Quotes about possession
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“Admiral Smyth says that no family is quite civilized unless it possesses a copy of some encyclopaedia and a telescope.”

William Henry Smyth (1788–1865) English naval officer and hydrographer

Quoted by Maria Mitchell http://pinetreeweb.com/bp-admiral.htm

Family

“In the history of thought… objectivity was sometimes on the side of one man against the rest of humankind. For example, in Copernicus' time the objective astronomical reality existed only for him, while hundreds of millions of people were mistaken in this regard… Copernicus alone embraced the accumulated astronomical experience up to that time in its entirety and was able to organize it harmoniously with the methods which corresponded to the level achieved by the collective efforts of humankind; other people possessed only parts and fragments of this experience, so that it remained unorganized in all its fullness.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Alexander Bogdanov, cited in: Kenneth M. Stokes. Paradigm Lost: A Cultural and Systems Theoretical Critique of Political Economy. p. 1995

People, History, Reality, Effort

“From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties. The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 10
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Nature

“Among the new bibliographers, Sr. Epifanio de los Santos, a young scholar with great culture, stood at the head; he possessed more than 2,000 titles, some of them were very rare.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

As quoted by Wenceslao Retana in Gregorio F. Zaide's "Epifanio de los Santos, his collection and library" (The Tribune Magazine. p. 4).
BALIW

“Evolution in… cases has clearly been a very slow and almost (if not quite) continuous process, exactly as Darwin had predicted.
We must remember, however, that the organisms studied in this way are far from representative. They are in general the most successful members of animal associations living in very constant marine or lacustrine environments. We have not got similar data for land species… Nor do we possess them for the rarer forms. We shall see… that perhaps dominant species in a uniform environment are the least likely to undergo sudden change to a new type.”

J. B. S. Haldane book The Causes of Evolution

Introduction, p. 22.
The Causes of Evolution (1932)

Way, Study, Change, Success

“All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents; and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book VII, sec. 15.
Naturalis Historia

Men, Water

“Our strongest gifts are usually those we are barely aware of possessing. They are a part of our God-given nature, with us from the moment we drew first breath, and we are no more conscious of having them than we are of breathing.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999), p. 52

God, Nature, Parting

“It reminds us that a man driven to desire to possess a certain female is a highly purposive individual. We have already noted that evolution tends to mark time when individuals have no reason to evolve. The same applies to individuals; they may be talented and intelligent, and yet waste their lives because they somehow lack the motivation to make use of these faculties. The best piece of luck that can befall any individual is to have a strong sense of purpose.”

Colin Wilson book From Atlantis to the Sphinx

Source: From Atlantis to the Sphinx (1996), p. 225

Intelligence, Motivation, Sense, Strong

“[The sensate body possesses] an art of interrogating the sensible according to its own wishes, an inspired exegesis”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) French phenomenological philosopher

The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis (Evanston: 1968), p. 135

Art

“It is clear that man has functioned in a multitude of states of consciousness and that different cultures have varied enormously in recognition and utilization of, and attitudes toward, ASC's. Many "primitive" peoples, for example, believe that almost every normal adult has the possibility to go into a trance state and be possessed by a god; the adult who cannot do this is a psychological cripple. How deficient Americans would seem to a person from such a culture. In many Eastern civilizations, elaborate techniques have been developed for inducing and utilizing ASC's, such as Yoga and Zen systems. In some cases vocabularies have been developed for talking about these ASC's more adequately. Fredrick Spiegelberg, the noted Indian scholar, pointed out that Sanskrit has about 20 nouns which we translate into "consciousness" or "mind" because we do not have the vocabulary to specify the different shades of meaning in these words.”

Charles Tart (1937) American spiritual writer

Foreword to Altered States of Consciousness (1969)

God, People, Personality

“Our gathering here today is in testimony of supreme obligation to those who have given most to make and preserve the Nation. They established it upon the dual system of State government and Federal Government, each supreme in its own sphere. But they left to the States the main powers and functions of determining the form and course of society. We have demonstrated in the time of war that under the Constitution we possess an indestructible Union. We must not fail to demonstrate in the time of peace that we are likewise determined to possess and maintain indestructible States. This policy can be greatly advanced by individual observance of the law. It can be strongly supplemented by a vigorous enforcement of the law. The war which established Memorial Day had for its main purpose the enforcement of the Constitution. The peace which followed that war rests upon the universal observance of the Constitution. This Union can only be preserved, the States can only be maintained, under a reign of national, local, and moral law, under the Constitution established by Washington, under the peace provided by Lincoln.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

