Quotes on Extravagance
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944. Ambition; Extravagance
"The desires of man increase with his acquisitions; every step which he advances brings something within his view, which he did not see before, and which, as soon as he sees it, he begins to want. Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with every thing that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites."
Johnson: Idler #30 (November 11, 1758)
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945. Extravagance
"By ... restlessness of mind, every populous and wealthy city is filled with innumerable employments, for which the greater part of mankind is without a name; with artificers, whose labour is exerted in producing such petty conveniences, that many shops are furnished with instruments of which the use can hardly be found without inquiry, but which he that once knows them quickly learns to number among necessary things."
Johnson: Idler #30 (November 11, 1758)
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1,068. Ambition; Extravagance; Satisfaction
"All the attainments possible in our present state are evidently inadequate to our capacities of enjoyment; conquest serves no purpose but that of kindling ambition, discovery has no effect but of raising expectation; the gratification of one desire encourages another; and after all our labours, studies, and inquiries, we are continually at the same distance from the contemplation of our schemes, have still some wish importunate to be satisfied, and some faculty restless and turbulent for want of its enjoyment."
Johnson: Rambler #103 (March 12, 1751)
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1,069. Extravagance; Knowledge
"The desire for knowledge, though often animated by extrinsic and adventitious motives, seems on many occasions to operate without subordination to any other principle; we are eager to see and hear, without intention of referring our observations to a further end; we climb a mountain for a prospect of the plain; we run to the strand in a storm, that we may contemplate the agitation of the water; we range from city to city, though we profess neither architecture nor fortification; we cross seas only to view nature in nakedness, or magnificence in ruins; we are equally allured by novelty of every kind, by a desert or a palace, a cataract or a cavern, by every thing rude and every thing polished, every thing great and every thing little; we do not see a thicket but with some temptation to enter it, or remark an insect flying before us but with an inclination to pursue it."
Johnson: Rambler #103 (March 12, 1751)
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