The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Thorstein VeblenRead
The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.
Interpretation
Imperfections in handmade items add character and beauty, enhancing their value.
Thorstein Veblen suggests that the flaws inherent in handmade goods distinguish them from mass-produced items, elevating their beauty and functionality. This perspective honors the craftsmanship involved, as imperfections reveal authenticity and human effort, ultimately making these items more desirable.
In practice
In an art gallery discussing the value of handmade pottery.
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.
The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
Modern storytellers are the descendants of an immense and ancient community of holy people, troubadours, bards, griots, cantadoras, cantors, traveling poets, bums, hags, and crazy people.
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
I've always thought of the book as a visual art form, and it should represent a single artistic idea, which it does if you write your own material.
My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage - they're just not stages you're allowed to see.
I am like a caricature of myself, and I like that. It is like a mask. And for me the Carnival of Venice lasts all year long.
Strange, I feel as if up to now I had written no more than a few notes.
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