Luxury Quotes - Page 34

• The knowledge of the ancient languages is mainly a luxury.

  John Bright

  Language, Ancient

  Letter in 'Pall Mall Gazette', 30 November 1886

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• It takes less than a decade for today's luxury to become a universal necessity.

  Paul Johnson

  Today, Universal, Decades

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• No man receives the full culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and there is no condition of life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest, and the most at hand, and most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give grossness to the mind.

  William Ellery Channing

  Beautiful, Men, Hands

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• Only white men have the luxury of ignoring race.

  Richard Powers

  Men, Race, White Man

  Richard Powers (2004). “The Time of Our Singing: A Novel”, p.304, Macmillan

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• What will not luxury taste? Earth, sea, and air, Are daily ransack'd for the bill of fare. Blood stuffed in skins is British Christians' food, And France robs marshes of the croaking brood.

  John Gay

  Christian, Air, Blood

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• Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice-- The weakness and the wickedness of luxury-- The negligence--the apathy--the evils Of sensual sloth--produces ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing.

  Lord Byron

  Thinking, Tyrants, Blood

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• Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.

  George Bancroft

  Lap, Libertine, Chosen

  George Bancroft (1855). “Literary and historical miscellanies”, p.424

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• The irony is that in our decades, the combination of rationalism, asceticism, and individualism (the so-called Protestant Ethic) has produced precisely the system of boondoggling, luxury-consumption, and status.

  Paul Goodman

  Asceticism, Ethics, Irony

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.131, New York Review of Books

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• To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world - to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish - is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance.

  Sam Harris

  Ignorance, Our World, Political

  "The End of Faith". Book by Sam Harris (pages 22-23), 2004.

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• Yoga is my luxury workout. If I'm on vacation or I have a day off, I love a 90-minute yoga class. It's a really strong workout, but it takes a little bit longer.

  Alison Sweeney

  Strong, Workout, Yoga

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• Because these consequences are distributed globally, the problem masquerades as a distraction. Because the length of time between causes and consequences stretches out longer than we're used to dealing with, it gives us the illusion that we have the luxury of time. Neither of those things is true.

  Al Gore

  Giving, Causes, Problem

  ""What in the Hell Do They Think Is Causing It?"". Interview with John Dickerson, www.slate.com. December 8, 2009.

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• Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market. In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society.

  Ai Weiwei

  Kind, Easy, Made

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• For me, luxury isn't just the real thing. It's also fake. Swarovski crystals or real diamonds? It's a game. You have to be luxurious nude.

  Sonia Rykiel

  Real, Games, Fake

  Interview with Rebecca Voight, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 22, 2008.

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• Being pretty successful, I can, of course, afford some luxuries. But I realize again and again how we have to disillusion ourselves of the idea that these things are going to give us real satisfaction.

  Sam Keen

  Real, Successful, Ideas

  Source: www.scottlondon.com

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• I've gone to Yaddo many times, I've worked at the Rockefeller Foundation's Center for Scholars and Artists in Bellagio. That these are places of beauty and of changed landscape is helpful - but far more important for me is that they offer what I feel as a monastic luxury: undisturbed time.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Artist, Important, Gone

  "Of Amplitude There Is No Scraping Bottom: An Interview with Jane Hirshfield". Interview with Rebecca Olson, tinhouse.com. March 16, 2015.

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• We do not have the luxury of despair right now. There is too much at stake, for too many people.

  Robert Jensen

  People, Despair, Too Much

  "Why I Will Not Rally Around the President" by Robert Jensen, www.counterpunch.org. September 15, 2001.

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• Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Capitalism

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• You have comfort. You don't have luxury. And don't tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.

  Jean Cocteau

  Play, Comfort, Rewards

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• Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, which in others are luxuries merely and in others still are entirely unknown.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Circles, Stills

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden and Other Writings”, p.118, Bantam Classics

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• The intellectual's ... playfulness, in its various manifestations, is likely to seem to most men a perverse luxury; in the United States the play of the mind is perhaps the only form of play that is not looked upon with the most tender indulgence. His piety is likely to seem nettlesome, if not actually dangerous. And neither quality is considered to contribute very much to the practical business of life.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Men, Play, Mind

  "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life". Book by Richard Hofstadter (p. 33), 1974.

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• Recognizing that the world is governed by a minority, the sexually active, and that they hold sway of a huge majority of the nonsexual, those people too young or too old or too poor or too homely or sick or crazy or powerless to be able to afford sexual partners (or the luxury of systematic, sustained and shared introspection, so sexual in its own way). All advertisements and films and songs are addressed to sexuals, to their rash whims and finicky tastes.

  Edmund White

  Song, Crazy, Sick

  "A Boy's Own Story". Book by Edmund White, 1982.

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• This is the first time in history that we've had this level of luxury, so we have a new opportunity to rethink the way we approach God.

  Warren Farrell

  Opportunity, Levels, Way

  "Bridges to Heaven: How Well-Known Seekers Define and Deepen Their Connection with God". Book by Jonathan Robinson, 1994.

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• It would be hard to find a single example in history in which a group that cast more than 50 percent of the vote got away with calling itself the victim... Women are the only 'oppressed' group to share the same parents as the 'oppressor'; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the 'oppressor'; to own more of the culture's luxury items than the 'oppressor'.

  Warren Farrell

  Class, Parent, Groups

  Warren Farrell (1994). “The myth of male power: why men are the disposable sex”

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• A high proportion of the population enjoys many of the 'luxuries' which until recently were considered the prerogative of the rich; and the ordinary worker lives at what even two decades ago would have been considered in Britain a middle-class standard of life.

  Anthony Crosland

  Class, Two, Ordinary

  "The Future of Socialism". Book by Anthony Crosland, 1956.

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• When you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success.

  Edward Bellamy

  Effort, Desire, Want

  Edward Bellamy (2016). “Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887: American literature”, p.47, VM eBooks

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