Quotes About Consumption

The city unwrapped you like a candy bar and ate you all up.

the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for dinner

So it was the hand that started it all... His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders, and then the jump-over from shoulder-blade to shoulder-blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything.

Last night I've thought about all that kerosene I've used in the past 10 years, and I thought about books. And for the first time, I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper, and I'd never even thought that thought before. It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life. And then I come walking in and BOOM, it's all over.

I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts.

I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.

I remained, and went on with my dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much.

I suppose at that period I did exist on food in the usual way; but the memory is now that in those days life was sustained on invincible anguish, as a sort of infernal stimulant exciting and consuming at the same time.

Decree now, and say it meaningly: From this moment forward, I will admit to my mind for mental consumption only those ideas and thoughts that heal, bless, inspire, and strengthen

United States and Australia, use more per person, whereas others, like Japan and Britain, use less. Americans drive bigger cars than Japanese do, and drive more rather than take trains, and they live in bigger homes that are kept warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Americans consequently emit more carbon pollution than do people in more energy-efficient countries.

To the destroyers, Earth is not a person. They will want more until there is no more to steal.

We pay for light, pay for water, next thing you know We'll pay to breathe harder

Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.

Thus the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is an act of trust in the subversive, exodus-causing God of the first commandment, an act of submission to the restful God of commandments one, two, and three. Sabbath is a practical divestment so that neighborly engagement, rather than production and consumption, defines our lives.

Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one's life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.

In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.

Oh, pity the poor glutton Whose troubles all begin In struggling on and on to turn What's out into what's in.

We have come to have no idea of profit other than financial profit. The delusion is that cheapness leads to plenty. But what use is plenty of rubbish?

The problem is this: in order to make money- lots of money- we don't need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it.

Time will rust the sharpest sword,Time will consume the strongest cord;That which molders hemp and steel,Mortal arm and nerve must feel.

It's nice to have a lot of money, but you know, you don't want to keep it around forever. I prefer buying things. Otherwise, it's a little like saving sex for your old age.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

His appetite for the marvelous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary

The idea of unlimited growth... needs to be seriously questioned on at least two counts: the availability of basic resources and... the capacity of the environment to cope with the degree of interference implied. - E.F. Schumacher