C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Ostentation
Deeds of lowly virtue fade before the glare of lofty ostentation.
Excess in apparel is another costly folly. The very trimming of the vain world would clothe all the naked one.
Do what good thou canst unknown; and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen.
They used to think they were doing God a favor to print His name in capital letters.
Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends.
Show is not substance; realities govern wise men.
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
Education, indeed, has made the fondness for fine things next to natural; the corals and bells teach infants on the breasts to be delighted with sound and glitter.
There is a patience that cackles. There are a great many virtues that are hen-like. They are virtues, to be sure; but everybody in the neighborhood has to know about them.
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.
Heaven must scorn the humility which we telegraph thither by genuflection; it must prefer the manliness that stands by all created gifts, and looks itself in the face without pretence of worship.
Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy. The charlatan is verbose and assumptive; the Pharisee is ostentatious, because he is a hypocrite. Pride is the master sin of the Devil; and the Devil is the father of lies.