#possessions

The possessions of the rich are stolen property. ↗

— Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

#property #rich #stolen

Already, in the last few decades, you have realized the utter futility of of encumbering yourselves with superfluous possessions that have no useful virtue, but which, for various sentimental reasons, you continue to hoard, thus lessening your life's efficiency by using for it time and attention that should have been applied to the practical work of life's accomplishments. (The Miracle of the Lily - 1928) ↗

— Clare Winger Harris

#material-possessions #materialism #possessions #uselessness #wasted-time

Technologies of easy travel "give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man’s inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere,—in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home? ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#possessions #technology #travel #beauty

We are not the sum of our possessions. ↗

— George H. W. Bush

#possessions #sum

Of all our possessions, wisdom alone is imortal. ↗

— Isocrates

#our #possessions #wisdom

I grew with it, and I used to go to see the monks, who had no possessions, even more extreme than my mother. ↗

— Satish Kumar

#extreme #go #grew #had #i

There was a period when I believed stuff meant something. I thought that if you had matching side chairs and a sofa that harmonized and some beautiful lamps to light them you would have a home, that elegance signaled happiness. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#stuff #things #beauty

The richness of the world, all artificial pleasures, have the taste of sickness and give off a smell of death in the face of certain spiritual possessions. ↗

— Georges Rouault

#certain #death #face #give #off

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#else #freely #living #more #more than anything

I like to walk about among 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

#adorn #among #any #away #beautiful