Showing posts with label luxury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label luxury. Show all posts

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Post #2679

Luxury is a word of uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as in a bad sense.
—David Hume

Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Post #2243

All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.
—Joseph Joubert

Monday, September 28, 2015

Post #1911

Fell luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains.
—Hannah More

Monday, June 08, 2015

Post #1831

Garrick showed Dr. Johnson his fine house, gardens, statues, pictures, etc., at Hampton Court. "Ah! David, David," said the doctor, "these are the things which make a deathbed terrible.”
―John Bate

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Post #1664

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
—Henry David Thoreau

Saturday, March 03, 2012

Post #880

The eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all  but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture.
—Benjamin Franklin

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Post #188

Luxury is more deadly than any foe.
—Juvenal

The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live — lives.
written by Theodore F. MacManus

A deadly viper once bit a hole snipe's hide; But 'twas the viper, not the snipe, that died.

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One From the Archives

Post #1234

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied...

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