"Commercialism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I am afraid the captain doesn't come very well out of this, and I'm afraid it is rather an immoral story; but my object is to show up the evils of commercialism, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... pecuniary rewards of success, it would seem almost redundant to state that he has continued to manifest an intense interest in the cement plant. Ordinarily, his interest as an inventor wanes in proportion to the approach to mere commercialism—in other words, the keenness of his pleasure is in overcoming difficulties rather than the mere piling up of a bank account. He is entirely sensible of the advantages arising from a good balance at the banker's, but that has not been the goal of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... burned out from under shaggy grizzled eyebrows, denounce in bitter stinging irony what he called the Europeanization of Spain. What they called progress, he had said, was merely an aping of the stupid commercialism of modern Europe. Better no education for the masses than education that would turn healthy peasants into crafty putty-skinned merchants; better a Spain swooning in her age-old apathy than a Spain awakened ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... quarter to the antagonist of his hero. His Wotan, whom he calls Jupiter, is the almighty fiend into whom the Englishman's God had degenerated during two centuries of ignorant Bible worship and shameless commercialism. He is Alberic, Fafnir Loki and the ambitious side of Wotan all rolled into one melodramatic demon who is finally torn from his throne and hurled shrieking into the abyss by a spirit representing that conception of ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... heart, the insensitiveness of a certain kind, which during a century or more now has been bred by the institutions of Commercialism; ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... one available. Tim was duly sympathetic to her desire to get away from her daily grind for as long a time as possible, but he also had a garage to run, and he was by no means incapable of pointing out the practical side of crass commercialism. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... class, it would probably have done little harm. In Britain the Feudal caste has ceased to be exclusively military, and has become blended with the commercial class. The British aristocracy now consists largely or chiefly of retired grocers and brewers. Commercialism here has become more confessedly dominant than in Germany, and whereas there the commercial class may support the military in its ambitions, here the commercial class uses the military as a matter of course and for its own ends. We have become a Nation of Shopkeepers ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... recalled the well known views of our sociological historians who held that it was woman's greater individualism that had checked the socialistic tendencies of the world. Had the Germans then achieved and maintained their rigid socialistic order by retaining this incongruous vestige of feminine commercialism as a safety valve for the individualistic instincts ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... means, of course, that the material form of the book shall correspond to its spiritual substance, shall be no finer and no meaner, and shall produce a like, even if a slighter, esthetic impression. At the outset we have to surrender to commercialism more than half our territory. All agree that our kings should be clothed in purple and our commoners in broadcloth; but how about the intellectual riffraff that makes up the majority of our books? Are our publishers willing ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... there were humiliating ones, like the prostitution of a great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight of commercialism had fallen on the institution. On February 11, 1908, Mr. Conried resigned, and announcement was officially made of a reorganization of his company, and the engagement of Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel as managers of the opera for ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of a proud Knickerbocker family. Its rooms and halls and staircases rang with the laughter of richly-attired men and women—the society of New York in ante-bellum days. But in the modern relentless march uptown of commercialism, all that remained of its one-time glory had been swept away. The house fell into decay and ruin, and while waiting for it to be pulled down entirely, to make room for an up-to-date skyscraper, the present owners had rented it just to pay the taxes. And a queer collection ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... is always in danger of being one of inner paralysis. Luxury is a foe to life. Character does not develop freely, largely, beautifully in an atmosphere of commercialism. A moral decline that but presages enduring disaster is sure to succeed the ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... supplied the tuition, also free of cost. The instructor naturally marked out for this purpose, says Mr. Cockburn, was Mr. Cecil Grace, a fine pilot, a great sportsman, and a man quite untouched by the spirit of commercialism, but only a few weeks earlier he had been lost while flying over the Channel from France to England. So Mr. Cockburn undertook the task, and for about six weeks took up his residence at Eastchurch. The four naval officers were ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... should," was the Reply. "Although I have been denied the blessed Privileges of Higher Education, I love to get into an Atmosphere of four-ply Intellectuality and meet those Souls who are above the sordid Considerations of workaday Commercialism." ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... generation which has gone through so many successive revolts against commercial aggression and lawlessness, will at last lead one more revolt on behalf of the young girls who are the victims of the basest and vilest commercialism. As that consciousness of human suffering, which already hangs like a black cloud over thousands of our more sensitive contemporaries, increases in poignancy, it must finally include the women who for so many generations have received neither ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... introduction of western methods of education and civilization somewhat difficult to carry out. The educational system of the dominating Brahmanic caste, although of a very high order, does not fit the people to cope with the commercialism of western civilization. ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... of commercialism in these men, even when, as in the case of Martin and Ryder and I do not know whom else, they did panels for somebody-or-other's leather screen, of which "Smuggler's Cove" and the other long panel of Ryder's in the Metropolitan ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... feudal system isn't dead, and I believe that what is best in it need never disappear altogether. Of course, it had its drawbacks, but I think it was better than the commercialism that is replacing it. It recognized obligations on both sides, and there is a danger of forgetting them; the new people often fail to realize them at all. Marple—I'm using him as an example—bought the land for what he could get ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... adjective "amateur" as applied to the press association, we must adhere to the more basic interpretation, regarding the word as indicating the non-mercenary nature of the membership. Our amateurs write purely for love of their art, without the stultifying influence of commercialism. Many of them are prominent professional authors in the outside world, but their professionalism never creeps into their association work. The atmosphere is wholly fraternal, and courtesy takes the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... World's Fair it was used for entertainment all over the world. The wheel of Anschuetz had been widespread too; yet it was considered only as a half-scientific apparatus. With Edison's kinetoscope the moving pictures had become a means for popular amusement and entertainment, and the appetite of commercialism was whetted. At once efforts to improve on the Edison machine were starting everywhere, and the adjustment to the needs of the wide public was in ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... lies in the adversity of some one else, be delicate and chivalrous, or even honest? If we could have had time to perfect our system at the South, to eliminate what was evil and develop what was good in it, we should have had a perfect system. But the virus of commercialism was in us, too; it forbade us to make the best of a divine institution, and tempted us to make the worst. Now the curse is on the whole country; the dollar is the measure of every value, the stamp of every success. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sitting by the river's bank. To-day it is the counting-house of one of the great brandy shippers whose name is current the world over. Its associations have changed considerably, and where once the new art instincts were born, in the person of the gallant Francois, is now the cradle of commercialism. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong. No nation deserves to exist if it permits itself to lose the stern and virile virtues; and this without regard to whether the loss is due to the growth of a heartless and all-absorbing commercialism, to prolonged indulgence in luxury and soft effortless ease, or to the deification of a ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... crown of our success, if we would make it truly great, we must place the sublimer elements of our being. As the ivy softens the roughness of the mountain side and the unsightly ruin, so will the aesthetic mellow and subdue the intense commercialism with which we are surrounded. Without this quality our success becomes like the fabled apples on the brink of the Dead Sea—fair without, ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given |
