Ostentation Quotes - Page 2

• It is a cruel folly to offer up to ostentation so many lives of creatures, as to make up the state of our treats.

  William Penn

  Life, Death, Animal

  William Penn (1782). “The Select Works of William Penn: In Five Volumes. ...”, p.127

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• Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books and a total ignorance of men.

  Henry Mackenzie

  Book, Ignorance, Mean

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• The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.

  William Hazlitt

  Honesty, People, Office

  "Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims". Book by William Hazlitt. No. 43, 1823.

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• In San Francisco, vulgarity, "bad taste," ostentation are regarded as a kind of alien blight, an invasion or encroachment from outside. In Los Angeles, there is so much money and power connected with ostentation that is no longer ludicrous: it commands a kind of respect. For if the mighty behave like this, then quiet good taste means that you can't afford the conspicuous expenditures, and you become a little ashamed of your modesty and propriety.

  Pauline Kael

  Mean, San Francisco, Invasion

  pauline kael (1965). “i lost it at the movies”

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• I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together.

  Joseph Hall

  Vanity, Together, Mets

  Joseph Hall (1837). “The Works of Joseph Hall: Devotional works; Miscellaneous theology”, p.10

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• I don't do marriage. I think it's incredibly naff. And I don't like vulgar displays of ostentation.

  Jenny Eclair

  Thinking, Vulgar, Display

  "This much I know". Interview with Stuart Husband, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2008.

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• I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together. The sun, rising and declining, makes long shadows; at mid day, when he is highest, none at all.

  Joseph Hall

  Long, Together, Shadow

  Joseph Hall (1824). “Select Tracts from the Writings of the ... Rev. J. Hall”, p.231

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• By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Nature, Freedom, People

  Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ignat Avsey (1998). “The Karamazov Brothers”, p.393, Oxford Paperbacks

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• Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but
  eat as you ought. For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally avoided all ostentation.

  Epictetus

  Entertainment, Philosopher, Remember

  Epictetus (2012). “The Handbook of Epictetus”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
  Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affection,
  Figures pedantical--these summer flies
  Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Three, Phrases

  'Love's Labour's Lost' (1595) act 5, sc. 2, l. 407

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• This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks - to have a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines, no wires, no controls.

  Michael Swanwick

  Funny, Science, Technology

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• Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.

  Francis Bacon

  Art, Modesty, Wells

  Francis Bacon (1856). “Bacon's Essays”, p.478

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• If we want to eliminate bad qualities like hatred, envy, pride and ostentation, we have to employ Sathya, Dharma, Santhi and Prema and Ahimsa as the cleaning instruments.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Pride, Envy, Hatred

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• There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else.

  Beatrice Warde

  Wise, Simple, Men

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• To conclude, therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficience in both; only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling; to use, and not to ostentation; and again, that they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together.

  Francis Bacon

  Philosophy, Book, Men

  Francis Bacon (1824). “The Works of Francis Bacon: Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England”, p.11

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• I confess that Magic teacheth many superfluous things, and curious prodigies for ostentation; leave them as empty things, yet be not ignorant of their causes. But those things which are for the profit of men -- for the turning away of evil events, for the destroying of sorceries, for the curing of diseases, for the exterminating of phantasms, for the preserving of life, honor, or fortune -- may be done without offense to God or injury to religion, because they are, as profitable, so necessary.

  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

  Men, Evil, Ignorant

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• Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.

  Camille Paglia

  Teacher, Association, Firsts

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.19, Vintage

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• Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.

  Alexander Pope

  Mean, Simplicity

  Alexander Pope (2002). “Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.105, Routledge

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• It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.

  Joseph Addison

  Vanity, Ill Will, Mind

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.675

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• Fashion is the veriest goddess of semblance and of shade; to be happy is of far less consequence to her worshippers than to appear so; even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Fashion, Sacrifice, Shade

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.255

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• That an author's work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Book, Writing, Mirrors

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.141

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• [Warfare is] 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 accompaniment of noise.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Men, Warfare, Noise

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (2015). “Collected Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Short Stories, Novels, Poems and Essays: The Yellow Wallpaper, What Diantha Did, Women and Economics, The Crux, Moving the Mountain, Herland and other works from the prominent American feminist, sociologist and novelist”, p.780, e-artnow

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• Plants do everything animals do, but slowly. They migrate, communicate, deceive, stalk their food and, with an ostentation of styles and perfumes to put the animal kingdom to shame, they make love. It's just that catching them in flagrante delicto might require time-lapse photography.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Photography, Animal, Making Love

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• As you see in a pair of bellows, there is a forced breath without life, so in those that are puffed up with the wind of ostentation, there may be charitable words without works.

  Joseph Hall

  Wind, May, Pairs

  Joseph Hall (1837). “The Works of Joseph Hall DD Successively Bishop of Exeter and Norwich: With Some Account of His Life and Sufferings”, p.460

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• Pendantry is the unseasonable ostentation of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject or in the manner d treating it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Choices, May, Subjects

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