is his peculiar ornament, he is delivered from the ostentation, malevolence, and supercilious temper, that so often blemish men of that character. His remarks result from the nature and reason of things, and are formed by a judgment free and unbiassed by the authority of those who have lazily followed each ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... him with a sense of the continuity of English traditions and mode of life, as applied to such families as the Gladwynes. Cradled in a degree of luxury which nevertheless differed from modern profusion and ostentation, steeped in a slightly austere refinement, he could understand their shrinking from sudden chance and clinging to the customs of the past. They were all, so far as he had seen, characterized by the possession of high qualities, with the exception of Clarence, whom he regarded as ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... change in the entire deportment of the camp. Those long grown careless drew forth their old morals and manners, brushed the moths from them, burnished the rust and wore them with undeniable self-consciousness, but without ostentation. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... that I have heard engineers say, that one may betray the weak point to the enemy, by too much ostentation of fortifying it. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... man 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 on the warpath ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... necessary preparations, would not you have gone where your more impressionable acquaintances and friends were gathered together in the greatest numbers, informing them of the position and doing, on the strength of it, a quiet but irretrievable swank? No ostentation, mark you, and nothing approaching a boast, but just a suspicion of a brave careless laugh, a voice just slightly choked with emotion and but a formal reluctance to accept the numerous and costly gifts proffered by relatives who at less emotional times would have grudged ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... 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 of his auditor, who ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... which a close look revealed two much-battered and faded stars, indicating his rank of major-general. He wore a black "slouch" hat, the brim well down over his face, and rode along with a single orderly, without the least ostentation. The men of the other regiments knew him and broke out into a cheer, at which he promptly doffed his hat and swung it at the boys. His hat off, we recognized the handsome author of the "Burnside" whiskers. ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... have said, to the inn, in order to convey the thief before the justice, were greatly concerned to find a small accident had happened, which somewhat disconcerted them; and this was no other than the thief's escape, who had modestly withdrawn himself by night, declining all ostentation, and not chusing, in imitation of some great men, to distinguish himself at the expense ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... awhile, And let my counsel sway you in this case. Your daughter here the princes left for dead; Let her awhile be secretly kept in, And publish it that she is dead indeed: Maintain a mourning ostentation; And on your family's old monument Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites That ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... these drawbacks, however, the house was one that any doll agent would have been justified in describing as a "most desirable family residence"; and it had been furnished with a lavishness that bordered on positive ostentation. In the bedroom there was a washing-stand, and on the washing-stand there stood a jug and basin, and in the jug there was real water. But all this was as nothing. I have known mere ordinary, middle-class ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... passions of masters, when they pass into the souls of menials, assume the natural dimensions of the place they occupy—they are contracted and lowered. What was pride in the former becomes puerile vanity and paltry ostentation in the latter. The servants of a great man are commonly most punctilious as to the marks of respect due to him, and they attach more importance to his slightest privileges than he does himself. In France a few of these old servants of the aristocracy ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... hoarse screams, one moment flapping on the foam of the wave, and then soaring aloft, till their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine. In the calm of the summer sunset, I drag my aged limbs, with a little ostentation of activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill. There I see the white sails of many a vessel, outward bound or homeward from afar, and the black trail of a vapor behind the eastern steamboat; there, ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest. And thus, too, our city is equally admirable in peace and war; for we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace: the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he takes care ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... creature as his wife could be purchased for a paltry five hundred dollars, and he was upon the point of returning to Crosset with a request to double the loan when his common sense asserted itself. Poverty was odious, but not shameful, he reflected; ostentation, on the other hand, was vulgar. Would it not be in bad taste to squander this happy windfall upon jewelry when Lorelei needed ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... saving of the situation. It was then, when the frontier was broken and all the world aquake with alarm, that he consulted his generals; the only time he ever did so. Says Velleius Paterculus, who served uner him:—"There was no ostentation in his conduct; it was marked by solid worth, practicality, humaneness. He took as much care of any one of us who happened to be sick, as if that one's health were the main object of his concern." Ambulances, he continues, were always in attendance, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... suffer the unfortunate to wait for assistance; to subtract from our pleasures, and even to bear privations, the better to help all the afflicted, without distinction of opinion, age, or sex; to measure the kindness done rather by their wants, than our own resources, and to do all that, without ostentation, habitually, in secret and unknown, with God and our conscience for sole witnesses: certainly, all that is full of moral beauty; and we know on what a large scale Lord Byron practiced it all his life. We have seen him in childhood, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Ostentation is the root of charity; why else are we told, in capitals, by a large stone in the front of a building—"This hospital was erected by William Bilby, in the sixty-third year of his age, 1709." Or, "That John Moore, yeoman, of Worley Wigorn, built ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... me, was only skin-deep. Though he held human life rather cheaper than I quite liked, he was a kind and liberal master and a generous giver. His largesses were often princely and invariably anonymous, for he detested everything that savored of ostentation and parade. On the other hand, he had no more tolerance for mendicants in broadcloth than for beggars in rags, and to those who asked he gave nothing. As an instance of his dislike of publicity, I may mention that I had been with him several months before I discovered that he had published, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... conspicuous in any official or public way. A rebuke, a cold reception, might do serious harm; nor was it politic to bring perplexities to those whose friendship he sought. He could not avoid, nor had he any reason to do so, the social eclat with which he was greeted; but he must shun the ostentation of any relationship with men in office. This would be more easily accomplished by living in a quarter somewhat remote and suburban. His retirement, therefore, while little curtailing his intercourse with private society, evinced his good tact, and doubtless helped his good standing with ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... quietly at the Clapham parish church. A humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter "h." The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Sidney to my ancestor, I should wear his crest upon my ring, and glory in my relationship, and I hope I should be a better man for it. I wouldn't put his arms upon my carriage, however, because that would mean nothing but ostentation. It would be merely a flourish of trumpets to say that I was his descendant, and nobody would know that, either, if my name chanced to be Boggs. In my library I might hang a copy of the family escutcheon as a matter ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... 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
