Quote#Beauty
The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is... present as a…
Quote byThorstein Veblen · 1857–1929
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 126.
English (original)
The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is... present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful.
— Thorstein Veblen
More from Thorstein Veblen
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.
The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.
Any evolutionary science... is a close-knit body of theory. It is a theory of a process, of an unfolding sequence... of cumulative causation. The great deserts of the evolutionist leaders... lie... in their having shown how this colorless …
In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.