shallow pursuits Quotes

You have grown abominably lazy, and you like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things, you are contented to be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and respected by wise ones.

Our age is very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, and you shall find it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency of coffee and toast, with a daily newspaper; a well glazed parlor, with marbles, mirrors and centre-table; and the excitement of a few parties and a few rides in a year.

The trite objects of human efforts-possessions, superficial success, luxury-have always seemed contemptible to me.

The most terrible thing about materialism, even more terrible than its proneness to violence, is its boredom, from which sex alcohol, drugs, all devices for putting out the accusing light of reason and suppressing the unrealizable aspirations of love, offer a prospect of deliverance.

As an artist I am attracted by decadence, by those who exhaust their lives in the shallow pursuits of pleasure. Occasionally, I feel that spiritually I participate in all these kinds of lives.

There is a city in which you find everything you desire-handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind-all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.

We are empty shells if we do not possess, if we do not fill our life with furniture, with music, with knowledge, with this or that. And that shell makes a lot of noise, and that noise we call living, and with that we are satisfied.

If chasing cool is important to you, you're an idiot!

I enjoy vanity . But I can't stick to any of that lifestyle for too long because, when its true colors come out, it's empty and cold and soulless.

It's all very well setting up your own brand of face cream or exercise wear - but Christ, it's so shallow.

There are sordid souls that eat and drink and breed and die, and imagine they have lived.

A relentless focus on the outward markers of success can lead to complacency. It can make you lazy.

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long, have done my credit in this World much wrong; have drowned my Glory in a shallow Cup, and sold my Reputation for a Song.

You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.

The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!