Show is not substance; realities govern wise men. [ William Penn ]

Deeds of lowly virtue fade before the glare of lofty ostentation. [ Klopstock ]

Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends. [ Lavater ]

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

They used to think they were doing God a favor to print His name in capital letters. [ Richter ]

Do what good thou canst unknown; and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen. [ William Penn ]

Excess in apparel is another costly folly. The very trimming of the vain world would clothe all the naked one. [ William Penn ]

Those who seek happiness in ostentation and dissipation, are like those who prefer the light of a candle to the splendor of the sun. [ Napoleon I ]

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

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. [ H. Brooke ]

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. [ Beecher ]

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. [ Bishop Hall ]

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 pretense of worship. [ John Weiss ]

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. [ Chapin ]