“The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness.” ActionBeautifulSubjectsFashionStyleExpressionWasteStandardsInnovationCome UpAcceptedRangeAestheticOffensiveNormRestlessSelective Book:A Veblen Treasury: From Leisure Class to War, Peace, and Capitalism Source: A Veblen Treasury: From Leisure Class to War, Peace, and Capitalism
“I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. "The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize." "Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I'm not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat."” WellsSaidBeautifulMotherLandPoetWastePrizeSignificanceSchemesNobelNobel PrizeGreat PoetPrerogativeWaste LandOvercoat Author:Alan Bennett
“It is not strange that that early love of the heart should come back, as it so often does when the dim eye is brightening with its last light. It is not strange that the freshest fountains the heart has ever known in its wastes should bubble up anew when the lifeblood is growing stagnant. It is not strange that a bright memory should come to a dying old man, as the sunshine breaks across the hills at the close of a stormy day; nor that in the light of that ray, the very clouds that made the day dark should grow gloriously beautiful.” MenShouldHeartDoeMadeLightEyeLastsBeautifulDeathGrowsMemoriesDarkKnownBreakGrowingDyingStrangeWasteCloudsHillsSunshineOld ManRaysBubblesFountainStagnantStormyStormy DaysEarly Love Author:Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The future is always fairyland to the young. Life is like a beautiful and winding lane, on either side bright flowers, and beautiful butterflies and tempting fruits, which we scarcely pause to admire and to taste, so eager are we to hasten to an opening which we imagine will be more beautiful still. But by degrees, as we advance, the trees grow bleak; the flowers and butterflies fail, the fruits disappear, and we find we have arrived--to reach a desert waste.” StillsBeautifulYoungLife IsGrowsSidesImagineFailingTreeFlowerTasteFutureDegreesWasteFruitDisappearAdmireOpeningDesertButterflyPausesLife Is LikeLanesBleakTemptingYoung LifeBeautiful Butterfly Author:George Augustus Henry Sala
“The existence of very pious feelings, in conjunction with intolerance, cruelty, and selfish policy, has never ceased to surprise and perplex those who have viewed it calmly from a distance. ... It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world. What destruction of the beautiful monuments of past ages, what waste of life, what disturbance of domestic and social happiness, what perverted feelings, what blighted hearts, have always marked its baneful progress!” WorldHeartDoneFeelingsAgePastBeautifulEvilSocialExistenceProgressImpossiblePolicyWasteDestructionDistanceSurpriseSelfishTheologyCrueltyHypocrisyIntoleranceMonumentPiousDisturbanceConjunctionsWaste Of Life Author:Lydia M. Child
“It has been the sad experience of many that much of the best and the most beautiful is lost to those whose mental food consists exclusively of the sensational paper or the cheap novel, or of that frothy mass of waste material which is thrown up like scum upon the molten metal of life--novelettes, serials, and fragments of a type which neither teach the ignorant, nor strengthen the weak, nor develop the immature.” Has BeensBeautifulLostTeachNovelMaterialsTypeWastePaperMassWeakIgnorantThrownMetalsFragmentsImmatureSerialsSensationalScum Book:Vegetarianism and Occultism Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism