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.