Ostentatious Quotes

• Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.

  George S. Patton

  Military

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• As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Attributed in "Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography" by Carl Seeling, (p. 114), 1956.

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• An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

  Joseph Addison

  Conceited, Men, Talking

  Joseph Addison (1729). “The spectator”, p.35

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• The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Men, Modesty

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.281, Courier Corporation

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• Moderation is an ostentatious proof of our strength of character.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Character, Moderation, Proof

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• Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inability, Emotion, Dishonesty

  "Everybody’s Protest Novel". Essay by James A. Baldwin (1949), as quoted in "Uneasy Rider" by Alexandra Schwartz, www.newyorker.com. November 9, 2015.

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• There are a lot of big spec houses now all across Connecticut, a lot of ostentatious showing of wealth.

  Glenn Close

  House, Wealth, Bigs

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• They've listed my name in the dictionary - 'Imeldific' is used to mean ostentatious extravagance... But the truth will prevail.

  Imelda Marcos

  Mean, Names, Truth Will Prevail

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Home, Journey

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into North Wales”, p.429

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• Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Lying, Perfection

  'Discourses on Art' (ed. R. Wark, 1975) no. 6 (10 December 1774)

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• There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth ... namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and the concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge.

  Roger Bacon

  Ignorance, Prejudice, Four

  Roger Bacon (2016). “Opus Majus, Volumes 1 and 2”, p.4, University of Pennsylvania Press

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• Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

  Samuel Johnson

  Night, Giving, Style

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Addison'

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• There's nothing worse than an ostentatious shot or some lighting that draws attention to itself, and you might go, 'Oh, wow, that's spectacular.' Or that spectacular shot, a big crane move, or something. But it's not necessarily right for the film — you jump out, you think about the surface, and you don't stay in there with the characters and the story.

  Roger Deakins

  Moving, Character, Thinking

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• Hypocrites act by virtue.... They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce so seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Heaven

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.32

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• The miserable consumption of the poor is partly the result of the ostentatious demands of the rich. There isn't enough for both, and the latter get far more than they need...But could anything seriously be done about it?

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Needs, Done, Demand

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• Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.

  Samuel Johnson

  Littles, Feels, Sensibility

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into North Wales”, p.429

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• I don't like ostentatious galas and stuff like that, but if you get to the Oscars, you'd better get used to it and you'd better enjoy it.

  Philippe Falardeau

  Oscars, Stuff, Used

  Source: collider.com

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• Gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Ignorant, Gold

  Mark Twain (2008). “10 Books in 1”, p.583, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen.

  Lester Bangs

  Thinking, Littles, Lifestyle

  Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.108, Anchor

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• Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization.

  William H. Prescott

  Eye, Hands, Civilization

  William H. PRESCOTT (1873). “History of the Conquest of México”, p.173

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• The grandest discourse ever delivered is an ostentatious failure if the doctrine of the grace of God be absent from it.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Grace, Doctrine, Discourse

  Spurgeon, Charles (2015). “Charles Spurgeon: Lectures to My Students, Volume 1”, p.73, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

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• Go over and over your beads, paint weird designs on your forehead, wear your hear matted, long, and ostentatious, but when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?

  Kabir

  Gun, Long, Design

  Kabir (1977). “The Kabir book: forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir”

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• Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty...the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent humanity, the mark of cruelty.

  James A. Baldwin

  Heart, Eye, Humanity

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• The lifestyle of many of our colleagues has been very pompous. They conduct weddings and birthdays in such an ostentatious manner that it pains me a lot. It appears that they are making fun of our commitment to the poor.

  Sonia Gandhi

  Fun, Pain, Commitment

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• I know that many of you do wear such a cross of Christ, not in any ostentatious way, not in a way that might harm you at your work or recreation, but a simple indication that you value the role of Jesus Christ in the history of the world, that you are trying to live by Christ's standards in your own daily life.

  Keith O'Brien

  Jesus, Simple, Trying

  "Catholic cardinal calls on Christians to wear their crosses every day" by Damien Pearse, www.theguardian.com. April 7, 2012.

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