Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
The dog commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery.
All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.
In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
