Daily Inspiration Quote by Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Ostentation, in Chapin's formulation, is hypocrisy made visible: not just the sin, but its advertising. The phrase "signal flag" does the real work here. A flag is raised to be seen at distance, to communicate allegiance, purity, or status before anyone asks. Chapin implies that performative display is rarely accidental; it’s a deliberate broadcast meant to preempt scrutiny. If you’re busy announcing your virtue, you’re probably managing a deficit.

As a 19th-century clergyman, Chapin is speaking from inside a culture where moral authority traveled through appearances: churchgoing, temperance, charitable giving, respectable dress. In that ecosystem, ostentation wasn’t merely tacky; it was socially profitable. The subtext is a warning about a marketplace of righteousness, where the outward signs of goodness become currency and the inner substance becomes optional. By calling ostentation a "signal", Chapin suggests you can read hypocrisy the way sailors read a horizon: not by mind-reading, but by noticing who needs to be noticed.

The line is also a tactical rebuke to his own audience. Clergy rhetoric often asks people to examine themselves; Chapin makes self-examination unavoidable by reframing display as evidence against the displayer. It’s a compact critique of moral branding before the term existed, suspicious of virtue that needs stage lighting. In an era of reform movements and public piety, Chapin’s sentence cuts through with a simple diagnostic: when goodness performs too loudly, it may be hiding its motives.