#possession

Perhaps a sense of possessing needs to come to come before a sense of genuine sharing. ↗

— Stephen R. Covey

#sharing #change

You could not spend your entire span of life in thrall to the code of stuff. There was no code of stuff. Stuff was just stuff. You couldn't live by it or for it. ↗

— John Lanchester

#life #material-possessions #stuff #life

My couch is my deathbed, and I won’t let my life get repossessed. ↗

— Bauvard

#death #funny #humor #life #repossession

He had been violently confused by her real presence in the opposite inaccessible corner. For months he had been possessed by the imagination of her. She had been distant and closed away, a princess in a tower, and his imagination’s work had been all to make her present, all of her, to his mind and senses, the quickness of her and the mystery, the whiteness of her, which was part of her extreme magnetism, and the green look of those piercing or occluded eyes. Her presence had been unimaginable, or more strictly, only to be imagined. Yet here she was, and he was engaged in observing the ways in which she resembled, or differed from, the woman he dreamed, or reached for in sleep, or would fight for. ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#distance #imagination #love #lust #possession

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. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#possessions #readers #reading #things #life

The greatest possession is self-possession. ↗

— Ethel Watts Mumford

#possession

The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth. ↗

— Frederick Law Olmsted

#arbitrary #arbitrary power #destroy #humane #irresistibly

Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners as yet. ↗

— Vladimir Putin

#data #destruction #does #existence #information

In the first place, when there is a policy of intentional aggression, inspired by a desire to get possession of the territory or the trade of another country, right or wrong, a pretext is always sought. ↗

— Elihu Root

#always #another #country #desire #first

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace. ↗

— Carlos Santana

#heart #instrument #most #most powerful #open