... high-minded, and fond husbands and fathers are echoing such questions with a sigh of agony! Poor Follett! 'twas for such reasons that he lived with an honourable economy, eschewing that extravagance and ostentation which too often, to men in his dazzling position, prove irresistible; it was for such reasons that he rose up early, and went to bed late, and ate the bread of carefulness. Had he been alone in the world—had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... be their enemies, they killed. At Canterbury they pillaged the palace of the archbishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, then as now, drew an immense revenue from the state, and lived in great splendor, and they justly conceived that the luxury and ostentation in which he indulged was in some degree the cause of the oppressive taxation ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the classical period of portraits in engraving, as just before had closed the Augustan age of French literature. Louis XIV. decreed engraving a fine art, and established an academy for its cultivation. Pride and ostentation in the king and the great aristocracy created a demand which the genius of the age supplied. The heights that had been reached could not be maintained. There were eminent engravers still; but the zenith had been passed. Balechou, ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... egoism, intellect, the unmanifest (viz., Prakriti), also the ten senses, the one (manas), 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] freedom ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... one. The sale of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front right opposite to the humbler residence ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... slits and gashes which they made; neither more nor less than the shit-breech fellows in our country bepink and cut open their breeches that the taffety on the inside may stand out and be puffed up. They said that what they did was not out of pride or ostentation, but because otherwise their skins would not hold them without much pain. Having thus slashed their skin, they used to grow much bigger, like the young trees on whose barks the gardeners make incisions that they may grow ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... from such speculations, and his talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride, his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of the indolent government willingly connived at excesses ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with[175] all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side,—the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench[176] are the emptiest ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... ere long my conviction; though I was at first offended by his apparent affectation of a mean exterior. But I soon understood, that in no other way could he gain equal access to the lower and lowest orders, and that he was moved not by asceticism, nor by ostentation, but by a self-abandonment fruitful of consequences. He had practically given up all reading except that of the Bible; and no small part of his movement towards me soon took the form of dissuasion from all ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... man of gentle disposition and simple habits. His plainness of dress and freedom from ostentation gave the impression that he was parsimonious, and Handel says of him that "he liked nothing better than seeing pictures without paying for it, and saving money," He was also noted for his objection to ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... affability did 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 ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... se, we find maleness in its absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from the initial instinct of combat, through every form of glorious ostentation, with the loudest possible accompaniment ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... condition unknown to him or his fathers, since he once served in our army as a free man. We marvel that such a man should be dragged into bondage who (on account of his infirmity) ought to have been liberated by a lawful owner. It is a new kind of ostentation to claim the services of such an one, the sight of whom shocks you, and to call that man a slave, to whom you ought rather to minister with ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... of empire, the focus of commerce, life under high pressure moves at full speed. I know of no European capital, excepting perhaps London and Vienna, which leaves on the mind so strong an impression of power, wealth, and ostentation, as the city of ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... See how well dressed and how dignified I am!" The furnishings of the room are elegant and perhaps uncomfortable and unhealthful, since the master of the house would consider not so much the comfort and health of his guests as his own ostentation, "A terrible thing is dysentery," he would say to them, "but you are sitting in European chairs and that is something you ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... intended for a peace offering to be eaten by the priests in the court of the sanctuary. The pipe played before the procession until it approached Jerusalem. When they drew near to the holy city, the first fruits were "crowned" and exposed to view with great ostentation. Then the chief men and the high officers and the treasurers of the temple came out to meet them and receive them with honor. And all the workmen in Jerusalem rose up in their shops, and thus they saluted them: "O our brethren, inhabitants of such a city, ye are welcome." The pipe played ...
— Hebrew Literature
... the gentry. She had been detected in her borrowed plumes. At the stupid reference to her supposed morals she snapped her fingers. It was idiotic. It was the detection of the plumage that rankled in her soul. From that moment she hated society and every woman in it with an elaborate ostentation. The very next day she sold the emerald green dress and the devil of a hat and, with a certain grim satisfaction, stuffed the proceeds into the stocking of economy. In spite of the disastrous dinner, Andrew obtained the Paris engagement. He was not, however, greatly ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... air as he went like an ill-conditioned cur scenting a foe,—and seating himself in a high-backed chair, he arranged his garments fussily about him, rolled up his long embroidered sleeves to the elbow, and spread his writing implements all over the desk in front of him with much mock-solemn ostentation. Then, rubbing his lean hands together, he gave a stealthy glance of covert derision round at Sah-luma and Theos,—a glance which Theos saw and in his heart resented, but which Sah- luma, absorbed in his own reflections, apparently ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... at the German coast, was not large, and the whole of his slaves, of both sexes and of all ages, did not exceed thirty-two. His friends and brother conspirators, who were among the first gentlemen in the land, did not live with more ostentation. All the sequestrated property being sold, it was found that, after having distributed among the widows and other creditors what they were entitled to, and after paying the costs of the trial and inventories, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... of the house, introducing Lanyard to a spacious apartment, a library uncommonly well furnished, rather more than comfortably yet without a trace of ostentation in its complete luxury, a warm room, a room intimately lived in, a room, in short, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... 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 entire expenses of a wedding, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... whose business it is to carry things from where they are plentiful to where they are scarce. And comes he so quietly and with so little ostentation that men do not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... he practised its forms with parade and ostentation: witness the inordinate ambition with which he always claimed honors in the Church, to which he had no right; outrageously affronted intendants, who opposed his pretensions; required priests to address him when preaching, and in their intercourse with him demanded ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the muscular development of the man, is greatly aided by the care now taken of children from their birth. Women were formerly left to themselves, and many, either from ignorance or want of thought, neglected to do justice to their proper qualities and charms, whilst they became enamoured of ostentation and indulged in a thoughtless extravagance which served to kindle the envy of their neighbours, and to bring ruin to their husbands. Whilst seeking extraneous aids to beauty, they neglected the simplest precautions for its preservation, ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... with clean good furniture, the kitchen provided with clean wholesome-looking cooking utensils, good fires, in grates that give no anxiety lest a good fire should spoil them, clean good table-linen, the furniture of the table and sideboard good of the kind without ostentation, and a well-dressed plain dinner, bespeak a sound judgment and correct taste in a private family, that place it on a footing of respectability with the first characters in the country. It is only conforming to our sphere, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... modern Charlemagne to set all 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... two forces that were at this time working in society, the one opposing the entrance of the Grecian influence, and the other encouraging the refinement in manners and modes of living that came with it, even encouraging ostentation and the lavish use of money for pleasures. When Scipio was making his arrangements to go to Africa, he was governor of Sicily, and lived in luxury. Cato, then but thirty years old, had been sent to Sicily to investigate his proceedings, and act as a check upon him; but Scipio seems ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... cried, calling into the room behind him. "Why, Mary, I'm honored. Has Elliston actually released his prisoner at last?" He drew her into the studio, and kissed her almost with ostentation. