
“Many first possess wealth, and are then possessed by it.”
Source: Rhythmen und Runen (1944), p. 253
III, 1445-49
Jewels of Remembrance (1996)
Context: If an ant seeks the rank of Solomon,
don't smile contemptuously upon its quest.
Everything you possess of skill, and wealth and handicraft,
wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest?
“Many first possess wealth, and are then possessed by it.”
Source: Rhythmen und Runen (1944), p. 253
“For you who no longer possess it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion.”
History and Utopia (1960)
“First thought: It was a dream
Second thought: No it wasn't
Third thought: Crap”
Source: Twisted
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 171
“It wasn't that I had to be first in everything, but I should have been number one.”
Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 72
“Не does not possess wealth that allows it to possess him.”
“The lust of lucre has so totally seized upon mankind, that their wealth seems rather to possess them, than they to possess their wealth.”
Ea invasit homines habendi cupido, ut possideri magis quam possidere videantur.
Letter 30, 4.
Letters, Book IX
“The first quest or the first love is also the last. The second isn’t.”
#427
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Context: Do not imagine that it is less an accident by which you find yourself master of the wealth which you possess, than that by which this man found himself king.