The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.

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

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

Socialism is a dead horse.

With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.

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

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.