Topic

Possession

Possession and the meaning we attach to what we own is one of the recurring preoccupations of moral philosophy and practical wisdom alike. The quotes here examine the relationship between human beings and their things — and, more importantly, between human beings and their attachment to their things. The oldest wisdom traditions are nearly unanimous: excessive attachment to possessions is a reliable source of anxiety, because what can be gained can be lost, and the fear of loss shadows every gain. But these reflections resist simple asceticism — they do not argue that owning nothing is the answer, only that owning things should not own us. The line between using possessions and being possessed by them runs through virtually every quote here. Several voices are particularly incisive on how acquisition substitutes for other satisfactions; others focus on the liberation that comes from holding things lightly. Whether you are considering a significant purchase, rethinking consumption, or just curious about your own relationship to stuff, this collection rewards careful reading.

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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife

Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)

If you own something you cannot give away, then you don't own it, it owns you.

The agitator seizes the world. The artist is seized by it

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

No one possesses unalloyed pleasure; there is some anxiety mingled with the joy

He does not possess wealth, it possesses him.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Are there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?

It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of truth

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature; and the greatest of these, at least the most constant and always at hand, is nature