"Ostensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas the best service done in education,—namely, in soul development (and this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients as they were usually ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays 'Dixie' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... on at one end of the table, Rotha had made her way to the other end, with the ostensible purpose of cutting up the cheese, but with the actual purpose of listening to a conversation in which his reverence Nicholas Stevens was beginning to bear an unusually animated part. Some one had made allusion to the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... revelation, disclosure, exposition, manifestation; direction, guidance, ushering; explanation, expounding, illustration, interpretation, indication, exemplification. Associated Words: ostensive, ostensible, exhibiting, expository. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... seem that, even though the ostensible motive was not the same, the two courses of operation followed identical methods, and in outcome were indistinguishable. This is not so. However subtle the working of the desire for gain upon the individual naval officer, leading at times to acts of doubtful propriety, the tone and ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... an alleged historical treatise, profited by his priestly garb to play fast and loose with what little remained of decent family life on that God-abandoned island. Honour to whom honor is due! The ostensible reason for this unique act of justice was that the said Perrelli had appeared at some palace function with paste buckles on his shoes, instead of silver ones. The pretext was well chosen, inasmuch as the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Campan [Memoires, t. i. p. 33], "the queen unfortunately made an equally grave one in supporting him at the time of a disgrace brought upon him by the despair of the whole nation. She considered it only consistent with her dignity to give him, at his departure, ostensible proofs of her esteem, and, her very sensibility misleading her, she sent him her portrait adorned with precious stones and the patent of lady of the palace for his niece, Madame de Courcy, saying that it was necessary to indemnify ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... recourse to legal measures with a view to the punishment of Harlowe; and I finally determined—after a conference with Mr. Ferret, who, having acted for the first Mrs. Harlowe, I naturally conjectured must know something of her history and connections—to take for the present no ostensible steps in the matter. Mr. Ferret, like myself, was persuaded that the sham resuscitation of his first wife was a mere trick, to enable Harlowe to rid himself of the presence of a woman he no longer cared for. "I will take an ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... arena until practically the whole of Europe was in arms and the Armageddon seemed at hand, the world stood amazed and astounded, wondering what hand had loosed so vast a catastrophe, what deep and secret causes lay below the ostensible causes of the war. The causes of this were largely unknown. As a panic at times affects a vast assemblage, with no one aware of its origin, so a wave of hostile sentiment may sweep over vast communities until ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... that, by lulling emotional confusion, it is possible to inhibit the sense of modesty. In other words, we are here in the presence of a fear—to a large extent a sex-fear—impelling to concealment, and dreading self-attention; this fear naturally disappears, even though its ostensible cause remains, when it becomes apparent that there is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... raves, your heroine cries, All stab, and every body dies. In short, your tragedy would be The very thing to hear and see: And for a piece of publication, If I decline on this occasion, It is not that I am not sensible To merits in themselves ostensible, But—and I grieve to speak it—plays Are drugs, mere drugs, sir—now-a-days. I had a heavy loss by 'Manuel,'— Too lucky if it prove not annual,— And S * *, with his 'Orestes,' (Which, by the by, the author's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sat round the dinner table was gay, but no reference was made to the ostensible object of Mr. Bolitho's visit. When nine o'clock came, however, it was evident that there were several new-comers, and presently the two Wilsons led the way to the library, while Mr. Bolitho followed with a half-interested, half-bored look on his face. He shook hands with a number ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... have phrased it), so that in his proper social environment he was not apt to make social mistakes. This environment, however, could not but be constituted, in the main, of convicts either actual or potential; and there was probably no citizen, however high his standing or spotless his ostensible record, who in this official's estimate might not have prison gates either before him or behind him, or both. To be able to maintain, under the shadow of convictions so harsh, a disposition so sunny, was surely ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Mr Thomas Rookwood followed this interview. It was equally short in its ostensible length, and piously acknowledged the receipt of two bands, two handkerchiefs, one pair of socks, and a Bible. Beneath came the important postscript "Your last letter I could not read; the pen did not cast incke. Mr Catesby did ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... the daughter of Clotel, in the capacity of a servant in her own father's house, where she had been taken by her mistress for the ostensible purpose of plunging her husband into the depths of humiliation. At first the young girl was treated with great severity; but after finding that Horatio Green had lost all feeling for his child, Mrs. Green's own ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... intimacy between our family and Mrs. Long's was to be preserved unaltered. This it would have been impossible for me to do if Mrs. Long had not herself recognized the necessity of it, for her own full enjoyment of John's society. But it was a hard thing; my aunt, the ostensible head of our house, was a quiet woman who had nothing whatever to do with society, and who felt in the outset a great shrinking from the brilliant Mrs. Long. I had never been on intimate terms with her, so that John ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that the family had not been ignorant of Fanny's career since she had run away from home, leaving her child on her grandmother's hands. She had made her home in one of the yellow vans which circulate between fairs and races, driving an ostensible trade in cheap toys, but really existing by setting up games which were, in fact, forms of gambling, according to the taste of the people and the toleration of the police. From time to time, she had appeared at home, late in the evening, with small sums of money and presents ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... committed from the number of roads by which the same point may be reached, is a great temptation to the waverer, and a great trial of temper to the victim. The disputants on the arenae of law, politics, or other pursuits, the ostensible aim of which is worldly aggrandizement, however animated in debate, unsparing