
“What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.”
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.”
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 208
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IX, The Future Of Liberalism, p. 117.
“What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 202
“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
Variant: We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.
“The more we possess the less we have.”
All Will be Well (2004)
Variant: The more we own the less we have.
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.