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... he muttered; "his old brag and ostentation have caught these fools! I wonder where his vessel is? If I could fire a torpedo under it and send them all where young Jack and the other boy have gone to, I shouldn't have a dull moment for the ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... gaze of the spectator, because, forsooth, he would not seem to make a rarity of them. The subject to be treated, the groundwork to be adorned, becomes the barest excuse for a profitless haphazard ostentation. This fault is very incident to the scholarly style, which often sacrifices emphasis and conviction to a futile air ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... equally, is digested into the better blood of that commonwealth, which is all, or the greatest, benefit they can have by accumulation. For how unequal soever you will have them to be in their incomes, they have officers of the pomp, to bring them equal in expenses, or at least in the ostentation or show of them. And so unless the advantage of an estate consists more in the measure than in the use of it, the authority of Venice does but enforce our agrarian; nor shall a man evade or elude the prudence of it, by the authority of ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... spiritual renaissance may be at hand. Meanwhile, we are not suffered to ignore the huge strides in material progress that are the chief glory of modern Japan; nor have we failed to remark that the latest art to reach us from that country proved, when displayed with some ostentation at Shepherd's Bush, equal in vulgarity of sentiment, flashiness of execution, and apelike imitation to the worst that can be seen at Burlington House. Philistinism, it seems, finds ready converts on the other side of the ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... die, left his corpse unburied. Perhaps the dogs that had licked his sores tore his flesh. A fine sight that would be from the rich man's door! The latter had to die too, for all his purple, and to be swathed in less gorgeous robes. His funeral is mentioned, not only because pomp and ostentation went as far as they could with him, but to suggest that he had to leave them all behind. 'His glory ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... weariness, an icy-sickening sense that life had palled upon her. She was tired of fashionable society. She was tired of polished, imperturbable men who sought only to please her. She was tired of being feted, admired, loved, followed, and importuned; tired of people; tired of houses, noise, ostentation, luxury. She ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... and lender. The prohibition of lending at interest in continental Europe promoted luxury and discouraged economy; the rich, who were not engaged in business, finding no easy way of employing their incomes productively, spent them largely in ostentation and riotous living. One evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The Jews, so acute in intellect and strong in will, were virtually drawn or driven out of all other industries or professions by the theory that ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... different habits of body and complexion, we may be truly said to be most prone to particular passions at particular ages:—as in youth, love, hope, and joy;—in maturity, ambition, pride, and its attendant ostentation;—when more advanced in years, grief, fear, and despair;—and in old age, avarice, and a kind of very churlish dislike of every ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... any restraints of life and society. Diogenes of Sinope (fl. 300 B.C.) was one of the most prominent followers of this school. He, like his master, Antisthenes, always appeared in the most beggarly clothing, with the staff and wallet of mendicancy; and this ostentation of self-denial drew from Socrates the exclamation, that he saw the vanity of Antisthenes through the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... caught Drake's look of expectancy. "Oh no, boss," said the buccaroo, instantly, from the door. "You're on to me, but I'm on to you." He slammed the door with ostentation and dropped with a loud laugh ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... our Lady of Health. On bringing it from Mexico, that image gave proofs of her favors not a few times on the sea, and perfecting and increasing them in the islands through her mercy. Her installation was celebrated with great pomp and ostentation in the presence of the royal Audiencia and the city, which made very Catholic and pious demonstrations in the feast. The church was filled in a short time with vows and memorials which the faithful offered. A brotherhood ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Who on mere credit his vain trophies rears, And founds his merit on our servile fears; Then we discard the workings of the heart, And nature's banish'd by mechanic art; Then, deeply read, our reading must be shown; Vain is that knowledge which remains unknown: Then Ostentation marches to our aid, And letter'd Pride stalks forth in full parade; 40 Beneath their care behold the work refine, Pointed each sentence, polish'd every line; Trifles are dignified, and taught to wear The robes of ancients with a modern air; Nonsense with classic ornaments is ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... shoes, and from what we had heard of that Duke that married Queen Wilhelmina, we thought we were going to a country where men were cruel to their wives, and swatted them over the head when things didn't go right, but when we saw the queen riding with her husband, as free, from ostentation as a department store clerk would ride out with his cash girl wife, and saw happiness beaming on the face of the queen and her husband, and saw them squeeze hands and look lovingly into each other's eyes, we made up ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... the increase is for real comfort and advance in decent living, and so far it is to be commended. Such part of the increase as is for ostentation, for show and sham, is to be frowned upon, for this high cost of shelter is to-day the greatest menace to the social welfare of the community. When the average young man finds it impossible to support a family, when the professional man finds it necessary ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... citizens on ceremonial occasions. The chronicles of the period teem with marvellous descriptions of the pomp and pageantry displayed whenever a royal or illustrious personage honoured the City with a visit. In modern times this semi-barbarous love of ostentation has been superseded by a genial and dignified hospitality, that has tended in no slight degree to increase the fame and influence of that important quarter of the metropolis. Each successive sovereign of this great empire has accepted with grateful ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... with the gifts of nature, are apt to show their parts with too much ostentation. I would therefore advise all the professors of this art never to tell stories but as they seem to grow out of the subject-matter of the conversation, or as they serve to illustrate or enliven it. Stories that are very common are generally ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... one flocking to it, I mingled with the shades and constituted myself a member. Various measures were decided upon, and last came this question of the rich. Many grave accusations were preferred against them, including violence, ostentation, pride, injustice; and at last a popular speaker rose and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... deal on Messer Guido; and as for Dante, she glanced at him slightly and gave him little heed, for his habit was modest and his looks were not of a kind at once to tickle the fancy of such as she. Yet Dante looked at her curiously, though without ostentation, as one whose way it is instinctively to observe all men and all women with an exceeding keenness ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 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
... 380 These if from servitude thou shalt restore To thir inheritance, then, nor till then, Thou on the Throne of David in full glory, From Egypt to Euphrates and beyond Shalt raign, and Rome or Caesar not need fear. To whom our Saviour answer'd thus unmov'd. Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm, And fragile arms, much instrument of war Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought, Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear 390 Vented much policy, and projects deep Of enemies, of aids, battels and leagues, Plausible to the world, to me worth naught. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... state of superiority, and immediately began to envy, hate, and declare war against us. The neighbouring little squires, too, were uneasy to see a poor renter become their equal in a matter in which they placed so much dignity; and, not doubting but it arose in me from the same ostentation, they began to hate me likewise, and to turn my equipage into ridicule, asserting that my horses, which were as well matched as any in the kingdom, were of different colours and sizes, with much more of that kind of wit, the only ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... and even to bear privations, the better to help all the afflicted, without distinction of opinion, age, or sex; to measure the kindness done rather by their wants, than our own resources, and to do all that, without ostentation, habitually, in secret and unknown, with God and our conscience for sole witnesses: certainly, all that is full of moral beauty; and we know on what a large scale Lord Byron practiced it all his life. We have seen him in childhood, of which we should vainly seek one more amiable and more ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... court for the ambassador and for the present which had been sent him from Luzon, for he was anxious to see the gifts, especially the elephant, with which he was greatly delighted. He heard the embassy and replied with much ostentation and display, exculpating himself from the death of the religious upon whom he laid the blame, saying that after he had forbidden them to christianize, or teach their religion, they had disregarded his orders in his own ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... she not exceed either! Prudent in the formation, yet prompt in the execution, of her plans; severe towards guilt, yet merciful towards misfortune; unbending in her purposes, yet submissive to her husband; of rigid virtue, yet indulgent to minor frailties; devout without ostentation, and proud without haughtiness; feeling towards the pains of others, yet exhibiting no sentiment of her own, she might well command the respect, no less than the affection, of her people. Of her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... the German coast, was not large, and the whole of his slaves, of both sexes and of all ages, did not exceed thirty-two. His friends and brother conspirators, who were among the first gentlemen in the land, did not live with more ostentation. All the sequestrated property being sold, it was found that, after having distributed among the widows and other creditors what they were entitled to, and after paying the costs of the trial and inventories, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... was therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The sale of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front right opposite to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Canterbury they pillaged the palace of the archbishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, then as now, drew an immense revenue from the state, and lived in great splendor, and they justly conceived that the luxury and ostentation in which he indulged was in some degree the cause of the ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... laid 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 slept with us that night on the mountain-side. Before morning it rained ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... 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 high thinking." Suppose they should ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... pleasure in asserting its finality. For the convenience of suitors he allowed agents to practice in his court: these gentlemen had somewhat more legal knowledge than the judge, and often exasperated his antipathies by its ostentation. They would dwell on the dignity of his court: his decision was irrevocable; even the lord chancellor of England, they would say, was subject to the revision of a still higher court than his own, but the deputy judge advocate ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... hall, a bur or bedroom, and in some cases a cicen or kitchen, and the materials are chiefly beams of wood, laths, and plaster. But when we come to the vocabularies of the Anglo-Norman period, we soon find traces of that ostentation in domestic buildings which William of Malmsbury assures us that the Normans introduced into this island; the house becomes more massive, and the rooms more numerous, and more diversified in their purposes. When we look at the furniture of the house, the difference ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... true: do you suppose the love to dazzle and mystify is not as strong with some natures as that of gold and power with others? Zicci has a moral ostentation; and the same character that makes him rival kings in expenditure makes him not disdain to be wondered at ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... two ends to every stick. It was the Stapletons and others of their sort, rather than any soft-handed Musgraves, who converted a wilderness, a little by a little, into the America of to-day. The task was tediously achieved, and without ostentation; and always the ship had its resplendent figure-head, as always it had its hidden, nay! grimy, engines, which propelled the ship. And, however direfully America may differ from Utopia, to have assisted in the making of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Seasonable for me to proceed to the Consideration of the Experiments themselves, wherein they are wont so much to Triumph and Glory. And these will the rather deserve a serious Examination, because those that Alledge them are wont to do it with so much Confidence and Ostentation, that they have hitherto impos'd upon almost all Persons, without excepting Philosophers and Physitians themselves, who have read their Books, or heard them talk. For some learned Men have been content ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... civil life; in his conversation, his servants, his traveling, his mode of living, and the relationships he formed, the modest demeanor of the citizen was always evident; for he was aware that a constant exhibition of pomp brings more envy upon its possessor than greater realities borne without ostentation. Thus in selecting consorts for his sons, he did not seek the alliance of princes, but for Giovanni chose Corneglia degli Allesandri, and for Piero, Lucrezia de' Tornabuoni. He gave his granddaughters, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... or profit such superfluity, such show, such ostentation, such extraordinary luxurious kind of life as is now come upon us? If Adam were to return to earth, and see our mode of living, our food, drink, and dress, how would he marvel. He would say: "Surely this is not the world I was in?" For Adam drank water, ate ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... judging to the American merchant (full of kindness and honorable sympathy as beneath the crust he so often is) who wants pictures and statues, not merely from ostentation, but as means of delight and improvement to himself and his friends, who has a soul to respect the genius and desire the happiness of the artist, and who, if he errs, does so from ignorance of the circumstances, I give the following ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... characterised by the expressive term—"very august," restored to her somewhat of that importance which she was desirous of renouncing through humility. But the world is ever distrustful on the score of a repentance which has some tinge of ostentation about it. One historian remarks that "the Duchess de Longueville being unable to dispense with intrigues, after she had renounced those of love and politics, found sufficient to satisfy her in devotion." This sentence, read aright, would mean that the schisms of Catholicism gave her an opportunity ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... not like to think that Christmas has been snapped up, docked of its old-world kindliness, and pressed into the service of an odious ostentation. But so it has. Alas! The thought of Father Christmas trudging through the snow to the homes of gentle and simple alike (forgive that stupid, snobbish phrase) was agreeable. But Father Christmas in red plush breeches, lounging ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Forney married Nancy, daughter of David Abernathy, a lady of great moral worth and Christian benevolence. The natural goodness of her heart made her the "cheerful giver." Her numerous acts of charity were free of all ostentation, and flowed silently forth like gentle streams from a pure fountain, imparting new vigor and refreshing everything in their course. After the close of the war, full of youthful enterprise, and anxious to engage in some ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... fuss was made about me when I went to visit the governor of the prison one wet morning. He met me with great ostentation at the entrance, escorting me through a clean courtyard, on either side of which were pretty flower-beds and plots of green turf, to a reception-room. There was nothing "quadlike" about the place. This reception-room, furnished on a semi-Occidental plan, overlooked the main prison ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... showing themselves off, and actually accept the vulgar applause of unwashed crowds with a smile and a bow of gratitude! Ye gods! what has become of the superb pride of the old regime—the pride which disdained all ostentation and clung to honor more closely than life! What a striking sign of the times too, is this: let a woman taint her virtue BEFORE marriage, she is never forgiven—her sin is never forgotten; but let her do what she will when she has a husband's name to screen her, and society winks its eyes at ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... House of Commons. To these qualities was added a good-humour which was seldom ruffled,—a peculiar fascination of manner and address,—the most delightful powers of conversation,—a heart perfectly free from vindictiveness, ostentation, and deceit,—a strong sense of justice,—a thorough detestation of tyranny and oppression,—and an almost feminine tenderness of feeling for the sufferings of others. Unfortunately, however, his great talents ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the colonel, with his mouth full of brown bread, "is delightful, really delightful. The New England hospitality that we read about. So free from ostentation and conventionality." ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the next place of passages of that nature. Wherein I intend to touch only at some particulars, leaving all longer discussion, and the trimming up and furnishing them with a multitude of instances, to those who write more for display and ostentation. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... would never do so ungentlemanly a thing," said Bessie, laughing heartily. "He is too considerate a man for that; he'd starve in silence and without ostentation." ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... the North, the Russian Czar, having started with loud ostentation the movement for a world-wide peace, was swiftly completing his preparations to strike with his armies at Japan. And the other nations of Europe, jealous and suspicious of each other's every secret plan—they, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... Madame Recamier's conquests, they do not appear on the surface. In her voluminous correspondence we find tender letters from husbands side by side with friendly notes from their wives. Her biographer parades the latter with some ostentation, as a proof of the friendship these women entertained for Madame Recamier. That they respected her is evident; that they loved her is not so apparent. Mere complimentary notes prove but little. He must be but a superficial judge of life who draws decided conclusions simply ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of each article by P'ing Erh, goody Liu muttered the name of Buddha, so already she had repeated Buddha's name several thousands of times. But when she saw the heap of presents which P'ing Erh too bestowed on her, and the little ostentation with which she did it, she promptly smiled. "Miss!" she said, "what are you saying? Could I ever disdain such nice gifts as these! Had I even the money, I couldn't buy them anywhere. The only thing is that I feel overpowered with shame. If ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 8, 1844, and in which he stated, "I desire that I may be interred in the vault in the parish of Drayton-Bassett, in which my father and mother were interred, and that my funeral may be without ostentation or parade of any kind." Nor did this sentiment undergo any alteration; for, not later than six weeks since, when alterations were made in that particular church to which that memorandum referred, Sir Robert Peel pointed out to Lady Peel the very ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... scarcely regard dancing as a manly accomplishment. It is necessary that a gentleman should dance, perhaps, but it appears to me that he should do so simply because it is necessary; and to pass through the measure without ostentation or offence ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... liberal to his friends; more generous than grateful; less moved by injuries than by contempt; he was framed to take the ascendant in every intercourse with others, but exerted this superiority of nature with such ostentation as exposed him to envy, and made every one willing to recall the original inferiority, or rather meanness, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... 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
