“: You can desire something only if you wish to possess it in the end. Therefore, love is a possession!”

The Way to Love (1995)
Context: To find the kingdom is the easiest thing in the world but also the most difficult. Easy because it is all around you and within you, and all you have to do is reach out and take possession of it. Difficult because if you wish to possess the kingdom you may possess nothing else. That is, you must drop all inward leaning on any person or thing, withdrawing from them forever the power to thrill you, or excite you, or to give you a feeling of security or well-being. For this, you first need to see with unflinching clarity this simple and shattering truth: Contrary to what your culture and religion have taught you, nothing, but absolutely nothing can make you happy. The moment you see that, you will stop moving from one job to another, one friend to another, one place, one spiritual technique, one guru to another. None of these things can give you a single minute of happiness. They can only offer you a temporary thrill, a pleasure that initially grows in intesity, then turns into pain if you lose them and into boredom if you keep them.

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

La vérité ne se possède pas, elle se cherche.
[Albert Jacquard, Petite philosophie à l'usage des non-philosophes, Quebec Livres, 1997, 2920596179].

Source: The Black Room (1975), p. 108

Book 2, Chapter 2 “In Which Old Acquaintances Are Resumed and New Agreements Reached” (p. 226)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

Source: Epigrams, p. 352