Paul Johnson Quotes

It is hardly possible to exaggerate the power, as an incentive to action, which the love of luxury exercises over the majority of people. The desire for Luxury is almost universal and is constantly expanding. Things that were formerly considered Luxuries are now held to be Necessaries, and this is as it should be. The world is approaching an era when not the pressure of Necessity but the lure of Luxury must be depended upon to keep society moving onward and upward. Let us avoid Puritanical denunciation of Luxury; the Puritans were dead wrong; their drab lives led to stagnation. All of the great periods of history have been periods characterized by Luxury, by art and by the delight in beauty and splendor.

A fancy watch, it's completely unnecessary. I just need a watch to tell the right time.

We don't need fashion to survive, we just desire it so much.

The affluent society makes no meaningful distinction between luxury and necessity.

It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of the consumer, a necessary of life.

In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.

Committing to a lifetime of wellness is not a luxury-it's a necessity. You'll never have enough time; you have to make the time.

The irony is that in our decades, the combination of rationalism, asceticism, and individualism (the so-called Protestant Ethic) has produced precisely the system of boondoggling, luxury-consumption, and status.

Ancient simplicity is gone...the people of today are satisfied with nothing but finery.

The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.

Poor is the new black.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.

I'm not just buying a car... I'm buying a lifestyle!

As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things--though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart--and at the ranch, I could see, we have pretty much everything we'd need but precious little else.

A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.

Time and silence are the most luxurious things today.

American women were frustrated in just the role of housewife - but they also managed to enlarge it. And they weren't just housewives, they were community leaders.

People don't want to be millionaires - they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.

The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse; it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is, exists only by being spent and there is a good case for showing that airplanes, machines, the telephone, and the radio do not make men of today happier than those of former times.

Fashion postulates an achrony, a time which does not exist; here the past is shameful and the present is constantly "eaten up" by the Fashion being heralded.

Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.

Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.

We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It's very materialistic. It's full of desire and luxury goods.

A high proportion of the population enjoys many of the 'luxuries' which until recently were considered the prerogative of the rich; and the ordinary worker lives at what even two decades ago would have been considered in Britain a middle-class standard of life.