Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.

The philosophers of industrialism, from Bacon to Bentham, from Smith to Marx, insisted that the improvement of man's condition was the highest requirement of morality. But in what did the improvement consist? The answer seemed so obvious to them that they did not bother to justify it: the expansion and fulfillment of the material wants of man, and the spread of these benefits, from the few who had once preempted them, to the many who had so long lived on the scraps Dives had thrown into the gutter.

If we never met again in our lives I should feel that somehow the whole adventure of existence was justified by my having met you.

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.

By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale.

War is a specific product of civilization.

Without leisure there can be neither art nor science nor fine conversation, nor any ceremonious performance of the offices of love and friendship.