#consumption

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#clothing #conspicuous-consumption #fashion #fashion-industry #tattoo

Once we are fed, heated, housed and healthy, our extra consumption inevitably has an element of luxury about it. And once luxury enters the scene, the practicalities are in trouble, as women who wear expensive stiletto heels can testify. ↗

— Evan Davis

#consumption #element #enters #expensive #extra

The Texas Energy Office's Loan Star Program has reduced building energy consumption and taxpayers' energy costs through the efficient operation of public buildings, saving taxpayers more than $172 million through energy efficiency projects. ↗

— Rosa DeLauro

#buildings #consumption #costs #efficiency #efficient

In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#consumption #deeply #endless #filled #glut

My disorder has been attended with several symptoms of a consumption; and I have been at times apprehensive that my great change was at hand: yet blessed be God, I have never been affrighted; but, on the contrary, at times much delighted with a view of its approach. ↗

— David Brainerd

#approach #attended #been #blessed #blessed be

Where consumption is both conspicuous and competitive, humanity will never run out of new wishes. All the while, industry creates new desires that are marketed, in the great fashion paradox, as both novelty and need. ↗

— James Buchan

#competitive #conspicuous #consumption #creates #desires

Women are clearly the major consumers in far more than just female categories. It doesn't matter whether it is purchases of cars, cosmetics, or even products for men, female consumption power is the leading consumption power in the world. Any company that overlooks the woman as the decision maker is making a huge mistake. ↗

— Andrea Jung

#cars #categories #clearly #company #consumers

The greatly increased consumption of alcoholic beverages is very largely a direct result of the increased purchasing power created by wartime expenditures. ↗

— William Lyon Mackenzie King

#alcoholic beverages #beverages #consumption #created #direct

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced. ↗

— Masanobu Fukuoka

#conservation #consumption #farming #food #food-security

The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods. ↗

— Thorstein Veblen

#basis #community #conspicuous #consumption #gaining