“While the proximate ground of discrimination may be of another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time.”

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 51

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "While the proximate ground of discrimination may be of another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of …" by Thorstein Veblen?
Thorstein Veblen photo
Thorstein Veblen 41
American academic 1857–1929

Related quotes

Maureen Johnson photo

“Proximity doesn't breed familiarity.”

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Frits Bolkestein photo
Ronald Fisher photo
Anthony Kennedy photo

“Some kinds of government regulation of private consensual homosexual behavior may face substantial constitutional challenge.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Beller v. Middendorf, 632 F.2d 788, 809-10 (9th Cir. 1980) upholding a Navy discharge for homosexual conduct.

George Bernard Shaw photo

“The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Act IV
1890s, The Philanderer (1893)

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo

“The principles which discriminate in politics between good and evil, and make states worthy to last, were not yet found.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
Context: That men should understand that governments do not exist by divine right, and that arbitrary government is the violation of divine right, was no doubt the medicine suited to the malady under which Europe languished. But although the knowledge of this truth might become an element of salutary destruction, it could give little aid to progress and reform. Resistance to tyranny implied no faculty of constructing a legal government in its place. Tyburn tree may be a useful thing; but it is better still that the offender should live for repentance and reformation. The principles which discriminate in politics between good and evil, and make states worthy to last, were not yet found.

“An unattended mind is the breeding ground of self defeat.”

Guy Finley (1949) American self-help writer, philosopher, and spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician

The Lost Secrets of Prayer

Mortimer J. Adler photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

“When the ground is soft
It may be worked with any kind of tool.”

Giovanni Maria Cecchi (1518–1587) Italian poet, playwright, writer and notary

Le Pellegrine, Act III., Scene VIL.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 366.

Related topics