Until a person becomes a true believer, their acts of virtue, irrespective of how magnificent they may be, cannot be free from the gild of ostentation…
On one occasion, Khawaja Sahib related a narration to me and I have read this story myself as well. When Sir Philip Sidney was wounded in the siege of the fort at Zutphen in the Netherlands during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in his throes of death, at a time of intense thirst, a small vessel of water was brought for him. At the time, water was scarce. Another wounded soldier lay nearby and he too was terribly thirsty. The soldier began to look at Sir Philip Sidney with intense longing and desire.
Upon noticing the soldier’s wish, Sidney did not drink the water himself, but rather gave it to the solider as an act of selflessness, saying: ‘Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.’
Even in the face of death people do not refrain from ostentation. Often those who wish to establish or portray themselves as possessing sublime morals do perform such deeds.
(Malfuzat, Vol. 1, p. 213)