#possessions

Culture and possessions, there is the bourgeoisie for you. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#culture #possessions #you

Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave? ↗

— Roman Payne

#carpenter #courage #esteem #genius #happiness

I just acquired a choir. I bought it for a song.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#buy #choir #consumption #deal #funny

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

How good something is should never be determined by its cost, designer, origin, or its perceived value by others. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#materialism #perception #quality #value #design

Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen. ↗

— Mort Sahl

#deserve #everything #feel #liberals #possessions

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#anxiety #desire #happiness #materialism #possessions

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

Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for. ↗

— Laura Lippman

#life #need #possessions #regret #wanting

The world is already yours - why try to conquer it? ↗

— Rasheed Ogunlaru

#acceptance #appreciation #conquer #consciousness #contentment