... self-indulgence which, if carried far, is destructive of personal health and character, weakens family affection, and threatens the solidarity of society. The dwelling-house is costly and the furnishings are expensive. A retinue of servants performs many useless functions in the operation of the establishment. Ostentation often carried to the point of vulgarity marks habits of speech, of dress, and of conduct both within and outside of the home. Every member of the family has his own friends and interests and usually his own share of the family allowance. The adults of the family are unreasonably ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... ill-conditioned cur scenting a foe,—and seating himself in a high-backed chair, he arranged his garments fussily about him, rolled up his long embroidered sleeves to the elbow, and spread his writing implements all over the desk in front of him with much mock-solemn ostentation. Then, rubbing his lean hands together, he gave a stealthy glance of covert derision round at Sah-luma and Theos,—a glance which Theos saw and in his heart resented, but which Sah- luma, absorbed in his own reflections, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 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
... was educated at Westminster and at Christ Church, Oxford; but his temperament rebelled against the system of education still in vogue and the public disputations of the schools, which he thought "invented for wrangling and ostentation rather than to discover truth." It was his study of Descartes that first "gave him a relish of philosophical things." From 1683 to 1689 he found it prudent to sojourn in Holland. In the latter year he returned to England, bringing ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... geography class and turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and got "turned down," by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with ostentation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... philosophers are taken upon trust, and by a sort of men who are not very likely to be at the pains of an inquiry that would employ so much time and thinking. For the usual ends why men affect this kind of discourse appear generally to be either out of ostentation, that they may pass upon the world for persons of great knowledge and observation, or, what is worse, there are some who highly exalt the wisdom of those Gentile sages, thereby obliquely to glance at and traduce Divine revelation, and more especially that of the Gospel; for the consequence they ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... declared, from the signs that they found, that he had been poisoned, which made his death more regrettable. [34] The Audiencia buried the governor in the monastery of St. Augustine at Manila, with the pomp and ostentation due to his person and offices. Then, again taking charge of the government, the Audiencia despatched the vessels to Nueva Espana, whence advice was sent to his Majesty of the taking of Maluco and the death of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... he claimed at least his share of the reverence paid by fools to rank and wealth. He was travelling this lonely coast on a tour of inspection, to visit and report upon a site where His Majesty's advisers had some design to plant a fort; and a fine ostentation coloured his progress here as through life. He had brought his coach because it conveyed his claret and his batterie de cuisine (the seaside inns were detestable); but being young and extravagantly healthy and, with all his faults, very much of a man, he preferred to ride ahead on his saddle-horse ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... honourable, high-minded, and fond husbands and fathers are echoing such questions with a sigh of agony! Poor Follett! 'twas for such reasons that he lived with an honourable economy, eschewing that extravagance and ostentation which too often, to men in his dazzling position, prove irresistible; it was for such reasons that he rose up early, and went to bed late, and ate the bread of carefulness. Had he been alone in the world—had he had none to provide for but himself, and yet had manifested the same feverish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... reduced him to a state of slavery, a condition unknown to him or his fathers, since he once served in our army as a free man. We marvel that such a man should be dragged into bondage who (on account of his infirmity) ought to have been liberated by a lawful owner. It is a new kind of ostentation to claim the services of such an one, the sight of whom shocks you, and to call that man a slave, to whom you ought rather to minister with ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... There was no ostentation or superciliousness about Mrs. Washington. She was hospitable and kind, and she put on no airs because she was a great lady from Virginia, and because she was the wife of the commander in chief of the army. The story ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... commanded to be introduced to the church. At first, almost the whole church 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, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... contrary, Mrs. Forrester is seen at her best, and has given us a book of lively interest. The situation in some respects suggests that of Daniel Deronda: D'Arcy is a sort of Grandcourt cheapened and made popular, acting out his instincts of tyranny and brutality with more ostentation and less good taste. What is subtly indicated by George Eliot is given with profuse effect by the present writer. Viola, if not a Gwendolen, is yet an unloving wife. Sir Douglas Roy plays a somewhat difficult ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... unlike the complex works of man, Heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan! No clustering ornaments to clog the pile; From ostentation, as from weakness free, It stands majestic in its own simplicity. Inscribed above the portal, from afar, Conspicuous as the brightness of a star, Legible only by the light they give, Stand the soul-quickening words—Believe and Live. Too many, shocked at what should charm ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... Tacitus says of Mucianus, the wisest and most active politician of his time, 'That he had a certain art of setting forth to advantage everything he said or did.' And it requires indeed some art, lest it become wearisome and contemptible; but yet it is true that ostentation, though carried to the first degree of vanity, is rather a vice in morals than in policy. For as it is said of calumny, 'Calumniate boldly, for some of it will stick,' so it may be said of ostentation (except it be in a ridiculous degree ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... lady whom Archdale looked at with pride. He was fond of his mother without recognizing a certain likeness between them. She was dressed elegantly, although without ostentation, and she came towards her guests with an ease as delightful as their own. Stephen going to meet her, led her forward and introduced her. Lady Dacre looked at her scrutinizingly, and gave a little ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... in so many different senses, but I never knew anybody who realized my conception of that ideal more perfectly than Mr. Mackay. In him, as Prince Leopold said of another, all culture and all refinement met. He was extremely simple in all his ways, and averse to every kind of vanity and ostentation. He had a sufficient fortune for a refined life, and did not care for any kind of wasteful extravagance. All belonging to him was simple and in good taste. He did not see very much society; that which he did see included several men and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... grandeur of the commonwealth shows itself chiefly in works that were either necessary or convenient, such as temples, highways, aqueducts, walls, and bridges of the city. On the contrary, the magnificence of Rome under the emperors is seen principally in such works as were rather for ostentation or luxury, than any real usefulness or necessity, as in baths, amphitheaters, circuses, obelisks, triumphal pillars, arches, and mausoleums; for what they added to the aqueducts was rather to supply their ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... courage to attempt the reparation of his broken fortunes by that favorite resource, the plunder of the Spanish settlements. On his return from his first voyage he sailed up the Thames in a kind of triumph, displaying a top-sail of cloth of gold, and making ostentation of the profit rather than the glory of the enterprise. He appears to have been equally deficient in the enlightened prudence which makes an essential feature of the great commander, and in that lofty ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... An unusual ostentation of magnificence appears to have attended the celebration of these august nuptials. The fondness of the king for pomp and pageantry was at all times excessive, and on this occasion his love and his pride would equally conspire to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... there be large sums given for these is within common knowledge. 