Extravagance
Extravagance is excessive or superfluous expenditure of money.
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Quotes
- The question is not put how far extends
- His piety, but what he yearly spends;
- Quick, to the business; how he lives and eats;
- How largely gives; how splendidly he treats;
- How many thousand acres feed his sheep;
- What are his rents; what servants does he keep?
- The account is soon cast up; the judges rate
- Our credit in the court by our estate.
- Epicurus, the great teacher of happiness, has correctly and finely divided human needs into three classes. First there are the natural and necessary needs which, if they are not satisfied, cause pain. Consequently, they are only victus et amictus [food and clothing] and are easy to satisfy. Then we have those that are natural yet not necessary, that is, the needs for sexual satisfaction. ... These needs are more difficult to satisfy. Finally, there are those that are neither natural nor necessary, the needs for luxury, extravagance, pomp, and splendour, which are without end and very difficult to satisfy.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 346
- You seem to imagine that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance. But my belief is that to have no wants is divine; to have as few as possible comes next to the divine; and as that which is divine is supreme, so that which approaches nearest to its nature is nearest to the supreme.”
- Xenophon, Socrates speaking to Antiphon in Memorabilia