in satire, reckless in their invective and recrimination, seldom fail in their private intercourse to throw off the armour of professional antagonism, and to extend to each other the ungloved hand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... sort of magnetism that drew my eyes in his direction. I was always on my guard to resist it, and that was really the inception of my neglect of him. From I don't know what stupid motive of pride, I was anxious that he shouldn't discern the interest he had excited in me; so I paid less ostensible attention to him than to the others, who excited none at all. I tried to appear unconscious of him as a detached personality, to treat him as merely a part of the group as a whole. Then I improved such occasions as presented themselves ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... it is evident, were only to be obtained by a process of bloodshed, war, and revolution. None will deny that those who set on foot military expeditions against foreign states by means like these are far more culpable than the ignorant and the necessitous whom they induce to go forth as the ostensible parties in the proceeding. These originators of the invasion of Cuba seem to have determined with coolness and system upon an undertaking which should disgrace their country, violate its laws, and put to hazard the lives of ill-informed and deluded men. You will consider whether ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... reversed, and men accepted the hypothesis as conclusive until it was disproved. It was a perfectly rational and sufficient explanation in those days to refer some extraordinary event to some given supernatural cause, even though there might be no ostensible link between the two: now, such a suggestion would be treated by the vast majority with derision or contempt. On the other hand, the most trivial occurrences, such as sneezing, the appearance of birds of ill omen, the crowing of a cock, and events of like unimportance happening at a ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... rather a peculiar temper. He is perpetually getting very angry with no ostensible reason—and then he glares at one like an ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... care, and more continually than tempers and morals do. The strongest body ceases to be a body in a few days without a supply of food. When we speak of men being naturally bad or good, we mean susceptible and retentive and communicative of them. In this case (and there can be no other true or ostensible one) I believe that the more are good; and nearly in the same proportion as there are animals and plants produced healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly. Strange is the opinion of Mr. Hobbes, that, when God hath poured so abundantly His benefits on other creatures, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had been taken up on a charge of felony, committed, and thrown into the common jail. The crime imputed to him was that six years before he had forged a bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still is, the opinion of everybody, idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings was the real mover in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cologne professors and purported to be from his former students and admirers. In these letters the writers take pains to exhibit the most shocking ignorance and stupidity. They narrate their scandalous doings with the ostensible purpose of obtaining advice as to the best way to get out of their scrapes. They vituperate the humanists in comically bad Latin, which is perhaps the best part of the joke.[269] In this way those who later opposed Luther ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... defiance of the opposition of the whole of Europe, and with the danger of a War that may devastate the world, do betray a distinct tendency, and because the grave consequences of the War must appear much more momentous than the original ostensible cause of it, which at first appeared only as the request for a key to the back door of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... now mingled up with the more daring spirits, producing a more complicated and varied class of crime than before. The steam-boats were soon crowded by a description of people who were termed gamblers, as such was their ostensible profession, although they were ready for any crime which might offer an advantage to them, [see note 1] and the increase of commerce and constant inpouring of populations daily offer to them some new dupe ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rival, spoke slurringly of Mrs. Jackson. He apologized for it on the plea that he had been in his cups at the time, but Jackson never forgave him. A political difference as an ostensible cause of quarrel soon developed. Dickinson sent a challenge which was gladly accepted. The resulting duel was probably the most dramatic that ever occurred in the United States. Dickinson was a dead shot. So, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... intention in these pages to give a full and particular account of George Reader's college life. It would neither be on the whole interesting, nor would it be found to have much bearing on my own career, which is the ostensible theme of the ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... years after his ostensible conversion, the king was obliged daily to perform the most humiliating ceremonies, by way of penance; and it was not till 1594 that he was absolved by Clement VIII. The Leaguers then had no further pretext ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... spring the government, if it is to be so called, of which Berwick was the ostensible head, was dissolved by the return of Tyrconnel. The Luttrells had, in the name of their countrymen, implored James not to subject so loyal a people to so odious and incapable a viceroy. Tyrconnel, they said, was old; he was infirm; he needed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... alluring, of lodgings. The town seemed to be pretty full of lodgings, but as it was the middle of August, and the very height of the season, they were full-up in dismaying measure. We found the only one not kept by a Welsh woman in the ostensible keeping of an Englishwoman, a veteran cockney landlady, but behind her tottering throne reigned a Welsh girl, under whose iron rule we fell as if we had been unworthy Saeseneg instead of Cymric-fetched Americans. We had rejected ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... fall under the pear tree, at the first scream I had heard from the house. It had burst open and two or three of the sandwiches lay broken on the ground. But those that were intact I picked up, and being more than ever anxious to cover up by some ostensible errand my absence from the party, I rushed away toward the lonely road where these brothers lived, meaning to leave such fragments as remained on the old doorstep, beyond which I had been told ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... out in the morning with the ostensible purpose of gathering chestnuts, or autumn leaves, or persimmons, or exploring some run or branch. It is, say, the last of October or the first of November. The air is not balmy, but tart and pungent, like the flavor of the red-cheeked apples by the roadside. In the sky not a cloud, not a ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... prospect of a lesson in driving, especially as