Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows.

The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature.

The abjectly poor, and all those person whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today.

All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.

There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.

The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.