We face the question whether a still higher “standard of living” is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. – Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949

Men can bear all things except good days. – Dutch Proverb [Quoted in Henry G. Bohn, A Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs comprisin

Luxury: The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master. – Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. – Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879