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The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.

Thorstein Veblen

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Thorstein Veblen
Age: 72 †
Born: 1857
Born: July 30
Died: 1929
Died: August 3
Economist
Sociologist
University Professor
Writer
Manitowoc County
Wisconsin
Thorstein Bunde Veblen
Beauty
Imperfection
Point
Superiority
Hands
Goods
Visible
Errors
Accounted
Mark
Wrought
Mistake
Imperfections
Hand
Marks

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Inherited aptitudes and traits of temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of life.
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Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows.
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The thief or swindler who has gained great wealth by his delinquency has a better chance than the small thief of escaping the rigorous penalty of the law.
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Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
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There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.
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The corset is?a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitalityand rendering her permanentlyand obviously unfit for work.
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The domestic life of most classes is relatively shabby, as compared with the éclat of that overt portion of their life that is carried on before the eyes of observers.
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Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind.
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The aesthetic serviceability of objects of beauty is not greatly nor universally heightened by possession.
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No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
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Conservatism is the maintenance of conventions already in force.
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The machine technology takes no cognizance of conventionally established rules of precedence it knows neither manners nor breeding and can make no use of any of the attributes of worth.
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In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
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The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.
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The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is... present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful.
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Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.
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Abstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing.
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So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to that complacency which we call self-respect.
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Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
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In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
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