Samuel Johnson Quotes

When people grow gradually rich their requirements and standard of living expand in proportion, while their present-giving instincts often remain in the undeveloped condition of their earlier days. Something showy and not-too-expensive in a shop is their only conception of the ideal gift.

Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

But you know, if you live an affluent lifestyle, there are all types of trappings that are there that you have to be cognizant of, and you've got to try and communicate freely and gain understanding about and then keep moving on, because you know, sometimes lifestyles are chosen for us as opposed to us choosing them.

I think I'm actually quite a materialistic person, I value what it takes to make a car or build a nice house. Money does change things, but how it changes people depends on how they react to it.

We seem to live in an age where we are quietly appalled by the idea of appetites, whether they be for sex, food or diamonds.

In a way, the sense of quality has improved, the status symbol of the small things is gone, and it is acceptable to use stainless steel, even if the neighbour uses silver.

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

I was a victim of the American Dream, the bourgeois, middle-class dream. All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.

That's mind-blowing to me that people would say that because you have nice things, you're soft. No, you're soft because your culture is soft.

I think it's the society that drains us out, and we are in a society where we are driven by money.

You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.

There are conservative values where certain lifestyles are imposed and everybody should have 2.4 children and a dog and a cat and a house and you should feel like God and you should believe in God and you should be a capitalist. I don't buy any of that.

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

Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.

My whole thing in life is I just want freedom. I thought that money would give me that freedom. I was wrong. It bound me more than it freed me, because now I had more things to worry about, more people asking for money, I thought I had to buy a house and nice cars and different things that people with money are supposed to do.

The soul, when accustomed to superfluous things, acquires a strong habit of desiring things which are neither necessary for the preservation of the individual nor for that of the species. This desire is without limit, whilst those which are necessary are few in number and restricted within certain limits; but what is superfluous is without end.

We study there a lot because... what other choice does society give us, right? It's Starbucks or death, sometimes.

I used to play one job and have 125 pair of shoes on the floor. What was I doing? I couldn't wear but one pair.

When we have the means to pay for what we desire, what we get is not so much what is best, as what is costliest.

I have never walked down Fifth Avenue alone without thinking of money.

I am simply unable to understand the value placed by so many people upon great wealth.

The necessities that exist are in general created by the superfluities that are enjoyed.

I've read in many a novel, that unless they've souls that grovel-- Folks prefer in fact a hovel to your dreary marble halls.

I don't really like money - I like the things you can buy with money.

I like to live my life so that my loved ones give me the things I need as gifts and I give them the things they need. Frankly a society built around consumerism is hell