War, Peace, Law, Universe

“By This experience… melts the man utterly; he is no longer master of his joy. Such possession produces intoxication, the state of the spirit in which its bliss transcends the uttermost boundsIf every earthly pleasure were melted into a single experience and bestowed upon one man, it would be as nothing when measured by the joy of which I writeSometimes the ecstasy pours forth in song, sometimes in tears: at one moment it finds expression in movement, at others in the intense stillness of burning, voiceless feeling By the way of perfect likeness and fullest union.
Every good deed, however small, if it be directed to God by simplicity of intention, increases in us the Divine likeness,
and deepens in us the flow of eternal life…
Entering into and transcending itself, traversing all worlds of being, surpassing all creatures, the soul meets God in its own depths…
The whole life of the spirit and its activity consists solely in the Divine likeness and this simplicity of intention;
and the final peace abides on the heights in simplicity also, in simplicity All the divine means and all conditions, and all living images which are reflected in the mirror of truth, lapse in the onefold and ineffable waylessness beyond reason of essence.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

An Anthology of Mysticism and Philosophy

Life, God, Pleasure, Truth

“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 (1871–1958) French painter

Quotes, 1940-1950, Stella Vespertina. (1947)

Death, Pleasure, World

“[Ike] was presiding over a situation in which history was turning into demography, in which judgment—and Ike possessed judgment with a capital J—was being drained out of every powerful situation, and marketing considerations were being pumped in.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

History

“The Communist dream of a great new "one world" of the future is based on the belief that a regime of violence and coercion under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would permit the establishment of a society which would produce a new order of men who would acquire the habit of observing what Lenin called the "simple fundamental rules of every-day social life in common." The fallacy of this hope lies in Communism's perverted interpretation of human behavior. It assumes, on the basis of Dialectical Materialism, that if you change things outside of a man this automatically compels a change on the inside of the man. The inter-relation between environment on the outside and the internal make-up of man is not to be disputed, but environment only conditions man, it does not change his very nature. For example, just as men will always laugh, eat, propagate, gravitate into groups and explore the unknown, so likewise they will always enjoy the pleasure of possessing things (which alone gives pleasure to sharing); they will always possess the desire for individual expression or self-determination, the ambition to improve their circumstances and the motive to excel above others. These qualities are inherent in each generation and cannot be legislated away nor ignored.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Life, Men, Pleasure, World

“My whole concept of economics is based on the idea that we have to explain how prices operate as signals, telling people what they ought to do in particular circumstances. The approach to this problem has been blocked by a cost or labor theory of value, which assumes that prices are determined by the technical conditions of production only. The important question is to explain how the interaction of a great number of people, each possessing only limited knowledge, will bring about an order that could only be achieved by deliberate direction taken by somebody who has the combined knowledge of all these individuals. However, central planning cannot take direct account of particular circumstances of time and place. Additionally, every individual has important bits of information which cannot possibly be conveyed to a central authority in statistical form. In a system in which the knowledge of relevant data is dispersed among millions of agents, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different individuals.
Given this context, it is intellectually not satisfactory to attempt to establish causal relations between aggregates or averages in the manner in which the discipline of macroeconomics has attempted to do. Individuals do not make decisions on the basis of partial knowledge of magnitudes such as the total amount of production, or the total quantity of money. Aggregative theorizing leads nowhere.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1960s–1970s, A Conversation with Professor Friedrich A. Hayek (1979)

Money, People, Idea, Question

“If I had married a woman intelligent enough to guide me, to rule me without my feeling that I was ruled, I should have taken good care of my money, I should have had children, and I should not be, as now I am, alone in the world and possessing nothing.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 4, p. 94
Referenced

Money, Children, World, Feeling

“For tho' it is certainly more laudable, and a thing of greater moment, to be generous, constant, and magnanimous, than merely to be polite and well bred; yet we find, from daily experience, that sweetness of manners, a genteel carriage, and, polite address are frequently of more advantage to those who are so happy as to be possessed of them, than any greatness of soul or brightness of parts are to those who are adorned with those more shining talents. For those slighter accomplishments are of more frequent, or rather of constant and daily use on every occasion; as we are under a necessity of conversing daily with other people: Whereas justice, fortitude, and those other more exalted virtues, are of much less frequent occurrence. For neither is a generous or a brave man obliged to exhibit those virtues, every hour of the day (which indeed would be impossible,) neither has a wise man, or a man of great genius, an opportunity of displaying those extraordinary talents, but very rarely. As much therefore as those greater qualities exceed those more trifling accomplishments in weight and importance; so much the latter exceed the former in number and more frequent use.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 3

