Luxury Consumption Quotes

Among civilized peoples, especially the very wealthy population of the United States of America, women have become objects of luxury who consume but do not produce.

… frittered away, 9 times out of 10, in things which pertain to the body and not to the spirit; upon richer food and drink, better clothing, more extravagant living, which are beneficial neither to rich or nor poor.

Most companies are out to make money. They aren't worried about anything except whether they can buy their new BMW next month.

Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?

Fashion is, after all, a form of escapism, and in fact people are buying more special things than ever, nowadays. They deny and deny themselves, and wait and wait, and then they get sick of it and spend to make themselves feel better.

What is it that brings the capitalist to the market? It is the urge to get rich, to increase his capital, to gratify his ambitions and social vanities, to be able to indulge in all conceivable pleasures. And what brings the worker to the market? Hunger, the necessity of eating today and tomorrow.

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

Because of the demand for luxury articles, they become customary, and thus come to be necessities

The luxury of today is the necessity of tomorrow. Every advance first comes into being as the luxury of a few rich people, only to become, after a time, an indispensable necessity taken for granted by everyone. Luxury consumption provides industry with the stimulus to discover and introduce new, things. It is one of the dynamic factors in our economy. To it we owe the progressive innovations by which the standard of living of all strata of the population has been gradually raised.

There’s no way that Michael Jackson or whoever Jackson should have a million thousand droople billion dollars and then there’s people starving. There’s no way! There’s no way that these people should own planes and there people don’t have houses. Apartments. Shacks. Drawers. Pants! I know you’re rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars, but can you just keep it to one house? You only need ONE house. And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it to two rooms? I mean why have 52 rooms and you know there’s somebody with no room?! It just don’t make sense to me. It don’t.

Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.

Anybody who probably lives alone and they have three or four cars, that's probably somebody that's spending a lot of money that they don't need to.

Isn´t it strange how wealth is always wasted on the rich?

People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.

Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big libraries.

I don't really regret anything I've done, even if it's bad. I mean, I have a $100,000 Chopard watch. I don't need a $100,000 watch, but I like it. It's all diamonds. That's a little extreme, but I don't care.

I have more than 100 pairs of Jimmy Choos and I feel very guilty about it.

Luxury may possibly contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor.

Revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts.

We consume luxury. We participate in the image industry in a meaningful way, and we have a look and a background that should be taken on its own terms.

Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.

We know that if you have $20 million, it's better to buy a van Gough print than it is buy an executive jet, from the point of view of the environment. But when you start getting down, it's like the recycling question: What are things we can really afford to do, and how much pleasure do we get out of them? We haven't even started to have that discussion, and it's getting awfully late.

I don't feel comfortable defending my clothes. But if you've got the money to afford them, then buy something from me. Just don't buy too much.

The privileged classes can afford psychoanalysis and whiskey. Whereas all we get is sermons and sour wine. This is manifestly unfair. I protest, silently.

The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.