Bart, because of his lameness, did not venture to take his over-spirited steed Thunder. She sincerely hoped, however, that he would confine his thoughts and attentions to the ostensible object of the drive, for his manner at times was embarrassingly ardent. Burt was sufficiently politic to fulfil her hope, for he had many other drives in view, and had discovered that attentions not fraternal ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... The direct and ostensible aim of the book, however, has been kept steadily in view; which is to furnish the best possible exercises for practice in Rhetorical reading. To this end, the greatest variety of style and sentiment has been sought. There ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... little too close to be funny. Since the Celebrity had lost his nerve and betaken himself to the place of concealment Mr. Cooke had prepared for him, the whole composition of the affair was changed. Before, if McCann had arrested the ostensible Mr. Allen, my word, added to fifty dollars from my client, would probably have been sufficient. Should he be found now, no district attorney on the face of the earth could induce the chief to believe that he was any other than the real criminal; nor would any ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their tender relations; he felt such a thing to be by no means impossible. Meanwhile, ignorance would keep him in a most perplexing and embarrassing position. The Amyses, who knew nothing of the rupture of his ostensible engagement, would be surprised if he did not call upon Miss Bride, yet it behooved him, for the present, to hold aloof from both the girls, not to compromise his future chances with either of them. The dark possibility that neither one nor the other would come to his relief, he ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... own just defence; as, besides that there is no justice in stripping our own country of provisions, in order to feed strangers, we will not be surprised nor unpardonably displeased to learn, that of the ostensible quantity of flour, some sacks should be found filled with chalk, or lime, or some such substance. It is, indeed, truly wonderful, what the stomach of a Frank will digest comfortably. Their guides, also, whom you shall choose with reference to such duty, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the wrong, the one had mistaken the moral character of the revolution, and the other had miscalculated its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great, we may say, of almost humiliating sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that it would fail, at least, in its direct and ostensible object. Yet it was purchased cheaply, and realized an object of equal value, and, if possible, of more vital importance; for it brought about a national unanimity, unexampled in our history since the reign of Elizabeth; ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... survived; for she had, in the child which relied on her for support, a motive for strength and exertion. In what manner she maintained herself it is not easy to say. Her only ostensible means of support were a flock of three or four goats, which she fed wherever she pleased on the mountain pastures, no one challenging the intrusion. In the general distress of the country, her ancient acquaintances had ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... planned a magnificent scheme of commercial enterprise, which, having its centre of operations at Guaymas, should ramify through the golden wastes that stretch in silence and solitude along the tortuous banks of the Rio San Jose. This was to be the beginning and the ostensible end of the enterprise. Then he dreamed of the influence of American arts and American energy penetrating into the twilight of that decaying nationality, and saw the natural course of events leading on, first, Emigration, then Protection, and at last Annexation. Yet there was no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... I might have the opportunity of enjoying the presence of his fair daughter, and to her demonstrating my heart's devotion. Some such idea, vaguely conceived, flitted across my mind, as I entered upon my second journey to Mud Creek. My ostensible object was to take formal possession of an estate, and turn out its original owner. But my heart was in no unison with such an end. It recoiled from, or rather had it forgotten, its purpose. Its throbbings were directed to a different object: guiding me on a more joyful ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... afternoon. On Monday, May 2d, we made our usual visit, and returned to the post. A steamer touched there, on its way to Natchez, just after our return, and we accepted the invitation of her captain to go to that place. Our journey to Natchez was purely from impulse, and without any real or ostensible business to call us away. It proved, personally, a very ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... been the father, or the ostensible father, of the Senate amendment to House Bill Twenty-nine. He was known to the corporations' lobby as a legislator who would sign a railroad's death-warrant with one hand and take favors from it with the other; and ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... healthy-looking seamen were hanging in different parts of her rigging, some laughing, and holding low converse with messmates who lay indolently on the neighbouring spars, and others leisurely performing the light and trivial duty that was the ostensible employment of the moment. More than as many others loitered carelessly about the decks below, somewhat similarly engaged; the whole wearing much the appearance of men who were set to perform certain immaterial tasks, more ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... reserve, to everything which pleased the individual whom she loved, and simply because it was indispensable that she should love somebody. It was not even difficult to give her a lover by setting an eligible suitor to pay her court with an ostensible political motive; but as soon as she accepted him, she loved him solely and faithfully, and she owned to Mdme. de Rhodes and myself that, through caprice, she said, she had never really loved those whom she esteemed ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the other; superciliously jumped over the waistcoat and paused the infinitesimal part of a second on the necktie. Mauville learned in that moment how the eye may wither and humble, without giving any ostensible reason for offense. The attitude of this mincing fribble, as he danced twittingly away, was the first intimation Mauville had received that he would soon be relegated to the ranks of gay adventurers thronging the city. He who had watched his estates vanish with an unruffled countenance ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... professed champions of popular rights then and there attached to all men who recognized as essential to social order and progress, respect for and allegiance to justly constituted authorities in government and society: jealousy of the rights of the people was the ostensible motive of a political opposition to Jay, which, at this day and with all the evidence before us, seems inexplicable until we remember how the mirage of party fanaticism distorts the vision and perverts the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... subterranean chamber, or whether it corresponded with the spirit of her