Lewis H. Lapham Quotes

The Bible teaches that we are to love people and use money, but we often get that reversed and you start loving money and using people to get more money. Money is simply a tool to be used for good.

There's nothing wrong with possessions; it's just that they have value to us only when we use them, engage them, and enjoy them. They're nouns that mean something only in conjunction with verbs. That's why wealth is so dangerous: if you're not careful you can easily end up with a garage full of nouns.

Piety is different from superstition. To carry piety to the extent of superstition is to destroy it. The heretics reproach us with this superstitious submission. It is doing what they reproach us with.

I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous.

The passion of acquiring riches in order to support a vain expense corrupts the purest souls.

We sacrifice to dress till household joys and comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, and keeps our larder lean.

So that, were it the purpose of God to produce comets as signs of his wrath it would be true to say that he is quickening a false devotion almost all over the world, increasing the number of pilgrims to Mecca, multiplying the offerings to the most famous impostors, inducing men to build mosques for Mohammedan worship, causing the invention of new superstitions among the dervishes - in a word, stimulating many abominable things which otherwise might not have been.

Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities.

Luxurious food and drinks, in no way protect you from harm. Wealth beyond what is natural, is no more use than an overflowing container. Real value is not generated by theaters, and baths, perfumes or ointments, but by philosophy.

The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.

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.

It’s so hard for me to sit back here in this studio, looking at a guy out here, hollering my name!—When last year I spent more money, on spilled liquor, in bars from one side of this world to the other, than you made! You’re talking to the Rolex wearing, diamond ring wearing, kiss stealing, whoa! wheelin dealin’, limosuine riding, jet flying son of a gun and I’m having a hard time holding these alligators down!

You can't spend as much money as I have, even if you try. I've been trying.

Am I in the Forbes 100? Absolutely not, and I'll never be there. But for the first time I make so much money that I feel poor, like I have to cultivate and protect this fortune. But I never had more than $20 in my pocket before RuPaul's Drag Race so I feel so privileged with money, it's terrible. I bought a $300 beige t-shirt today.

My mother worshipped at the altar of the accessory.

those who use the word 'lifestyle' are rarely in possession of either.

I bought a Hummer before I bought a house, and then I bought a house. Every year, everything doubled. The work was doubling. The money was doubling. The popularity was doubling.

During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.

Don't use expensive clothes as a screen for your personal doubts. Be proud of yourself

Riches are but a means, or instrument; and the virtue of an instrument lies in its use.

I endorse only products I actually use. Like Wheaties keeps offering me money, but I don't eat Wheaties, so I can't do it. Now, if Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes offered me a deal, I'd take it right away. Apple Jacks, I'd be on the box in a heartbeat. Apple Shaqs. Yeah.

The prodigality of millionaires is comparable only to their greed of gain. Let some whim or passion seize them and money is of no account. In fact these Croesuses find whims and passions harder to come by than gold.

To how many girls has a great beauty been of no other use but to make them expect a large fortune!

I grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a nouveau riche world, where money was spent wildly, and I'm still living in one!... The private schools are all jammed with long waiting lists; the clubs -- all the old clubs -- are jammed with long waiting lists today; the harbors are clogged with yachts; there has never been a more material society than the one we live in today.... Where is this 'vanished world' they talk about? I don't think the critics have looked out the window!

Use money and love people. Don't love money and use people.