We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although a poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social... conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour. Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer. Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't... seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves ... as supplicants admitted to a shrine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world,... Than these poor compounds that thou mayest not sell. I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, i...nvesting and prospering in the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in cur...ious possibilities. I mean the advertisement.... It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Marrying a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it hom...e, but it doesn't always go with everything else in the house.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Panurge] spent everything in a thousand little banquets and joyous feasts open to all comers, particularly jolly companions, youn...g lasses, and delightful wenches, and in clearing his lands, burning the big logs to sell the ashes, taking money in advance, buying dear, selling cheap, and eating his wheat in the blade.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken... for the appropriation of their contents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The connection between ad and sale, so direct in classified ads, or between ad and consumer contact, reasonably direct in the Janu...ary white sale ad, is very remote in the national consumer-goods ad. It is indirect in both space and time. The commercial for Coca-Cola or Alka Seltzer does not say how the customer can buy the advertised product; it does not typically announce a phone number to call or a place to shop. It takes for granted the consumer's shopping skills and it assumes the successful distribution of the product to retail stores. In time, it does not presume a quick response of customers to its efforts. It does not presume that the consumers it wants to reach will see any given showing of the ad or, seeing it, quickly respond by buying. It is a general reminder or reinforcer, not an urgent appeal to go out and buy. What the ad says or pictures, then, is obliged to be relatively placeless and relatively timeless. National consumer-goods advertising is highly abstracted and self-contained.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »