But the kindest thing that could be said about Brownsville's ostensible purpose was that the desert was taking a Christless long time to bloom.
King, Stephen
The Stand
He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his ostensible calling.
Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
He eyed Sermak closely and continued in measured tones, "When Hari Seldon established the Foundation here, it was for the ostensible purpose of producing a great Encyclopedia, and for fifty years we followed that will-of-the-wisp, before discovering what he was really after. By that time, it was almost too late. When communications with the central regions of the old Empire broke down, we found ourselves a world of scientists concentrated in a single city, possessing no industries, and surrounded by newly created kingdoms, hostile and largely barbarous. We were a tiny island of nuclear power in this ocean of barbarism, and an infinitely valuable prize. "Anacreon, then as now, the most powerful of the Four Kingdoms, demanded and later actually established a military base upon Terminus, and the then rulers of the City, the Encyclopedists, knew very well that this was only a preliminary to taking over the entire planet.
Asimov, Isaac
Foundation 1 - Foundation
LIII The Gam The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms.
Herman Melville
Moby Dick
Laporte made no further objection, and read: " My Lord —By that which, since I have known you, have suffered by you and for you, I conjure you, if you have any care for my repose, to countermand those great armaments which you are preparing against France, to put an end to a war of which it is publicly said religion is the ostensible cause, and of which, it is generally whispered, your love for me is the concealed cause. This war may not only bring great catastrophes upon England and France, but misfortune upon you, my Lord, for which I should never console myself. "Be careful of your life, which is menaced, and which will be dear to me from the moment I am not obliged to see an enemy in you.
Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers
The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself, possesses still underneath, Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers, Underneath these possessing words that never fail.
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
The ostensible reason was her mother's funeral.
Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore
"You know during the war we had the Undesirable Element, the Reds and walking delegates and just the plain common grouches, dead to rights, and so did we for quite a while after the war, but folks forget about the danger and that gives these cranks a chance to begin working underground again, especially a lot of these parlor socialists. Oh, the G.C.L. has to have some other ostensible purposes—frinstance here in Zenith I think it ought to support the park-extension project and the City Planning Committee—and then, too, it should have a social aspect, being made up of the best people—have dances and so on, especially as one of the best ways it can put the kibosh on cranks is to apply this social boycott business to folks big enough so you can't reach 'em otherwise. Then if that don't work, the G.C.L. can finally send a little delegation around to inform folks that get too flip that they got to conform to decent standards and quit shooting off their mouths so free. Don't it sound like the organization could do a great work? We've already got some of the strongest men in town, and of course we want you in. How about it?"
Sinclair Lewis
Babbitt
O, spell it out, spell it out: the operation whose ostensible purpose was the draining of my inflamed sinuses and the once-and-for-all clearing of my nasal passages had the effect of breaking whatever connection had been made in a washing-chest; of depriving me of nose-given telepathy; of banishing me from the possibility of midnight children.
Salman Rushdie
Midnight's Children: A Novel
Communication and discussion to a certain extent by the chiefs in person, of the people as listeners and sympathizers—often for eloquence, and sometimes for quarrel—but here its ostensible purposes end." 53. Old Jacob Duport, whose "Gnomologia Homerica" is full of curious and useful things, quotes several passages of the ancients, in which reference is made to these words of Homer, in maintenance of the belief that dreams had a divine origin and an import in which men were interested. 54. Rather, "bright-eyed." See the German critics quoted by Arnold. 55. The prize given to Ajax was Tecmessa, while Ulysses received Laodice, the daughter of Cycnus. 56. The Myrmidons dwelt on the southern borders of Thessaly, and took their origin from Myrmido, son of Jupiter and Eurymedusa. It is fancifully supposed that the name was derived from myrmaex, an ant, "because they imitated the diligence of the ants, and like them were indefatigable, continually employed in cultivating the earth; the change from ants to men is founded merely on the equivocation of their name, which resembles that of the ant: they bore a further resemblance to these little animals, in that instead of inhabiting towns or villages, at first they commonly resided in the open fields, having no other retreats but dens and the cavities of trees, until Ithacus brought them together, and settled them in more secure and comfortable habitations.
Homer
The Iliad