The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. - Thorstein Veblen

In the priestly life of all anthropomorphic cults the marks of a vicarious consumption of time are visible.

There is probably no cult in which ideals of pecuniary merit have not been called in to supplement the ideals of ceremonial adequacy that guide men's conception of what is right in the matter of sacred apparatus.

A standard of living is of the nature of habit. ...it acts almost solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once become habitual.