Luxury Quotes - Page 14

• Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of one's own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one's own.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Lazy, Desire, Care

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• The pleasures of love are really quite wonderful--though I suspect they are rather a luxury and require a certain level of socioeconomic stability to be anything other than a mode of suffering.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Suffering, Levels, Wonderful

  Samuel R. Delany, Carl Howard Freedman (2009). “Conversations with Samuel R. Delany”, p.130, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore

  James A. Baldwin

  Confusion, Young

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• To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, instant electronic communication and such, have taught me to relearn and enjoy the basic human satisfactions of dipping water from a cold clear mountain stream; of building a wood fire in a cast-iron stove; of using long winter nights for making music, making things, making love; of writing long letters, in longhand with a fountain pen, to the few people on this earth I truly care about.

  Edward Abbey

  Communication, Writing, Winter

  Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

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• I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Lying, Responsibility

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• The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.

  Michael Lewis

  Jobs, Class, People

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• Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.

  Walter Kirn

  Breathing, Relaxation, Sometimes

  Walter Kirn (2002). “Up in the Air: A Novel”, p.10, Anchor

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• I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Giving, Generosity

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• I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Powerful, Stupid, School

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• And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn't have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.

  Clarice Lispector

  Sadness, People, Rich

  Clarice Lispector (2017). “Hour of the Star”, p.50, Penguin UK

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• The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.

  Victor Hugo

  Art, Intelligent, Hatred

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.42, Modern Library

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• I sighed and went back to filling out the application. The whole thing made me feel like my family didn’t think I had any right to want something of my own. It bothered me, but I knew I couldn’t hold it against them in the long run. We couldn’t afford the luxury of wants. We had needs.

  Kiera Cass

  Running, Thinking, Want Something

  Kiera Cass (2014). “The Selection Series 3-Book Collection: The Selection, The Elite, The One, The Prince, The Guard”, p.20, Harper Collins

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• There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.

  Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Book, Doors, Dust

  Zilpha Keatley Snyder (2004). “The Velvet Room”, p.64, iUniverse

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• Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple careers: I've been a teacher. A chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I’ve been a painter. A personal shopper. An accountant and a banker. I’ve been a beautician. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. A movie reviewer. A nurse. A psychologist. A negotiator. An I have a Ph. D in How to Pretend Like You Don’t Mind.

  Terry McMillan

  Mother, Teacher, Careers

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• I lived in countries that had no democracy... so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Country, Democracy, Grew Up

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• Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Perspective, Demon, Swarms

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• The writers job is to get naked, To hide nothing. To look away from nothing. To look at it. To not blink. To be not embarrassed or shamed of it. Strip it down and lets get down to where the blood is, the bone is. Instead of hiding it with clothes and all kinds of other stuff, luxury!

  Harry Crews

  Jobs, Blood, Clothes

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• Tea? At the beach? No time for luxuries, Holly. There is important work to be done.” He winked at Butler. “Are you sure you’re at the library? I thought I heard water.” Artemis smiled, enjoying the exchange. “Water? Surely not. The only thing flowing here is information.” “Are you grinning, Artemis? For some reason I get the feeling that you’re wearing that smug smile of yours.

  Eoin Colfer

  Beach, Water, Hollies

  Eoin Colfer (2008). “Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony”, Miramax

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• Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Self, Clothes, Boredom

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• No matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Missing, Matter, You Choose

  Chuck Palahniuk (1999). “Survivor: A Novel”, Anchor

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• Push yourself. Don’t settle. Wear those stripy legs with pride. And if you insist on settling down with some ridiculous bloke, make sure some of this is squirreled away somewhere. Knowing you still have possibilities is a luxury. Knowing I might have given them to you has alleviated something for me.

  Jojo Moyes

  Pride, Knowing, Legs

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• Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Book, Sole

  Edgar Allan Poe, Stuart Levine, Susan Levine (2000). “Thirty-two Stories”, p.134, Hackett Publishing

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• He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Spring, Law, Evil

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• Abundance isn't God's provision for me to live in luxury. It's his provision for me to help others live. God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven.

  Randy Alcorn

  Helping Others, Heaven, Earth

  Randy Alcorn (2011). “Managing God's Money: A Biblical Guide”, p.133, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• Sometimes choice is a luxury that fate does not afford us.

  Jasper Fforde

  Fate, Choices, Doe

  Jasper Fforde (2012). “The Last Dragonslayer”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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