quest, Mrs. Milvain invariably came in by the back door and sat in the servants' room when she was engaged in confidential family transactions. The ostensible reason she gave was that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hilbery should be disturbed. But, in truth, Mrs. Milvain depended even more than most elderly women of her generation upon the delicious emotions of intimacy, agony, and secrecy, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... and she resolved to break her chains and leave Paris. He regarded this resolution as a mere threat. "No," he wrote, "you have not bid farewell to all earthly joys. If you go, you will return." She did go, however, taking with her Ballanche and her adopted daughter, whose delicate health was the ostensible cause of her departure. What it cost her to leave Paris may well be conjectured, and nothing is more indicative of her power of self-control than this voluntary withdrawal from a companionship which fascinated while it tortured her. Chateaubriand ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... when the authority of a great church has been brought into operation to crush a great institution by charges which most seriously discredit it—which represent it as diametrically and in all respects opposite in its internal nature to its ostensible appearance—we must by no means make light of the impeachment; we must remember the high position and the many opportunities of knowledge which are possessed by such an accuser; we must extend to that accuser at least the ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... was unique. Its provisions were designed, no doubt, to meet the unusual conditions presented by the overland emigration to California. Military protection for the emigrant, a telegraph line, and an overland mail were among the ostensible objects. The military force was to be a volunteer corps, which would construct military posts and at the same time provide for its own maintenance by tilling the soil. At the end of three years these military farmers ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the prefect nor the magistrates would trouble to enquire into the affair, and all the gentry of Lower Normandy had declared for the family of Combray, which was, moreover, connected with all the nobility in the district. Such were the ostensible reasons which the three confederates put forth, their real reason was only a question of money. They imagined that Mme. Acquet had the free disposal of the treasure buried at the Buquets, which amounted to more than 40,000 francs. Finding her ready to rejoin Le ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... from Almack's. Many are gone to the Thatched House,(121) to sup with the ladies, as they call it. These ladies are Lady Essex and Miss Amyas(?). Richard won last night 1,300 ostensible, besides what he pocketed to keep a corps de reserve unknown to Brooks. For Brooks lent him 2,300, and then laments the state of the house. He duns me for three hundred, of which I am determined to give him but two; as he knows so well where ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... could occasionally see them from her hiding-place, gliding about, and stealthily inspecting every part of the room, though without making any ostensible search, until, apparently satisfied that there was no one ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... at the meeting of the Zoological Institute in London. That mission was to test the truth of Professor Challenger's statements. Those statements, as I am bound to admit, we are now in a position to endorse. Our ostensible work is therefore done. As to the detail which remains to be worked out upon this plateau, it is so enormous that only a large expedition, with a very special equipment, could hope to cope with it. Should we attempt ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of a plan of economy which tends to exonerate the civil list of expensive establishments may in some sort defeat the capital end we have in view,—the independence of Parliament; and that, in removing the public and ostensible means of influence, we may increase the fund of private corruption. I have thought of some methods to prevent an abuse of surplus cash under discretionary application,—I mean the heads of secret service, special ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... trifles, than on any other account whatsoever; indeed I heard as much in town. Rose and Steele may laugh at such details, but they are necessary; and the constituent will not believe the member's assiduity unless he sees a real or ostensible answer. I gave my L100 to the Westminster election, in consequence of a letter from Rose; I could ill spare it, but finding others were dosed in the same manner, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... give me greater pleasure," responded Evatt, warmly, "but in confidence to ye, as a friend of government, I dare to say that my search for a farm is only the ostensible reason for my travels. I am executing an important and delicate mission for our government, and having already journeyed through the colonies to the northward, I must still travel through those of the south. 'T is therefore quite impossible ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... semblance of, carry the semblance of, have the semblance of, bear the semblance of, exhibit the semblance of, take the semblance of, take on the semblance of, assume the semblance of; look like; cut a figure, figure; present to the view; show &c. (make manifest) 525. Adj. apparent, seeming, ostensible; on view. Adv. apparently; to all seeming, to all appearance; ostensibly, seemingly, as it seems, on the face of it, prima facie [Lat]; at the first blush, at first sight; in the eyes of; to the eye. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... comfortable classes. Nothing is left but the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called Baconian induction. The 'matchless constitution,' as Bentham calls it, represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. When Macaulay asserted against Mill[118] that it was impossible to say which element—monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy—had gained strength in England in the last century, he is obviously looking at the formulae and not at the social ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... be called on for military service, only to find out that he could not even then enjoy the rights of the citizen. He felt much as the dog in the fable, which let drop his piece of meat for the sake of a reflection in the water. New laws and regulations continually came into force for the ostensible purpose of improving the state of the Uitlander—laws which in reality were created to bamboozle him still further. What chicanery failed to accomplish the remissness of officials successfully brought about, and the discomfort of the foreign inhabitants was complete. Beside ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... direction of the Cavan and Emily roads, is a wide space which I call the "squatter's ground," it being entirely covered with shanties, in which the poor emigrants, commuted pensioners, and the like, have located themselves and families. Some remain here under the ostensible reason of providing a shelter for their wives and children till they have prepared a home for their reception on their respective grants; but not unfrequently it happens that they are too indolent, or really ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... whom she boarded received his pay in butter, cheese, potatoes, apples, and other commodities, which were the product of Captain Howard's farm. Whether this was true or not I am not prepared to say, but I suppose it was, for it was told by those who had no ostensible business except to attend to other people's affairs, and I am sure they ought to have known all about it, and ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... point was not open to discussion, it having already been considered and decided. He then called on Lisseh, his minister, to state again the reasons for the unity of the empire. The speech of the minister is one of high importance, as giving the ostensible reasons for the unexampled act of destruction by which it ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... left the house. How little any expectation of the moonlight prospect—which was the ostensible reason of their pilgrimage—had to do with Knight's real motive in getting the gentle girl again upon his arm, Elfride no less than ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... of others. He who acts, not from the high principles of moral duty, but from a desire of notoriety, or the applause of men, may devote himself to much benevolence and usefulness of a public and ostensible kind; while he neglects duties of a higher, though more private nature,—and overlooks entirely, it may be, his own moral condition. The ascetic, on the contrary, shuts himself up in his cell, and imagines that he pleases God by meditation and voluntary austerities. ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... ghost story can be brought into our charmed and charming circle only if we have made up our minds to believe in the ghosts; otherwise their introduction would not be a square deal. It would not be fair, in other words, to propose a conundrum on a basis of ostensible materialism, and then, when no other key would fit, to palm off a disembodied spirit on us. Tell me beforehand that your scenario is to include both worlds, and I have no objection to make; I simply attune my mind to the more extensive scope. But I rebel at ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... in the cabinet, of which we have made mention, after sounding Mr. Richard Waverley, were so satisfied with his sentiments and abilities as to propose that, in case of a certain revolution in the ministry, he should take an ostensible place in the new order of things, not indeed of the very first rank, but greatly higher, in point both of emolument and influence, than that which he now enjoyed. There was no resisting so tempting a ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... cases: though the most guileless, undeceptive and transparent of men, he had a noticeable, almost childlike faculty of self-deception, and usually substituted for the primary determining motive and set of motives, some ultimate ostensible one, and gave that out to himself and others as the ruling impulse for important changes in life. As is the way with much more ponderous and deliberate men;—as is the way, in a degree, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... denotes rather two classes of agency, common in a degree to every human being. None is exempt, indeed, from that species of influence which affects, as it were, the surface of his being, and gives the specific outline to his conduct. Almost all that is ostensible submits to that legislature created by the general representation of the past feelings of mankind—imperfect as it is from a variety of causes, as it exists in the government, the religion, and domestic habits. Those who do not nominally, yet actually, submit to the same power. The ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a marriage between Elizabeth and Anjou had, as we have seen, been virtually abandoned. The matter of religion was the ostensible stumbling-block; it can scarcely have been the real difficulty on either side. As to Anjou, the sincerity of his religious convictions is certainly not above suspicion. But he was the head of a party in his brother's kingdom, a party that professed ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... The inconsistency of such ostensible conduct, and the baseness of a meditated defection, is not irreconcilable to those who have had opportunities of knowing that he is not incapable of such vast extremes; who have seen him at the bar of the assembly he himself disqualified ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... pessimistic, in spite of my qualmy phases, it follows that I do not believe that the old spirit will necessarily prevail. I do not, because I believe that in the past few decades a new spirit has come into human affairs; that our ostensible rulers and leaders have been falling behind the times, and that in the young and the untried, in, for example, the young European of thirty and under who is now in such multitudes thinking over life and his seniors in the trenches, there are still unsuspected resources of will and ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... performance. And that we may judge of that with more advantage for searching and appraising the qualities of this document, permit us to suggest three separate questions, the first being this: What was the occasion of the Address? Secondly, what was its ostensible object? Thirdly, what are the arguments by which, as its means, the paper travels ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... everywhere, he prepared an elaborate scheme to sow Port Arthur roadstead, in front of the harbour entrance, with electro-mechanical mines, with the ostensible object of preventing the Russian fleet from coming out. These mines were stated to be of a peculiarly dangerous and deadly character, invented by Captain Odo. With great ingenuity the details of the scheme were permitted ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... were some of her fellow-passengers whom she was unwilling to lose sight of; and Mr. Brandon was not at Barragong, but in Adelaide, so, on the whole, she thought it would be preferable to stay. She gave as her ostensible reason for the choice, her wish to be with Mrs. Phillips during her brother's necessary absence. Mr. Phillips stayed with his wife till she presented him with a second son, and then, as she was doing very well, he left her in the care of his ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... resting at times upon it, the other selecting pieces of fuel from a box at her side. The line of her back from hip to shoulder seemed incredibly straight and long. The cold wind that was blowing gustily and which was the ostensible cause of her preparations, pressed her thin dress to her form and showed with sportive candour the fine modelling of bosom and limbs. Chiefly, however, I was attracted by the superb disdain in the poise of the head. It was a dark head, coiled heavily with black hair and set back in the hollow of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of what I can with the greatest truth term, the enthusiastic attachment I felt for him as a friend, I consider it as my duty to fulfil, and therefore, though I may be prevented from taking that ostensible and prominent situation at his funeral which I think my birth and high rank entitled me to claim, still nothing shall prevent me in a private character following his remains to their last resting place; for though the station and the character may be less ostensible, less prominent, yet the feelings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... kept a school. Afterward she purchased more considerable articles, which she sold with so much judgment, that she laid the foundation of a system of business, that she has ever since prosecuted with equal dexterity and success. She wrote to London, formed connections, and, in short, became the only ostensible instrument of that house, both at home and abroad. Who is he in this country, and who is a citizen of Nantucket or Boston, who does not know Aunt Kesiah? I must tell you that she is the wife of Mr. C——n, a very respectable man, who, well pleased with all her schemes, trusts to her ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... eighteen hundred miles, on the other it projects into the Chinese Sea at a point nearly midway between Singapore and Hong Kong, and so secures to its possessor a just influence in that commercial highway. The ostensible cause of the war in this region was the murder of a French missionary. If this was ever the real cause, it long since gave way to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... confidence in his favorite agent, for in his arrangements for the formation of a new ministry under the ostensible headship of George Grenville in the spring of 1763, he not only employed Shelburne in negotiations with no less than seven politically important personages, but he even wished to get him the seals ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... degenerated into a source of knowledge, morals, and education, exceedingly dry and unproductive to every person except the master, who was enabled by his honest industry to make a provision for his family absolutely surprising, when we consider the moderate nature of his ostensible income. It was, in fact, like a well dried up, to which scarcely any one ever thinks of going ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... more than a civil contract. Thus the Shinto priesthood was encouraged to penetrate into the intimacy of family life, while in another direction it encroached on the field of ethics by borrowing bits here and there from Confucian and even from Christian sources. Under a regime of ostensible religious toleration, the attendance of officials at certain Shinto services was required, and the practice was established in all schools of bowing down several times yearly before the Emperor's picture. Meanwhile Japanese polities had prospered; ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... met he had unwittingly influenced her, he began to feel more at his ease. His fair companion also, in the equally secret knowledge she had acquired of his history, felt as secure as if she had been formally introduced. Nobody could find fault with her for showing civility to the ostensible son of her host; it was not necessary that she should be aware of their family differences. There was a charm too in their enforced isolation, in what was the exceptional solitude of the little hotel that day, and the ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... bull amongst the Sinis, O foremost one of the Kurus, laughing said unto his charioteer, "Our foes, O Suta, had already been consumed by Kesava and Phalguna. In vanquishing them (again), we have only been the (ostensible) means. Already slain by that bull among men, viz., the son of the celestial chief, we have but slain the dead." Saying these words unto his charioteer, that bull amongst the Sinis, that foremost of bowmen, that slayer of hostile heroes, that mighty warrior, scattering with great force his arrows ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... said "good-bye" in earnest, and no one was surprised that he left somewhat abruptly, such being his way, and a course of lectures by a famous physician the ostensible reason for a trip to L——. Uncle Alec deserted most shamefully at the last moment by sending word that he would be at the station to see the traveler off, Aunt Plenty was still in her room, so ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... authoritatively announced as a bad title. At the sheriff's sale there were no bona fide bidders except the secret agents of Malcolm Neil. The sheriff's titles—such as they were— went for a song. Immediately the ostensible purchasers were personally warned by the commission; but ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... may divide sex types into six classes: male, male-female, male-female, female, female-male, and female-male. The sex intergrades, the four hyphenated classes, nearly all have some degree of persistent thymus. If its influence is partial, the emphasis is before the hyphen, upon the ostensible. If its influence is unchecked, the emphasis is after the hyphen upon the apparently latent sex. The sex difficulties produced in these people by the conflict between their conscious sex and their subconscious sex, the sex duel in the same mind, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... time Scott was eager to make one more sledding effort before the winter set in. The ostensible reason was to layout a depot of provisions to the south in preparation for the spring, but 'a more serious purpose was to give himself and those who had not been away already a practical insight into the difficulties of sledge traveling. But as this party would have to ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Ostensibly, its object was to encourage the noble sport of fox-hunting and to bind by closer ties the congenial souls whose love for horse and hound and horn bordered on enthusiasm. This, I say, was its [v]ostensible object, for it seems to me, looking back upon that terrible time, that the main purpose of the association was to devise new methods of forgetting the sickening [v]portents of disaster that were even then thick in the air. Any suggestion or ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Dante and Boccaccio, and in new readings of his own of classical stories; or if he painted religious subjects, painted them with an undercurrent of original sentiment which touches you as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to speak of a comparatively ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... of, amongst the Rejang. No ostensible worship. The word dewa applied to a class of invisible beings. Veneration for the tombs of their ancestors. Ancient religion of Malays. Motives for conversion to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... but to make another attempt to conciliate the Pope's Holiness. And this time he went about his negotiations in a manner better calculated to serve his ends, since his need was grown more urgent. He sent the Prince of Altamura again to Rome for the ostensible purpose of settling the vexatious matter of Cervetri and Anguillara and making alliance with the Holy Father, whilst behind Altamura was the Neapolitan army ready to move upon Rome should the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... rather pointed to the upper middle class as the fittest depositaries of judicial power. Not only were magistrates and ex-magistrates excluded from the Bench, but the disqualification extended to the fathers, brothers and sons of magistrates and of past or present senators. The ostensible purpose of these provisions was doubtless to ensure that the selected jurors should be bound by no tie of kindred to the individuals who would appear before their judgment seat; but they must have