Quotes About Materialism

It was an observation they had made in her earliest youth—Undine never wanted anything long, but she wanted it "right off." And until she got it the house was uninhabitable.

the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the epicurean's pleasure in them.

Undine Spragg—how can you? her mother wailed, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid bell-boy had just brought in.

and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

The parents are of the expensive, cocktail-party-and-chromium kind.

Was a glimpse of his cock worth a Mercedes?

Was I grieving because he didn't possess everything, absolutely everything, or because I owned nothing?

He looked out over the shirtless, muscled, tanned men and realised that right here, on this disco floor, there was such a concentration of fashion, slimming, money, bleaching, plastic surgery, psychotherapy – and all for naught. In a few years they'd all be old walruses, and in a few more, dead.

If the Northerners were acting the Will of God, the Southerners were rescuing a hallowed ideal of gallantry, aristocratic freedom, fine manners and luxurious living from the materialism and vulgarity of the mercantile Northern society.

lunch parties that the missus had for her girlfriends. Mamie and Gertie and Peg and Eunice. They were forever saying each other's names. Mamie and Gertie and Peg and Eunice, all the size of her, boasting about the presents their husbands gave them for their birthdays

In those palaces, sound is preferred to sense, and the care of the body to that of the mind.

It was hard to believe that in a society of computer chips, banana chips, and anti-lock brakes, of sitcoms, Home Shopping Clubs, and pay-per-view, and of surround-sound stereos and microwave ovens—it was hard to believe that such destitution could exist at all, much less under the very nose of the same society… He'd

Don't you know there's another bubble as well? An expectations bubble. Bigger houses, private planes, yachts... stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst as well, as all bubbles do.

New York was always materialist. But it was also the city of excellence, of art, music, of endless possibilities.

A Wall Street man is greedy, too. No harm in that. Without greed, I always say, there'd be no civilization. But the Wall Street man doesn't have the patience to till the soil or manufacture things. He's clever, but he's not deep. He invests in companies, but he doesn't much care what they are, or what they do. What he wants is to bet on them. Wall Street will always be full of young men, betting.

most people found it hard to know what to do other than eat and drink around the clock in a conscientious drive to fill as many recycling bags as possible.

I like heroin, cocaine, nice houses. good furniture, and pretty girls,' said Alexander, 'and I've had all of them in large quantities. 'But you know, they never made me happy.' 'My word, you're hard to please, aren't you?

What does your worship look like? Anxiety, despair, shopping, primping, acting like someone you aren't, acting stupid when you are smart, or acting like you don't care when you do? Why do you do it? You are hoping that, if you worship it correctly, the idol will give you what you want. But idols are notoriously slow in responding.

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

Possessions, outward success, publicity, LUXURY -- to me these have always been contemptible. I assume that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind

Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence—those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.

From this process has emerged a parallel process of translating traditional working and living values into a new political and economic power - a power increasingly based upon the strength of money and those material things money can purchase.

Maggie felt sorry for her, a woman surrounded by beautiful expensive things, all of them by authentic designers, genuine gold-trims, the best-quality fabrics and woods, rare collector accessories of porcelain and ceramic—nothing artificial except her personality. Maggie