In preindustrial cultures leisure is scarcely a burden or a "problem" because it is built into the ritual and ground plan of life for which people are conditioned in childhood; often they possess a relatively timeless attitude toward events.

If you want to get out of medicine the fullest enjoyment, be students all your lives.

A decline of exuberance is just barely noticeable in America, making itself felt particularly among the most highly educated and the well-to-do in a loss of appetite for work and perhaps even for leisure.

Why, I ask, isn't it possible that advertising as a whole is a fantastic fraud, presenting an image of America taken seriously by no one, least of all by the advertising men who create it?

It is no longer clear which way is up even if one wants to rise.

The closest thing we have to the traditional ideology of the leisure class is a group of artists and intellectuals who regard their work as play and their play as work.

It is among the less privileged groups relatively new to leisure and consumption that the zest for possessions retains something of its pristine energy.