had the effect of excluding from the new panel many of the true knights belonging ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... to convey some idea of the effect produced by the ostensible devotion of Madame de Verneuil upon those who gave her credit for sincerity, we need only quote a passage in the dedication of D'Hemery d'Amboise to his translation of the works of Gregoire de Tours, in which, addressing himself to the Marquise, he gravely says "that she had deduced ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... The ostensible motive of the officer in ascending the works, was to visit his several posts; but no sooner had he found himself between the points alluded to, which happened to be the first in his course, than he seemed to be riveted there by a species of fascination. Not that there was any external ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... capable of tracing effects to their efficient causes, who chanced to hear or read President George T. Winston's address before the Association of Superintendents and Principals of Public Schools, must have sighed in bitterness of soul, "Poor Old Texas!" These gentlemen, assembled for the ostensible purpose of enhancing their proficiency by the interchange of ideas, had a right to expect valuable instruction from the lips of a man who occupies the post of honor in the chief educational institute of the State; but were regaled with a cataclysm of misinformation, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... colonial sugar, and woad for indigo, but the North could not. Like Louis, though in a less degree, Murat and Jerome, sympathizing with their peoples, had sinned against the Continental System, and were soon to do penance for their sins by the loss of important territories. But for the present the ostensible compliance of the northern dependencies ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... thing up first. Grape firmly believes they decided the matter with small swords; another version is, that they played piquet for eight-and-forty hours to settle it—the best out of so many games. Be this how it may, the general appeared as the ostensible champion, and the marquis officiated as his temoin. Grape, as my uncle's second, chose pistols for the weapons, and selected a retired piece of ground in a large garden near the chateau as the lists. I give the ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... revocation of British Orders in Council has removed the great and ostensible cause of the present war, and prepared the way for an immediate accommodation of existing differences, inasmuch as, by the concession of the present Secretary of State, satisfactory and honourable arrangements might ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... the same house, and possessing a congeniality of tastes and pursuits, a strong affection had grown up between Michael and his cousin, which circumstance proved the ostensible reason given by Mr. C—- for his ill conduct to the young people, as by the laws of his church they were too near of kin to marry. Finding that their attachment was too strong to be wrenched asunder by threats, and that ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Aymar; and others again intimate that his true title was the Marquis de Betmar, and that he was a native of Portugal. The most plausible theory, however, makes him the natural son of an Italian princess, and fixes his birth at San Germano, in Savoy, about the year 1710; his ostensible father being one Rotondo, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Dinah, and open the door for Mrs. Raymond. I can write your song down just as well another time," I remonstrated, taking up and laying down my note-book as I spoke, so as to display my ostensible occupation to the peering eyes of Mrs. Clayton (now sitting bolt upright in her bed, looking like a Chinese bonze), for the purpose of sweeping in my ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... a good many Jews live in the villages together with Mohammedans. They lead a miserable life, go about half naked, and are constantly struck and insulted. Whether brokers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, porters, or whatever their ostensible occupation, they all lend ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... all, I began, all at once, to wish I had not seen the house; that I had passed it by; that I had not come through the window; that I were safely out of it again. I became, on a sudden, aware, that something was with me in the room. There was nothing, ostensible, to lead me to such a conviction; it may be that my faculties were unnaturally keen; but, all at once, I knew that there was something there. What was more, I had a horrible persuasion that, though unseeing, I was seen; that my every movement was ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... himself, justly enough, that they must not have the young man alone; this would partake too much of the nature of encouragement. So two or three other persons were invited; but Morris Townsend, though he was by no means the ostensible, was the real, occasion of the feast. There is every reason to suppose that he desired to make a good impression; and if he fell short of this result, it was not for want of a good deal of intelligent effort. The Doctor talked to him very little ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... facilitating and concealing a great revolution, but which, when that revolution was complete and irrevocable, could produce nothing but inconvenience. There were two governments, the real and the ostensible. The supreme power belonged to the Company, and was in truth the most despotic power that can be conceived. The only restraint on the English masters of the country was that which their own justice and humanity imposed on them. There was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him in education and worldly position. I thought they looked at me as if I were an intruder, but remembering the minister's words I held my ground, and took up one of poor Phillis's books (of which I could not read a word) to have an ostensible occupation. Presently I was asked to 'engage in prayer', and we all knelt down; Brother Robinson 'leading', and quoting largely as I remember from the Book of Job. He seemed to take for his text, if texts are ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... monarch; assaulted in his presence an insolent patrician; escaped to Asia in the habit of a private soldier; and yielded with a sigh to the authority of Bohemond, and the interest of the Christian cause. The best and most ostensible reason was the impossibility of passing the sea and accomplishing their vow, without the license and the vessels of Alexius; but they cherished a secret hope, that as soon as they trod the continent of Asia, their swords would obliterate their shame, and dissolve the engagement, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... The ostensible grounds on which Mr. Motley was recalled are plainly insufficient to account for the action of the government. If it was in great measure a manifestation of personal feeling on the part of the high officials by whom and through whom the act was accomplished, it was a wrong ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was suffering the worst of the disasters of the recent war in South Africa the Russian government sent a secret embassy to Lhassa, carrying rich presents and large sums of money to the Grand Lamal for the ostensible purpose of securing permission to construct a branch from its Siberian Railway to Lhassa across Chinese Turkestan. The Grand Lama afterward sent an embassy to return the visit at St. Petersburg, which was ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... you doing, young man? Are you so earnest—so given up to literature, science, art, amours? These ostensible realities, politics, points? Your ambition or business, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... but some plausible pretext," he thought, "some ostensible reason for my return, some excuse to allege which might show I came not as a degraded supplicant, or a discarded menial, I might go thither—but as I am, I cannot—my heart would leap from its place ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Evil, but with the inferior name of Sumenda and Rejicienda.