People of our time are so formed for agitation and…

In my youth I studied for ostentation; later, a little to gain wisdom; now, for recreation; never for gain.

— Michel de Montaigne

So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in…

— Michel de Montaigne

Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation,…

— Michel de Montaigne

As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the…

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— William Shakespeare

That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.

— Anonymous

“A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty. No, it is not possible that minds degraded…

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

The experience of the ages that are past, the hopes of the ages that are yet to come, unite their voices in an appeal…

— Horace Mann

Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of…

— Henry Mackenzie

Do what good thou canst unknown, and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen.

— William Penn

When blessed with wealth, let them withdraw from the competition of vanity and be modest, retiring from ostentation, and not be the slaves of…

— William Wilberforce

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

— Joseph Hall

Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye…

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.

— John Locke

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

— Michael Swanwick