1 d., 2 d., nay even 4 d., is not too great a price, if a man will have of the finest leaf, reckless of expense. In this sort of smoking, however, I find more of vainglory and ostentation than solid satisfaction; and its votaries would seem to display less a calm, healthy affection for tobacco than (as Sir T. Browne hath it) a "passionate prodigality.'' And, besides grievous wasting of ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... move in the House for a monument for Lord Collingwood in St Paul's, next to Nelson's. Of course the Body, which has arrived in the Thames, will be deposited in that Church, and the funeral must be splendid without ostentation—at the expense of the executors, or rather of the family." It was not, however, till May 8th that Mrs Stanhope was enabled to furnish her son with full details of the manner in which the intended ceremony was to ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... it rather grumpily. Most Englishmen dislike ostentation and display; and to Stafford the place seemed garish and "loud." Howard surveyed ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... "Ahem! See how well dressed and how dignified I am!" The furnishings of the room are elegant and perhaps uncomfortable and unhealthful, since the master of the house would consider not so much the comfort and health of his guests as his own ostentation, "A terrible thing is dysentery," he would say to them, "but you are sitting in European chairs and that is something you ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... 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 ; and therefore I mean always, in a Court as I would elsewhere, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... he had not been quite as attentive to me as his station demanded, or wishing to let me see what a fine house he possessed, stepped up to me and asked me to look into the billiard-room, the door of which I was about to pass. After some remarks of deprecatory ostentation, in which he informed me that in building his house he thought only of comfort and convenience, and nothing of show, he carelessly invited my attention to the drawing-room, the library, the music-room, and the little sitting-room, all of which ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... enough to know this, unless we print it in our minds by daily meditation, and so bring a good will to a good habit. And we must practice what we preach, for philosophy is not a subject for popular ostentation, nor does it rest in words, but in things. It is not an entertainment taken up for delight, or to give a taste to leisure, but it fashions the mind, governs our actions, tells us what we are to do, and what not. It sits at the helm, and guides ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... gentlemen of quality. I think it may be said, without disparagement to this history, that neither Alexander, nor Napoleon, nor Wellington, nor, indeed, any of the great warriors, whose deeds historians have recorded with so much ostentation, ever met with so strange an accident, or one which led to so many embarrassments. And although Captain Luke had never had occasion to doubt the chastity of his wife, whose face, being as ugly as could well be conceived, he had always held to be an adequate protection, his first impulse ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... was jewelry worn more ornately, or with greater display, we might almost say ostentation, than in the age of Shakespeare. As a rule, in this period the precious stones were less considered than the elaborate goldsmith work in which they were placed. They were the adjuncts, rather than the principal glory of ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... world as they are, and decided that Heaven is a myth. My manners soon betrayed the effect of the enlightenment of my mind. No more arrogance, no more boasting. I did not divest myself of pride, but it became more tractable and more convenient; it renounced ostentation and vain display; the peacock changed into a man of good breeding. This, sir, is what experience has done for me, assisted by Sequere fatum. It has made me wise, an honest man and an atheist. So I said a little while afterwards ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... guided by Empson, Julian deviated from the principal door, to one which opened, with less ostentation, in an angle of the courtyard. On a modest tap from the flute-player, admittance was afforded him and his companions by a footman, who conducted them through a variety of stone passages, to a very handsome summer parlour, where a lady, or something resembling one, dressed in a style of extra ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... these words that I have spoken are no mere quibbles, and I have tried to make you understand that they have not fallen into my head for ostentation or by mere chance on the present occasion: on the contrary, from the outset I realized that this course was both suitable and advantageous for me; that is why I both think and speak thus. Consequently you may be not only of good courage with reference to ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... several cautions should be observed:—1. Avoid every appearance of ostentation. Suppress every rising of self-complacency, on account of what you do, and of the success which attends your efforts. Such feelings are abominable in the sight of God; and if indulged, will make you appear contemptible in the eyes of men. The Pharisees were active in many religious duties. ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... nothing about our tastes or needs, and the builder was unable to make a comfortable flight of stairs, safe chimneys, smooth floors or tight windows. After these two came another pair, worse than the first—Ostentation and Avarice. They tried to make a grand display and at the same time a large profit on the job. How can I exorcise such demons as these except ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... 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 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... adds to that which I call their misery; and I must needs think the savages of America live much more happy than the poorer sort of these, because as they have nothing, so they desire nothing; whereas these are proud and insolent and in the main are in many parts mere beggars and drudges. Their ostentation is inexpressible; and, if they can, they love to keep multitudes of servants or slaves, which is to the last degree ridiculous, as well as their contempt of all the ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... and they fancy that by acting on a certain regimen they can arrive at tranquillity of soul. It is in reality just the other way. One must become simple in soul first, and the simple setting follows as a matter of course. If a man can purge himself of ambition, and social pride, and ostentation, and the desire of praise, his life falls at once into a simple mould, because keeping up appearances is the most expensive thing in the world; to begin with eating pulse and drinking water, is as ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... strongly tempted to break his royal promises, as he had done once before, and retain so valuable a prisoner, but confined himself to hints as to what he might do, and displayed on the part of his court and his capital an ostentation of luxury almost equal to that of the Field of the Cloth of Gold twenty years before, when he had met Henry VIII of England—"that spot of blood and grease on the pages of history." The capital, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... may be regarded as having secured his dynasty. Frederick the Great described George as a prince who governed England by respecting liberty, even while he made use of the subsidies granted by Parliament to corrupt the Parliament which voted them. {271} He was a king, Frederick declares, "without ostentation and without deceit," and who won by his conduct the confidence of Europe. This latter part of the description is a little too polite. Kings do not criticise each other too keenly in works that are meant for publication. But the words form, on the whole, an epitaph for George which might ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... personal zeal 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the veritable grandeur of your endowment never begot itself a body of work really symbolic of itself. For if your music, as a whole, has any grandeur, it is the hollow grandeur of inflation, of ostentation, of externality. Your music is almost entirely a monstrous decor de theatre. It is forever seeking to establish tragical and satanic and passional atmospheres, to suggest immense and regal and terrific things, to gain tremendous effects. It is full of loud, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... another, much in the same way as modern business houses endeavour to outshine each other in the magnificence of their buildings. Of all the mixed motives that went to the evolution of church architecture in the middle ages, this rivalry in ostentation was probably the most fertile in the creation of new forms. A volume might be written on the economic effects of this locking up of vast capital in unproductive buildings. In Catholic countries (notably in Ireland) great churches are still built out of the savings of a poverty-stricken ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... these people are so wretched, that they have nothing but rags to cover them, which do not at all fit, and are scarcely sufficient to hide their nakedness; yet they betray their foolish taste, and vain ostentation, whenever they have in opportunity." The women are as fond of dress as the men, and equally expose themselves to the ridicule of the considerate and reflecting part ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... satisfied with seeing the country prosperous and respected abroad. He wants to dazzle. His policy, domestic and foreign, is a policy of vanity and ostentation—motives which mislead everyone both in private and ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... out-of-date traditions caused the strain. One gained nothing by pretending to be rich and important; there was no logical reason for trying to live like one's ancestors, and the effort cost the Osborns much. It meant stern private economy, public ostentation, and many small deceits. Grace was getting tired of this pretense; she wanted something simpler and dignified. For the most part, the dalesfolk looked happy and she had come to envy them. They had their troubles, but they were ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... fails him only when his subject is consciously and deliberately breaking a moral law: it is irresistible when its target is a false moral law or convention of morals set up to protect anti-social practices. Among these we may reckon bribery of politicians, oppression of the poor, vulgar ostentation, the habit of adultery and the writing of bad verse. Aristophanes, Moliere, Byron, and Dickens—these attempted to correct the social vices of ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... 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