[9] Substantially, therefore, they held that pains are an evil, but, by a proper discipline, may be triumphed over. They disallowed the direct and ostensible pursuit of pleasure as an end (the point of view of Epicurus), but allured their followers partly by promising them the victory over pain, and partly by certain enjoyments of an elevated cast that grew out of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... necessary she should have known. Obtaining, therefore, only insufficient information, and guided by persons more ambitious than skilful, the Queen could not be useful in important affairs; yet, at the same time, her ostensible interference drew upon her, from all parties and all classes of society, an unpopularity the rapid progress of which alarmed all those who ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... horror the intoxicating effect this unreasoning fury had upon me, and cannot deny that without the slightest personal provocation I shared, like one possessed, in the frantic onslaught of the undergraduates, who madly shattered furniture and crockery to bits. I do not believe that the ostensible motive for this outrage, which, it is true, was to be found in a fact that was a grave menace to public morality, had any weight with me whatever; on the contrary, it was the purely devilish fury ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was inordinately vain: to have the popular young baritone fight a duel on her account—to have their names coupled together in common talk—what greater triumph could she desire than that? But while Miss Burgoyne might be the ostensible cause of the quarrel, Nina knew who was the real cause of it; and again and again she asked herself why she had ever come to England, thus to bring trouble upon her old ally and ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... influence of tastes which were equally lovely in themselves, and natural to the first desires of his mind. But when for days he was missed from his office—when the very hours of morning which are most religiously devoted by the profession to its ostensible if not earnest pursuit, were yielded up to the easel—and when, overlooking the boundaries which, according to the conventional usage, made such a course improper, he passed many of these mornings at my house, during my absence, I began to ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... sources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively—that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me—while cash is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic sympathy and unction are, and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... who informed us that they had searched every accessible spot where a man could walk dry-shod upon, from Guayabos to the Isle of Mangles; that they had destroyed several old and deserted piratical nests, and hung two or three ostensible fishermen by way of wholesome warning to their allies the pirates; but that was all; and from what they had learned, there did not seem to have been an established retreat in that maze of cays and reefs for four ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... principle, very proud and false. Charles X. an honest man, a kind friend, an honourable master, sincere in his opinions, and inclined to do everything that is right. That teaches us what we ought to believe in history as it is compiled according to ostensible events and results known to the generality of people. Memoirs are much more instructive, if written honestly and not purposely fabricated, as it happens too often nowadays, particularly at Paris.... I shall not fail to read the books you so kindly recommend. I join ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... suited to our heroine's genius and taste. Considering the negotiation to be now in effect brought within view of a happy termination, her ambassador, furnished with her ultimatum, having now actually set out on his ostensible mission of duck-shooting, our fair negotiatrix prepared to show the usual degree of gratitude towards those who had been the principal instruments of her success. The proper time, she thought, was now arrived, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... crashed pushpot half an hour later. He found that his ostensible assignment to the airfield for the investigation of sabotage was quaintly taken at face value there. A young lieutenant solemnly escorted him to the spot where the pushpot had landed, only ten feet from a hangar wall. The impact had ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... extermination of this nest of pirates. These expeditions were certainly not disadvantageous to the Porte, which seized the opportunity of annexing to its dominions some large slices of Hungarian and Venetian territory; but their ostensible object remained unaccomplished, and the proverbial salutation of the time, "God save you from the Uzcoques!" was still on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... American or French privateers were to be expected on the Irish coast, and no troops could be dispatched for the protection of the island. Then arose the great volunteer movement. Every Irishman entitled to bear arms enrolled himself in some regiment raised with the ostensible design of opposing a hostile landing, but really intended by the patriots to force the repeal of Poyning's Act from England, to obtain for the Parliament in Dublin real independence of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... imitation tapestry, bought at an auction, tall candlesticks and figured curtains. Amory liked him for being clever and literary without effeminacy or affectation. In fact, Amory did most of the strutting and tried painfully to make every remark an epigram, than which, if one is content with ostensible epigrams, there are many feats harder. 12 Univee was amused. Kerry read "Dorian Gray" and simulated Lord Henry, following Amory about, addressing him as "Dorian" and pretending to encourage in him wicked fancies and attenuated tendencies to ennui. When he carried it into Commons, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... were founded and fostered by the state, with the real object of extending the dominion, increasing the power, and illustrating the glory of France. The ostensible object of settlement, at least that holding the most prominent place in all Acts and Charters, was to extend the true religion, and to minister to the glory of God. From the earliest time the ecclesiastical establishments of Canada were formed on a ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton |
