Luxury

“ Luxury? do you suppose, because such sights, and such sounds, and such flattery, are luxuries to you, they are luxuries to those who produce them? Because you are in extacies to behold yourselves grow younger and more blooming every moment, do you conclude that he who mixes your colours, and covers your defects, shares your transports? ”

“ And so at last, when the muscles of our thighs refused to strengthen our legs for the ascent of another foot, we would turn our backs to the slant and sink gratefully into the only real luxury in the world.
For be it known that real luxury cannot be bought; it must be worked for. I refer to luxury as the exquisite savour of a pleasant sensation. The keenest sense-impressions are undoubtedly those of contrast. ”

“ Do not the consequences of luxury and magnificence bring ease and comfort to the hundreds of families that weave silks and laces, chisel gold and silver, carve precious stones, build palaces, sculpture the ebony of furniture, varnish carriages, breed thoroughbred horses, and cultivate rare flowers? Have not artists, architects, musicians, singers, danseuses, all that is art, pleasure, poetry, enchantment, a large share of the gold shower that produces these wonders? And does not this gold shower spring from that magical reservoir so slowly and perseveringly filled by the miser? ”

“ The costly and elegant furniture—the brilliant chandeliers—the magnificent but rather loose French prints and paintings—the universal luxury that prevailed—the voluptuous ladies, with their bare shoulders, painted cheeks, and free-and-easy manners—the buxom, bustling landlady, who was dressed with almost regal splendor and wore a profusion of jewelry—the crowd of half-drunken gentlemen who were drinking wine and laughing uproariously—all these things astonished and bewildered me. ”

“ Luxury has outstripped nomenclature.
The covering ought, in my judgment, to show that which is covered to be better than itself, as the image is superior to the temple, the soul to the body, and the body to the clothes. But now, quite the contrary, the body of these ladies, if sold, would never fetch a thousand Attic drachms. Buying, as they do, a single dress at the price of ten thousand talents, they prove themselves to be of less use and less value than cloth. Why in the world do you seek after what is rare and costly, in preference to what is at hand and cheap? ”

“ When you hear of the luxuries of the Ancients, you must remember that they were not like our luxuries, they were rather indulgence in pieces of extravagant folly than what we to-day call luxury—which, perhaps, you would rather call comfort; well, I accept the word, and say that a Greek or a Roman of the luxurious time would stare astonished could he be brought back again and shown the comforts of a well-to-do middle-class house. ”

“ I suppose we shall all admit that bad luxury is bad, and good luxury is good, unless the phrase good luxury is a contradiction in terms. We must try to avoid disputing about words. The word luxury, according to its derivation, signifies an extravagant and outrageous indulgence of the appetites or desires. If we take this as the meaning of the word, we shall agree that luxury is bad; but if we take luxury to be only another name for the refinements of civilization, we shall all approve of it. ”

“ We may consider luxury from three points of view: First, from the moral point, as concerning the individual; within what limits is the perfect satisfaction of wants useful in the normal development of the human faculties? Second, from the economical point; to what extent is luxury a help or a hindrance to the increase of wealth? Third, from the point of right and justice; is luxury compatible with the equitable division of products, and with the general principle that the remuneration of each person ought to be proportional to the amount of useful labor that he has performed? ”

“ It is the taste for luxury which in our day, in the absence of religious principles, sustains the social movement and reveals to the lower classes their dignity. The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences clearly understood this when it chose luxury as the subject of one of its essays, and I applaud its wisdom from the bottom of my heart. ”

“ If the Pilgrim Fathers themselves had had luxury before their eyes, they would have desired to have it; and they would have been right. Luxury is, in itself, a great good. Luxury is delicious fare,—of any and every kind: and He who bestowed it meant all men to have it. ”

“ If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another’s. ”

“ My dear boy, don’t you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. ”

“ Inside, every American luxury is at command. You move noiselessly on deep-piled carpets; the news-stand is heaped with the latest magazines and novels; there is a little row of shops where you can buy hats and frocks, jewellery and bric-à-brac, at fifty per cent. ”

“ But irrational impulses must be curbed, lest, carrying us away through excessive relaxation, they impel us to voluptuousness. For luxury, that has dashed on to surfeit, is prone to kick up its heels and toss its mane, and shake off the charioteer, the Instructor; who, pulling back the reins from far, leads and drives to salvation the human horse—that is, the irrational part of the soul—which is wildly bent on pleasures, and vicious appetites, and precious stones, and gold, and variety of dress, and other luxuries. ”

“ SECTION, II OF LUXURY. We are far from being agreed on the application of the term luxury, or on that degree of its meaning which is consistent with national prosperity, or with the moral rectitude of our nature. It is sometimes employed to signify a manner of life which we think necessary to civilization, and even to happiness. ”

“ Could Luxury be confined to the Palaces of the Great, the Society would not perhaps be much affected with it; at least, the Mischiefs, which I am now intending to obviate can never be the Consequence. ”

“ Neither husband nor wife has the remotest idea of modern luxury. They retain a livery only seen elsewhere on the stage, and cling to old fashions in plate, furniture, and equipages, as in language and manner of life. ”

“ But works of art, like the precious stones and metals, have come to be the conventionally accepted standards of luxury, the everywhere recognised insignia of the aristocracy of wealth. So I have them, and add to my collection steadily just as I add to my collection of finely bound books that no one ever opens. What slaves of convention and ostentation we are!
“What’s become of the Corot that used to hang there?” I asked, suspiciously, because I had had so many experiences of my family’s trifling with my possessions. ”

“ To those who must have luxury, who have wealth to spend and like to spend it on themselves, what a glorious opportunity is here!—straps inlaid with gold and gems, the poetry of the jeweller expended in chaste designs and ornate extravagances—straps that catch a thousand sun rays, and break them into prismatic splinters; gems that get loosened from their elaborate settings, and, rolling amongst the grey dust, attract the beggar’s eye with their flashing, and fire the hearts of the finders’ friends with the fleeting joy of possession ”

“ They possess themselves every profusion of luxury, in articles of plate and sculpture, in furniture of beds, tripods, and other household embellishments, far superior in degree to any thing that is seen in Europe: their expence of living rivals the magnificence of princes: their houses are decorated with pillars glistening with gold and silver: their doors are crowned with vases and beset with jewels: the interior of their houses corresponds with the beauty of their outward appearance, and all the riches of other countries are here exhibited in a variety of profusion. ”

“ The aspect of the numerous and brilliant edifices of V——, the luxury resulting from the many products of art and industry of all kinds with which it is enriched from day to day, form the delight of the loiterer, and the marvel of all travellers. ”

“ The elegance of its surroundings, the exquisite taste and richness of its appointments, its artistic and expensive construction, distinguish this residence of the millionaire, Forest, from all others far and near.
In the magnificent parlor, giving evidence of that superfluity of expensive comfort and luxury which to wealthy Americans seems an absolute necessity of life, sits a young lady, in an elaborate and costly home dress. ”

“ Therefore luxury advances. The syllogism is complete and sound; there is fault in neither major nor minor premiss; and we have therefore arrived at the ultimate conclusion that luxury is on the move—that is, has increased. ”

“ There is nothing that luxury can desire which does not find its way to these remote isles, from the newest scent to the finest dress materials—not even excepting silks and velvets, though for whose benefit these are imported, passes my comprehension. ”

“ In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past, it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages, and all the wisdom of antiquity, in that particular, as erroneous. ”

“ And time, with more state, brought more capacity for luxury, and it became well that men should dwell in large houses, and rest upon couches, and eat at tables; whereupon the artist, with his artificers, built palaces, and filled them with furniture, beautiful in proportion and lovely to look upon. ”

“ All that I ask is the luxury—yes, the luxury, long unknown to me, of candour—to place fairly and manfully before Susan the position in which fate has involved me. Can you suppose that we shall not both take comfort and strength from each other? Our duty is plain and obvious ”

“ It is, of course, impossible to fix an accurate limit between property of the last class and of this class, since things which are a mere luxury to one person are a means of intellectual occupation to another. Flowers in a London ball-room are a luxury; in a botanical garden, a delight of the intellect; and in their native fields, both; while the most noble works of art are continually made material of vulgar luxury or of criminal pride ”

“ From this point of view all the products of human labor have been, and in turn have ceased to be, articles of luxury, since we mean by luxury nothing but a relation of succession, whether chronological or commercial, in the elements of wealth. ”

“ Luxury, so far as it reaches the poor, 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 to a very few. ”

“ The evolution of luxury has been divided into three periods: the luxury of primitive periods, which was exemplified in patriarchal times, and in the beginning of the middle ages; luxury of flourishing and prosperous peoples, as in the modern age; and the luxury of peoples in decay, like the ancient Romans and the Orientals. ”

“ I want Dinky-Dunk all to myself. And the freedom of isolation like this is such a luxury! To be just one's self, in civilization, is a luxury, is the [Pg 42] greatest luxury in the world,—and also the most expensive, I've found to my sorrow. ”

“ We must add also to this parasitic class those who are engaged in luxury trades—with the caveat that it is exceedingly difficult to draw a strict frontier line between necessity and luxury on the one hand, and on the other, between luxury and the thing that may minister to the legitimate comfort, the health, the beauty and the general enrichment of life. ”

“ But he had lived too long in the atmosphere of luxury, and too close to the master adventurers of that speculative day. Luxury had become a second nature to him; contact with men who could sell him out twenty times over had brought him the parching hunger for money. ”

“ One kind of luxury only, in my opinion, is justifiable: that, namely, which admits the public to its enjoyments; which invites the masses to the pleasures of public gardens and fountains, which places the beautiful within the reach of those who can not own statuary or pictures, by establishing museums of art, and which founds libraries and public expositions. ”

“ The graceful styles and high finish to be seen at many of our stores, and in our recently furnished houses, illustrate a progress in elegance, luxury, and taste, not dreamed of by the last generation. And in all these things it is observable that the advance is in cheapness as well as in beauty. ”

“ In her house you will find everything in good taste; her luxury is for hourly use, and duly renewed; you will see nothing under glass shades, no rags of wrappings hanging about, and looking like a pantry. ”

“ His appetite for luxury was gratified by the perfection of all their appointments in the art of living. The fineness of their manners pleased his aristocratic tastes and he could not sufficiently admire the high-bred women and the simple, cordial, dignified gentlemen with whom he dined or drove through the cultivated landscapes. ”

“ Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes, but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields, but they are starving in the midst of its abundance; the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden, but they feel as reptiles that infest it. ”

“ And not only this, but when you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success. ”

“ They have become waiting maids, embroiderers, and milliners. One might say that luxury had exhausted our youth; all eyes are turned towards it, and it alone occupies every thought. Never, at any former period, did the contingent in lawyers, bailiffs, law students, physicians, and artists, exceed three or four; it is now raised to sixty-two: and what we should never have conceived in former days, there are now among us as many painters, poets, comedians, opera dancers, and travelling musicians, as a city of eighty thousand souls would have furnished thirty or forty years ago. ”