Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.

I didn't come to Hollywood to get on magazine covers or start my Porsche collection or to enjoy that kind of lifestyle, to go to the right parties and meet the right people.

So, there's like one luxury you take and since we do that, y'know, you're involved with people in suits; business people all the time. But hey, if I sit down on a bar and they leave, good for me.

More people smile at me now I'm richer.

The trappings of lifestyle are often that; traps.

But you see, that's the gilded prison of fashion. We're riding in private jets, and meantime I was so incredibly, painfully sad and lonely.

I can't relate to skinny, perfectly sculptured, tanned men singing about gold chains and Ferraris because I'm not that way.

Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.

The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.

The rich man has his motorcar, His country and his town estate, He smokes a fifty-cent cigar And jeers at Fate. He frivols through the livelong day, He knows not Poverty, her pinch. His lot seems light, his heart seems gay; He has a cinch. Yet though my lamp burns low and dim, Though I must slave for livelihood- Think you that I would change with him? You bet I would!

Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.

Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

How easily we get trapped in that which is not essential - in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth - when simply being alive is the gift beyond measure.

We are living in a material world and I'm a material girl.

"Keep your hands to yourself!" might almost be put at the head of the first chapter of every book on etiquette.

Don’t you, when strangers and friends come to call, straighten the cushions, kick the books under the bed and put away the letter you were writing? How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are? Isn’t the mirror hostile enough?

The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.

Oh no we don't play with silly girls All I know is the material girls

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

Wealth is a relational barrier. It keeps us from having open relationships.

The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune.

Men who could willingly resign the luxuries and sensual pleasures of a large fortune cannot consent to live without the grandeur and the homage.

All else-valor, a good name, glory, everything in heaven and earth-is secondary to the charm of riches.

Men honor property above all else; it has the greatest power in human life.