This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Luxury makes a man so soft that it is hard to please him, and easy to trouble him; so that his pleasures at last become his burden. Luxury is a nice master, hard to be pleased.
Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.
Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.
Body | Life | Life | Luxury | Mind | Possessions | Success | Wisdom |
The uprooting of human beings from the land, the concentration in cities, the breakdown of the authority of family, of tradition, and of moral conventions, the complexity and the novelty of modern life, and finally the economic insecurity of our industrial system have called into being the modern social worker. They perform a function in modern society which is not a luxury but an absolute necessity.
Absolute | Authority | Family | Insecurity | Land | Life | Life | Luxury | Necessity | Novelty | Society | System | Tradition | Wisdom | Society | Novelty |
The man whom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his troubles under the friendly shade of every tree, and may experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness.
Duty | Experience | Happy | Luxury | Man | Public | Riches | Troubles | Wisdom | Riches |
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction must come. The tower leans from its foundation, and every new story but hastens the final catastrophe.
When princes think more of luxury than of arms, they lose their state.
Meaning is not a luxury for us… It is a kind of spiritual oxygen, we might say, that enables our souls to live.