“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
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Thorstein Veblen 41
American academic 1857–1929Related quotes

Speech to the European Parliament (23 September 2003)
2000s

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

“The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.”
Act IV
1890s, The Philanderer (1893)

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.”
The Lost Secrets of Prayer

Source: Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1990), p. 312

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)
“When the ground is soft
It may be worked with any kind of tool.”
Le Pellegrine, Act III., Scene VIL.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 366.