... pufft him up, when he had part; Those titles loathed, which some do too much love For truly his ambition lay above. His humble mind so lov'd humility, He left it to his race for Legacy; And oft and oft, with speeches mild and wise, Gave his in charge, that Jewel rich to prize. No ostentation seen in all his wayes, As in the mean ones of our foolish dayes. Which all they have, and more still set to view, Their greatness may be judg'd by what they shew. His thoughts were more sublime, his actions wise, Such vanityes he justly ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... when they discovered their deficiency, or that the men had more confidence in others, after a short respite at home, returned and joined their old companies as privates. Was there ever greater patriotism and unselfishness and less ostentation shown as in the example of these men! It was but natural that men selected almost at random, and in many instances unacquainted with a majority of the men at enlistment unusual to military life, or the requirements of an officer in actual service, could possibly ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... had a longing for ices, strawberry mess, oyster- patties, or any other school luxury, he would treat him, running up a score if he had not the cash in his pocket to pay with. And if there was generosity in this impulse, I fear that there was ostentation too. It added to his popularity, and popularity had become as the air he breathed. For the only real test of generosity is self-denial. If you go without something you really want in order to ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... of a puff. Hull determined to utilize it for himself, and, if possible, trick the British so that they would lose all benefit of the breeze. The clouds that were coming up to windward seemed to threaten a squall, and driving sheets of rain were rapidly advancing toward the ship. With great ostentation, the "Constitution" was made ready for a severe gale. The enemy could see the nimble sailors taking in sail, and furling all the lighter canvas. Then the driving rain swept over the ship, and she was shut out of sight. Immediately all was activity in the tops of the British ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Governments of Europe, and especially from the cabinet of Great Britain. "If sufficient time were available to me," said Peron, "it would be very easy to demonstrate to you that all our natural history researches, extolled with so much ostentation by the Government, were merely the pretext of its enterprise." The principal object was "one of the most brilliant and important conceptions," which would, if successful, have made the Government for ever illustrious. The unfortunate circumstance was, however, Peron ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... as a Prytaneum for meritorious scholars, and to reward industry through the prizes which they offer. In their idea they belong with the university, this appearing externally in the fact that most of their members are university professors. But as institutions for ostentation by which the ambition of the learned was flattered, and to surround princes with scientific glory as scientific societies attached to a court, they have lost all significance. They ceased to flourish with the Ptolemies and ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... written in ridicule of some affected ladies of the period, who pretended, with rather too much ostentation, to embrace the doctrines of Platonic Love. Mrs. Mary Astell, a learned and worthy woman, had embraced this fantastic notion so deeply, that, in an essay upon the female sex, in 1696, she proposed a sort of female college, in which the young might be instructed, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... 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 in: keep up their ancient use; and whenever you see ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... intelligence nor virtue—in just that there seemed to her some flaw of taste 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 ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... melodies, but songs of a strange land. It was 'live and let live' here: stranger guests came from far and near, the music sounded, the goblets clashed, and I was not able to drown the noise," said the Wind. "Ostentation, and haughtiness, and splendour, and display, and rule were there, but the fear of the Lord ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... finding something nice and appropriate. On board, where she never saw him in evening clothes, Renouard's resemblance to a duke's son was not so apparent to her. Nothing but his—ah—bohemianism remained. She rose with a sort of ostentation. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Drevet closed the classical period of portraits in engraving, as just before had closed the Augustan age of French literature. Louis XIV. decreed engraving a fine art, and established an academy for its cultivation. Pride and ostentation in the king and the great aristocracy created a demand which the genius of the age supplied. The heights that had been reached could not be maintained. There were eminent engravers still; but the zenith had been passed. Balechou, who belonged to the reign of Louis XV., and Beauvarlet, ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... judge of Carlo Cignani by his works, I should pronounce him a man of elevated character, noble by instinct, if not by descent, but simple in his habits, and a despiser of outward show and ostentation. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... praise remains. Born to magnificence, she clothes not herself in the pride of wealth; listens not to Fortune's flattering tale, who tells her she is more than human; but walks upon the common ground, far removed from all thought of arrogance and ostentation. Every man is her equal; her greeting, her smile are for all who approach her; and how acceptable is the kindness of a superior, when it is free from every touch of condescension! When the power of the great turns not to insolence but to beneficence, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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, and stains the hands of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... species of dishonesty. They live within their means, and lay by something for a rainy day. They provide for the things of their own household,—yet they are not wanting in hospitality and benevolence on fitting occasions. And what they do, is done without ostentation. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... she did not sell, pledge, bestow, or otherwise make the book subservient to her temporal or corporal wants, as Mr. Rant very ingeniously argued. Neither did she take it to place in her library—for she had no library; nor for ostentation in her hall—for she had no hall, as my pious friend Counsellor Sleek has. But, gentlemen, even if this old woman by reading the Bible learned to repent, and felt conversion of heart, you are not to infer that the act which brought ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and cure. And then, that I did not fall into the ambition of ordinary sophists, either to write tracts concerning the common theorems, or to exhort men unto virtue and the study of philosophy by public orations; as also that I never by way of ostentation did affect to show myself an active able man, for any kind of bodily exercises. And that I gave over the study of rhetoric and poetry, and of elegant neat language. That I did not use to walk about the house in my long robe, nor to do any such things. Moreover ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... Philadelphia was one of the finest that the town possessed; he drove about in a carriage and four; he entertained with excessive luxury and a large retinue of servants; he revelled in all sorts of pompous parade. Such ostentation would have roused adverse comment amid the simple colonial surroundings of a century ago, even if he had merely been a citizen of extraordinary wealth. But being an officer intrusted with the most important dignities ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... remain poor. His estate, Briess, near Berlin, is no Chanteloup, but a model to those patriots who would study economy. Here he, every Wednesday, enjoys recreation. The services he renders the kingdom cost it only five thousand rix-dollars yearly; he, therefore, lives without ostentation, yet becoming his state, and with splendour when splendour is necessary. He does not plunder the public treasury that he may preserve his own ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... age, which produced such editions, and for the education, which by enabling me to understand and taste the Greek and Latin writers, has thus put it in my power to collect on my own shelves, for my actual use, almost