Quotes About Materialism

The scalpel won't make you happy.

Being a star and having money do not make for a happy person.

The older you get and the wealthier you get, the more complicated life becomes. That's why I have as few material assets as possible. Every material thing you have is more hassle.

Money is a hazard.

Somewhere along the way, New York became all about money. Or rather, it was always about money, but it wasn't all about money, if you know what I mean. New York's not Geneva or Zurich yet, but we're certainly heading in that direction. London is, too.

In New York, I live on a compost heap of all the stuff I accumulate.

We belabour, I think, under a very heavy crust of consumerism really.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

Our culture highlights the desire to always have more, even when we should be grateful for what we have.

We value 'stuff' quite highly. Why? Because that 'stuff' apparently matters. Not only that, we use it as a measure of how successful we are, and as a result of that, having more of this 'stuff' often determines how people treat us.

She got very tired, so tired that even her toys could no longer amuse her. You would wonder at that if I had time to describe to you one half of the toys she had. But then, you wouldn't have the toys themselves, and that makes all the difference: you can't get tired of a thing before you have it.

It is as necessary for a poor man to give away, as for a rich man. Many poor men are more devoted worshipers of Mammon than some rich men.

it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.

But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.

But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it. The man who is ever digging his grave is little better than he who already lies mouldering in it. The money the one has, the money the other would have, is in each the cause of an eternal stupidity.

if Donal was in any danger of loving the things of this world, it was in the shape of books–books he had a strong inclination to accumulate and hoard.

He must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising.

Page after page, advert after advert. Lipsticks, undies, tinned food, patent medicines, slimming cures, face-creams. A sort of cross-section of the money world. A panorama of ignorance, greed, vulgarity, snobbishness, whoredom and disease.

That's the way we're going nowadays. Everything slick and streamlined, everything made out of something else.

Vous ne possédez rien, en dehors des quelques centimètres cubes de votre crâne.

The Americans always go one better on any kind of beastliness, whether it is ice-cream soda, racketeering or theosophy.

I wasn't a highbrow any longer. I was down among the realities of modern life. And what are the realities of modern life? Well, the chief one is an everlasting, frantic struggle to sell things. With most people it takes the form of selling themselves

You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it.

You do not escape from money merely by being moneyless