Quotes About Materialism

There are lives to be lived if only you didn't care. Care for what, for what; the opinion of mankind, money, success, hotel lobbies, health, umbrellas, Uneeda biscuits . . .?

Half by desipience, half by proclivity, he had come to live in a world where the only significant leisure activities were coupling and consuming. His batrachian lips pursed into a smile, and he dug again into the honey.

Man is a highly acquisitive creature, brainwashed by most modern societies into believing that the act of acquisition is more enjoyable than the fact of having acquired, that getting beats having got.

I hate what G.P. calls the New People, the new class people with their cars and their money and their tellies and their stupid vulgarities and their stupid crawling imitations of the bourgeoisie. (...) The New People are still the poor people, it is the new form of poverty. The others hadn't any money and these haven't any soul.

This is true of all collecting. It extinguishes the moral instinct. The object finally possesses the possessor.

Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none.

A couple of hundred dollars for a fishing pole!?¨ You'll hear that all the time if you don't keep your mouth shut in certain company. You can talk about the aesthetics and even mention a cane rod will appreciate in value while a new graphite rod will depreciate, but the best thing to do is turn around and say, ¨$9,000.00 for a car? I only paid $500.00 for mine.

Where affluence is the rule, the true threat is the loss of desire.(...) What is new is not that prosperity depends on stimulating demand. It is that it cannot continue without inventing new vices.

I learned it is not enough just to be happy with what we have; we must honor our material desires as well.

My children know nothing of Christmas. They have so little, and want so little, it makes me feel guilty for the mindless materialism of our culture.

But you worship money, Nate. You're part of a culture where everything is measured by money. It's a religion.

I've lost my love for money. It's the curse of the devil.

SUDDEN AFFLUENCE triggers a desire for the better things in life.

It's a sad culture. People live in a frenzy. They work all the time to make money to buy things to impress other people. They're measured by what they own.

Greed is a strange animal

He was headed for Wall Street and had been sidetracked by the money. Only the money.

He was ashamed of his greed and embarrassed by his stupidity. It was sickening what money had done to him.

Our world does not reduce God by distributing his power to other deities. Rather, we reduce God by making him a figurehead. We too often portray him as standing back from a world that runs on its own. We banish him to the hidden corners of our lives while we amble through life, pursuing our own ambitious goals driven by narcissism, hedonism, and materialism and refusing to allow God to bridle our self-sufficiency.

Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.

The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hair sprays. That's why they are put away. They make the other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions.

In other words, you want to become totally bourgeois. You people have all been brainwashed. I imagine that you'd like to become a success or something equally vile.

Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.

Everyone I know has a fine big sedan, Mrs. Levy said as she got into the little car. Not you. No. You have to own a kid's car that costs more than a Cadillac and blows my hair all around.

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.