“What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost
“What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IX, The Future Of Liberalism, p. 117.
William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy
Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VII, Theory of Capital, p. 198.
“What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 202
“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
Variant: We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.
“The more we possess the less we have.”
Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian
All Will be Well (2004)
Variant: The more we own the less we have.
Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) writer and salonist
In "My Country 'tis of Thee", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)
Context: I am beginning to have a healthy dread of possessions, be it of a country, a house, a being or even an idea. If we are bothered by possessions we cannot really live either from without or from within; we are the possession of our possessions. All wars and most loves come from the possessive instinct. Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men: that you may belong to everything and everything be yours inclusive of yourself.
Could we, and we can, have the vital necessities for all, we should do away with this cry of class and begin to differentiate between individuals.
Individual superiority can alone feed the soul and give back through some materialisation of itself this individualised wealth of being.