Possessions Quotes

Most popular possessions quotes

We do not possess our home, our children, or even our own body. They are only given to us for a short while to treat with care and respect. - Gautama Buddha quote.
We do not possess our home, our children, or even our own body. They are only given to us for a short while to treat with care and respect.
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. - Henry Miller quote.
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.

inner peace

I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty. - George Santayana quote.
I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

wealth things

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

pursuit charm

The creative impulses of men are always at war with their possessive impulses.

creativity

Expectation...quickens desire, while possession deadens it. - Hannah More quote.
Expectation...quickens desire, while possession deadens it.

expectation

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss. - Leonardo da Vinci quote.
He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

loss

Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. - Yogananda quote.
Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake.
Yogananda The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

inner peace

When I behold what pleasure is pursuit,
What life, what glorious eagerness it is,
Then mark how full possession falls from this,
How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit. - Thomas Bailey Aldrich quote.
When I behold what pleasure is pursuit,
What life, what glorious eagerness it is,
Then mark how full possession falls from this,
How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit.

pursuit

Possessions are mere transient effects that come when they are required, and after their purpose has been served, pass away. - James Allen quote.
Possessions are mere transient effects that come when they are required, and after their purpose has been served, pass away.
People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging. - Sherwood Anderson quote.
People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging.
If one's reputation is a possession, then of all my possessions, my reputation means most to me.  Nothing comes even close to it in importance. - Arthur Ashe quote.
If one's reputation is a possession, then of all my possessions, my reputation means most to me.  Nothing comes even close to it in importance.

reputation

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men? - Natalie Clifford Barney quote.
Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men?
Possessions delude the human heart into believing that they provide security and a worry-free existence, but in truth they are the very cause of worry. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote.
Possessions delude the human heart into believing that they provide security and a worry-free existence, but in truth they are the very cause of worry.
A man that simply loads himself down with possessions of which he has no actual need, when he dies slips out of them—as a little insect might slip out of some parasite shell into which it has ensconced itself—into the grave, and is forgotten.
How many men you see in this world who have become merely the pack-horses of their own possessions; who go through life the veriest slaves to that which they toil for, wasting their health and strength, and, it may be, their higher powers—even  their consciences and souls—in the mere effort to accumulate!
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up. - Dorothy Day quote.
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

things

Possessions possess.
Most people seek after what they do not possess and are thus enslaved by the very things they want to acquire. - Anwar Sadat quote.
Most people seek after what they do not possess and are thus enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.

things

Complete possession is proved only by giving. - André Gide quote.
Complete possession is proved only by giving.
André Gide Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
Possessions, for the terminally frightened, bring peace of mind. - Cynthia Heimel quote.
Possessions, for the terminally frightened, bring peace of mind.
It is a curious fact that personal possessions take on fictitious values and exceptional charms when the owner, no matter how generous, is faced with giving them away or even selling them (which usually amounts to the same thing).
Marjorie Hillis Orchids on Your Budget: Live Smartly on What You Have
Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when remembered. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. quote.
Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when remembered.
In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions. - Max Lerner quote.
In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession a duty. - John Davison Rockefeller Jr. quote.
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession a duty.

rights responsibility

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness. - John Ruskin quote.
Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. - Bertrand Russell quote.
It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions. - George Santayana quote.
Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.
People who know their worth can live austerely; it's the people nagged by the gnawing knowledge of their own cheapness who have that eternal necessity for submerging themselves in what they feel is superlative in material things, as if fine possessions could make them fine.
False values begin with the worship of things. - Susan Sontag quote.
False values begin with the worship of things.

worship things

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions. - Frank Lloyd Wright quote.
Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.
Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture: Selected Writings, 1894–1940

wealth

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance. - Gautama Buddha quote.
To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.

wealth detachment

Those who own much have much to fear. - Rabindranath Tagore quote.
Those who own much have much to fear.

wealth