Richard Cecil Quotes

The trappings of lifestyle are often that; traps.

Show is not substance; realities govern wise men.

[We are] persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about.

I've decided that I am totally against jewelry. So I have all fake. There's no reason to have real diamonds. People think it's real anyway.

Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?

A wise man looks upon men as he does on horses; all their comparisons of title, wealth, and place, he consider but as harness.

In corporate levels, it's all about tailoring your shirt and which tennis club you belong to and which watch you are wearing and what did you shoot last week?

This age thinks better of a gilded fool Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school.

We judge of entire nations by the productions of a few mechanical arts, and think we are talking of men, while we are boasting of their estates, their dress, and their palaces. The sense in which we apply the terms, great, and noble, high rank, and high life, show, that we have, on such occasions, transferred the idea of perfection from the character to the equipage; and that excellence itself is, in our esteem, a mere pageant, adorned at a great expense, by the labors of many workmen.

I do this work, but I am uncomfortable in situations where you're hyped into something you're not. Just because you're in a long limo doesn't mean anything.

Consumerism, what kind of car you have, what kind of house you have in the country and so on, and that is all very incidental when you examine the kind of person he may be. He may be a big bore, and then there is a person who hasn't done a thing in the world and he is a fascinating person.

Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.

Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.

There is much money given to be laughed at, though the purchasers don't know it; witness A.'s fine horse, and B.'s fine house.

Remember what I’ve told you. Looks can often deceive you. A poor man can don the robes of a prince and a prince can be shoeless in the street. We judge people by what their actions are, not by the clothes they wear. (Eleni)

All that is gold does not glitter.

Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, in order to impress others who don't care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today.

Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all.

O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults, looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool's gold.

What is outside yourself does not convey much worth; Clothes do not make the man, the saddle not the horse.

A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his position, which after all is only something we wear like clothing.

Dreck is dreck and no amount of fancy polish is going to make it anything else.

Our knowledge of what the richer than ourselves possess, and the poor do not, has never been more widespread. Therefore, envy, which is wanting what others have, and jealousy, which is not wanting others to have what one has, have never been more widespread.

To appear rich, we become poor.