“The superior gratification derived from the use and contemplation of costly and supposedly beautiful products is, commonly, in great measure a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.”

—  Thorstein Veblen , book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 128

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Thorstein Veblen 41
American academic 1857–1929

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