Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Unless we are accustomed to them from early youth, splendid chambers and elegant furniture had best be left to people who neither have nor can have any thoughts.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with everything that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British Actor
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The more various our artificial necessities, the wider is our circle of pleasure; for all pleasure consists in obviating necessities as they rise; luxury, therefore, as it increases our wants, increases our capacity for happiness
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury—you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
It is impossible to overdo luxury
—French Proverb
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American Head of State
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
For many people, before age 60, it’s business before pleasure. After 60, pleasure before business.
—Marty Nemko (b.1950) American Career Coach
Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people; it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury; for, as I said before; it can reach but a very few.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Luxury, that alluring pest with fair forehead, which, yielding always to the will of the body, throws a deadening influence over the senses, and weakens the limbs more than the drugs of Circe’s cup.
—Claudian (c.370–c.404 CE) Roman Poet
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
—Charles Kingsley (1819–75) English Clergyman, Academic, Historian, Novelist
The ultimate of being successful is the luxury of giving yourself the time to do what you want to do.
—Leontyne Price (b.1927) American Opera Singer
It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn’t hear the barbarians coming.
—Garrison Keillor (b.1942) American Author, Humorist, Radio Personality
The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse—as a luxury befitting a young man.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) (1783–1842) French Writer
Now we suffer the evils of a long peace; luxury more cruel than war broods over us and avenges a conquered world.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.
—Golda Meir (1898–1978) Israeli Head of State
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
—Walter Bagehot (1826–77) English Economist, Journalist
All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
It was a shrewd saying, whoever said it, “That the man who first brought ruin on the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements.”
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarcely capable of cure.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
O luxury! Thou curst of heaven’s decree.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
On the soft bed of luxury, most kingdoms have expired.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
Sell not your liberty to gratify your luxury
—Indian Proverb
Let us consider what we call vicious luxury. No gratification, however sensual, can of itself be esteemed vicious. A gratification is only vicious when it engrosses all a man’s expense, and leaves no ability for such acts of duty and generosity as are required by his situation and fortune. The same care and toil that raise a dish of peas at Christmas would give bread to a whole family during six months.
—David Hume (1711–76) Scottish Philosopher, Historian
Living in the lap of luxury isn’t bad, except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
Learn the luxury of doing good.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
Whenever vanity and gaiety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.
—John Adams (1735–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.
—Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English Religious Poet
Luxury is an enticing pleasure, a bastard mirth, which hath honey in her mouth, gall in her heart, and a sting in her tail.
—Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English Religious Poet
What think you, if he were conveyed to bed, Wrapped in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers, A most delicious banquet by his bed, And brave attendants near him when he wakes, Would not the beggar then forget himself?
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence,—luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition,—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Luxury and dissipation, soft and gentle as their approaches are, and silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices.
—Hannah More
Sofas ’twas half a sin to sit upon,
So costly were they; carpets, every stitch
Of workmanship so rare, they make you wish
You could glide o’er them like a golden fish.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Were the labor and capital, now spent on pernicious luxuries, to be employed in the intellectual, moral, and religious culture of the whole people, how immense would be the gain, in every respect, though for a short time material products were diminished. A better age will look back with wonder and scorn on the misdirected industry of the present times.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
Luxury is a word of uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as in a bad sense
—David Hume (1711–76) Scottish Philosopher, Historian
Blest hour! It was a luxury—to be!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French Fashion Designer
We read on the foreheads of those who are surrounded by a foolish luxury, that fortune sells what she is thought to give.
—Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) French Poet, Short Story Writer
Other passions have objects to flatter them, and which seem to content and satisfy them for a while.—There is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist