David Hume Quotes

Luxury and dissipation, soft and gentle as their approaches are, and silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices

Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, has long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty.

Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.

Luxury and excessive refinement are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal.

Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice-- The weakness and the wickedness of luxury-- The negligence--the apathy--the evils Of sensual sloth--produces ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing.

Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart.

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.

Luxury is a word of uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as in a bad sense

Gansey leaned back, head thrown to the side, drunken and silly with happiness. "I love this car," he said, loud enough to be heard over the engine. "I should buy four more of them. I'll just open the door of one to fall in to the other. One can be a living room, one can be my kitchen, I'll sleep in one..." "And the fourth? Butler's pantry?" Blue shouted. "Don't be so selfish. Guest room.

An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age.

Luxury, that alluring pest with fair forehead, which, yielding always to the will of the body, throws a deadening influence over the senses, and weakens the limbs more than the drugs of Circe's cup.

The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarcely capable of cure.

I like extravagance. Letters which give the postman a stiff back to carry, books which overflow from their covers, sexuality which bursts the thermometers.

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

Luxury destroys more efficiently than war.

One defining symptom of decadence is a fondness for vast and nonsensical extravagance.

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil.

I don't have a chateau in France. There's no private airplane or yacht.

The super-rich watch each other like envious owls, to see who's got a slightly better loafer, a pullover made from some even more absurdly endangered fur. They will go to any lengths to find the best tailors.

I own a private yacht, private jet and a private lion.

I've never lived the glamorous life.

Luxury and Ostentation usually make me feel antsy, like I'm going to get a case of gout.

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?