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"The accouterments of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and every accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an existence above and beyond the purpose it was meant to serve " confusing the observer and absorbing attention."
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"What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work. The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more and keep buying and consuming."
"He had allowed the advertisers to multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop."
"Isn't materialism the cause of much that is evil in the land of mortal souls?"
"Man with his new powers became rich like Midas but all that he touched had gone dead and cold."
"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."
"It is good to have wealth. It is great to leave in comfort. It is awesome to obtain possessions but, don't be too eager for material possessions for the same material possessions that bring joy are the same possessions that bring sorrow and pain and also leave a big had I know on our minds."
"The folly of endless consumerism sends us on a wild goose-chase for happiness through materialism."
"People are preoccupied only with money. They are looking to see where they can get it from. Hey, why are you looking for it in a 'cemetery'? This worldly life has become like a cemetery. There is no love to be seen in it. The way in which money comes to one is a natural thing. It is (by way of) scientific circumstantial evidences. Why do we have to run after it? If it were to free (liberate) us itself, then it would be very good, right?"
"For our radically misnamed "materialistic civilization must above all cultivate the love of material, of earth, air, and water, of mountains and forests, of excellent food and imaginative housing and clothing, and of cherishing our artfully erotic contacts between human bodies. Certainly, all these so"called "things are as impermanent as ripples in water, but what life, what love, what energy is there in a perfectly pure abstraction or a totally solid and eternally indestructible rock?"
"Loving money is more of a problem for those who do not have it."
Explore more quotes by Thomas Mann
"For to be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully, is more than simple endurance; it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph."
"But even those five-and-forty minutes were too long, the bored me -and boredom is the coldest thing in the world."
"I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavors. Where might I be, if I were not here? Who, what, how could I be, if I were not me, if this outward appearance that is me did not encase me, separating my consciousness from that of others who are not me? An organism-a blind, rash, pitiful eruption of the insistent assertion of the will. Far better, really, if that will were to drift free in a night without time or space, than to languish in a prison cell lit only by the flickering, uncertain flame of the intellect."
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