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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #materialism
During those days Fingerbone was strangely transformed. If one should be shown odd fragments arranged on a silver tray and be told, "That is a splinter from the True Cross, and that is a nail paring dropped by Barabbas, and that is a bit of lint from under the bed where Pilate's wife dreamed her dream," the very ordinariness of the things would recommend them. Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves, and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on. ↗
Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium. Few things about the strategy of contemporary apologists are more repellent than their frequent recourse to spurious alternatives. The lesser lights inform us that the alternative to Christianity is materialism, thus showing how little they have read, while the greater lights talk as if the alternative were bound to be a shallow and inane optimism. I don't believe that man will turn this earth into a bed of roses either with the aid of God or without it. Nor does life among the roses strike me as a dream from which one would not care to wake up after a very short time. ↗
The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality. ↗
#possessions #readers #reading #things #life
Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty. ↗
Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There's just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs. ↗
And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number. ↗
Enttäuschung und Frustration werden [...] alle erleben, die sich wie im Märchen danach sehnen, Glück in einem Schlaraffenland zu finden ... Nur, dass unser Schlaraffenland nicht ein großer Berg von süßem Brei ist ... wir haben andere Fantasien und Bilder von Fülle und Erfülltheit in einem imaginären Schlaraffenland, das nur eben unglücklicherweise niemals dort ist, wo wir tatsächlich leben. Vielmehr leben wir mit der Hoffnung auf ein Glück, das uns das Schicksal irgenwann einmal gewähren müsse. [...] So können wir das Schlaraffenland je nach unserer eigenen Fasson ausgestalten - und wir tun es. Privat und auch gesellschaftlich. Doch sobald wir anfangen, uns mit diesem Glücksmodell anzufreunden, und gespannt darauf warten, wie im Lotto das große Los zu ziehen, werden wir auf einem Weg sein, wo das Glück ganz bestimmt nicht zu uns findet! Wir bleiben hungrig und ungesättigt. Denn geheimnisvollerweise ist das Glück dort, wo wir Bezogenheit leben - selbst in dem unspektatulärsten Tun des Alltags. ↗