all the best books in spite of my small income. Somewhat too I am indebted to the ostentation of expense among the rich, which has occasioned these cheap editions to ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... said. "These people have neither manners nor hearts. I told Mr. Shippen as much. And where does your general get all his money? It is vulgar, this waste. Look!" she said; "look there! It is well to feed the poor after a wedding; I like the old custom; but this is mere ostentation." It was true; there was a crowd of the neighbouring farm people about the detached kitchen, eager for the food and rum which I saw given daily in absurd profusion. My ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... simple manner in which she had pronounced this name, she had infused so triumphant an expression, such manifest ostentation, that Vaudrey felt himself suddenly ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... carefully darned in many places. The silver spoons were of fine, old-fashioned patterns, worn very thin—so thin that even the colonel was struck by their fragility. How charming, he thought, to prefer the simple dignity of the past to the vulgar ostentation of a more modern time. He had once dined off a golden dinner service, at the table of a multi-millionaire, and had not enjoyed the meal half so much. The dining-room looked out upon the garden and the perfume of lilac and violet stole in through the open windows. A soft-footed, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... altogether. It was a very fine house, and the gardens were reported to be beautifully kept up, but the owner was almost always in Italy, and had so seldom been at Rockstone that it was understood that all this was the ostentation of a man who did not know what to do ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "In fifteen days we have finished a campaign," said the proclamation of Napoleon to his soldiers. "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
... 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 together in ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... to appreciate those who dissented from him about forms of government, because he could discover in them the true love of nationality, to which Italy aspires. Wise without pretension, beneficent without ostentation, chaste in deed and word, exquisitely tender-hearted, he tempered the harsh lessons of experience by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a warrior who fought only in defense of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained with cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity, nor lifted up to insolence in the hour of triumph—there is no other name in English history ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... industrious and frugal; many of them delicately bred, their minds teeming with ideas and fertile in plans of enterprise; given to the culture of the arts; eager in the pursuit of wealth, yet employing wealth less for ostentation than for developing the resources of their country; seeking happiness in the calm of domestic life; and such lovers of peace, that for generations they had been reputed unwarlike. Now, at the cry of their country in its distress, they rose up with unappeasable patriotism; not ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... of Cassy was 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 returned ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to finish; already Rena Bonnesdel was looking at them, and there was a hint of amused surprise in Eileen Shannon's mischievous eyes, averted instantly, with malicious ostentation. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... popular taste accurately enough in setting up his chariot with its fifty runners. That was a show something like a king, and, no doubt, much more approved than David's simplicity. But it was an evil omen to any one who looked below the surface. When luxury grows, devotion languishes. The senseless ostentation which creeps into the families of good men, and is sustained by their weak compliance with their spoiled children's wishes, does a world of harm. We in Lancashire have a proverb, 'Clogs, carriage, clogs,' which puts into three words the history of three generations, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine joined in a rapturous cheer, each man and woman, to show that he or she was not disappointed. The bearer spoke with Mr. Burrham, in answer to his questions, and, with a good deal of ostentation, he opened a check-book, filled a check and passed it to her, she signing a receipt as she took it, and transferring to him her ticket. So far, in dumb show, all was well. What was more to my purpose, it was rapid, for we should have been ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... of view Graeme detested Mr. Pixley, though he had never passed a word with him. He was too perfect, too immaculate. His "unco' guidness," as Lady Elspeth would have said, bordered on ostentation. The sight and sound of him aroused in some people a wild inclination towards unaccustomed profanity and wallowing in the mire. He was so undisguisedly and self-satisfiedly better than his fellows ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... for learning trades, where dangerous tools are used; and many owners, from motives of profit and advantage, breed them to be coopers, carpenters, bricklayers, smiths, and other trades. Out of mere ostentation the colonists also keep a number of them about their families, who attend their tables, and hear their conversation, which very often turns upon their own various arts, plots, and assassinations. From such open and imprudent conversation those domestics may ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... hostile The despair of the official wire-puller Blind and unreasoning opponent Ignoble strife for power Surrounded by a cohort of admiring friends In an imperative voice Marked by copiousness and vivacity Touched with sombre dignity A ridiculous misconception Habitual austerity of demeanor Ostentation and lavish expenditure A person of exquisite tact Intolerant of bumptiousness The obvious danger of dallying This was grossly overstated A mass of calumny and exaggeration Inimical to religion Fraught with peril I venture to ask Attributed to mental decrepitude A strange phenomena ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... is that attendant upon the death of relatives and friends, and it becomes us to show, in every possible way, the utmost consideration for the feelings of the bereaved, and the deepest respect for the melancholy occasion. Of late the forms of ostentation at funerals are gradually diminishing, and by some people of intelligence, even mourning habiliments are rejected ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... the Shah for the first time stops his Horse—smiles—casts Largess among the Prisoners, etc. And when asked why he neglected all the Jewels, etc., and stopped with satisfaction at such a grim welcome as the Prisoners threw him, he says, 'The Jewels, etc., were but empty Ostentation—but those bloody Limbs prove that my Law has been executed, without which none of those Heads and Carcases would have parted Company, etc.' De Tassy notices a very agreeable Story of Mahmud and the Lad fishing: and I find another as pleasant about Mahmud ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... bravery, in which they excelled all nations; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to every impression; much intelligence, but at the same time extreme mobility, want of perseverance, aversion to discipline and order, ostentation and perpetual discord—the result of boundless vanity." Cato the Elder more briefly describes them, nearly to the same effect; "the Celts devote themselves mainly to two things—fighting and -esprit-."(6) Such qualities—those of good soldiers but of bad ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... witness from her window—a prisoner's window, her 'eager heart could have termed it—of a remarkable ostentation of cordiality between the colonel and Cecil, in the presence of Mr. Romfrey. Was it his humour to conspire to hand Miss Halkett to Cecil, and then to show Nevil the prize he had forfeited by his folly? The three were on the lawn a little before Colonel Halkett's departure. The colonel's arm ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... revealed two much-battered and faded stars, indicating his rank of major-general. He wore a black "slouch" hat, the brim well down over his face, and rode along with a single orderly, without the least ostentation. The men of the other regiments knew him and broke out into a cheer, at which he promptly doffed his hat and swung it at the boys. His hat off, we recognized the handsome author of the "Burnside" whiskers. He was not only very popular with his own corps—the Ninth—but ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... waxed as Peel's began to wane. Death put a sudden end to his activity. He was thrown from his horse while riding up Constitution Hill in London, and died on the second of July, 1850. In accordance with his expressed wish, his family declined the honors of a public funeral, and he was buried without ostentation in the family tomb at Drayton Bassett. His statue, voted by the House of Commons, was placed in ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Nature is the mother of us all, and only as we allow her spirit to pervade and nourish our being do we really live. The watchword, 'back to nature' may be said to have given the first impulse to the later call of the 'simple life,' which has arisen as a protest against the luxury, ostentation, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... eyes turned to Margaret, who had no eyes for him. She had forgotten his existence, with an utterness that verged on ostentation; and if it had been any one else Billy would have surmised she was in a temper. But that angel in a temper!—nonsense! And, oh, what eyes she had! and what lashes! and what hair!—and altogether, how adorable she was, and what a wonder ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
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