Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability…

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 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 outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.

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.

In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.