Happiness, People, Justice, Soul

“You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semitropical nights will reek of romance you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Women, Boy, Sun, Night

“It is not only the gulf between religions and cultures that plaques us today. There is the widening gulf between the rich and the poor, the world of plenty and the world of famine. We may think we can make a good patch work or mechanical arrangement to ameliorate such a division. But this I feel is an illusion. There is no economic solution to the ills of the world until the arts of originality - arts that are driven by mysterious strangeness - open the partialities and bias of tradition in ways that address the very core of our pre-possessions.”

Wilson Harris (1921–2018) Guyanese writer

pg. 251.
The Unfinished Genesis of the Imagination (1999)

World, Religion, Art, Way

“I wish it was in my power to confirm General Sullivan's prediction of the 17th, but I cannot flatter my self with such an agreeable issue. I am sensible he is in common very sanguine, but his expectations were not ill-founded in the present case. We had every reason to hope for success, from our numbers, and from the enemy's fears. Indeed, General Pigot was heard to say, the garrison must fall, unless they were speedily relieved by a British fleet. *If we could have made a landing upon the south part of the town, two days would have put us in complete possession of it. Nothing was wanting to effect this, but the cooperation of the fleet and French forces. The disappointment is vexatious and truly mortifying. The garrison was so important, and the reduction so certain, that I cannot with patience think of the event. The French ship that was missing has got into Boston. The rest of the fleet have not got there yet, or at least we have no accounts of their arrival.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Fear, Hope, Disappointment, Thinking

“The people who come to watch us play, who love the team and regard it as part of their lives, would never appreciate Liverpool having a huge balance in the bank. They want every asset we possess to be wearing a red shirt.”

Kenny Dalglish (1951) Scottish association football player and manager

Source http://imdb.com/name/nm0197910/bio

Love, People, Parting

“Were I to remove the veil, all would recognize Me as their Best Beloved, and no one would deny Me. Let not this assertion astound Your Majesty; inasmuch as a true believer in the unity of God who keepeth his eyes directed towards Him alone, will regard aught else but Him as utter nothingness. I swear by God! I seek no earthly goods from thee, be it as much as a mustard seed. Indeed, to possess anything of this world or of the next would, in My estimation, be tantamount to open blasphemy. For it ill beseemeth the believer in the unity of God to turn his gaze to aught else, much less to hold it in his possession. I know of a certainty that since I have God, the Ever-Living, the Adored One, I am the possessor of all things, visible and invisible…”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Epistle to Muhammad Sháh

God, World

“By such action we have not only discharged an obligation to humanity, but have likewise profited in our trade relations and established a community of interests which can not but be an added security for the maintenance of peace. In so far as we can confirm other people in the possession of profitable industry, without injuring ourselves, we shall have removed from them that economic pressure productive of those dissensions, discords, and hostilities which are a fruitful source of war.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Hostility, War, People, Peace

“Perhaps these experiences of cognitive man are lacking in the emotional dynamic and turbulent passion of aesthetic man; perhaps these experiences are devoid of flashy and externally impressive bursts of ecstasy or stychic enthusiasm. However, they are possessed of a profound depth and a clear penetrating vision. They do not flourish and then wither away like experiences that are only based on a vague, obscure moment of psychic upheaval.”

Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) American theologian

Source: Halakhic Man (1983), p. 84

Passion

“The opinion which you give us the contribution which can be derived from women is sensible and judicious. We will benefit. We all know the influence which this interesting sex can possess, which cannot bear more indifferently than we the yoke of tyranny. And which is endowed with less courage, when it is a question of contriving to break it.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

L'avis que tu nous donnes sur la partie qu'on peut en tirer des femmes est sensé et judicieux; nous en profiterons. Nous connaissons toutes l'influences que peut avoir ce sexe intéressant qui ne supporte pas plus indifféremment que nous le joug de la tyrannie; et qui n'est doué d'un moindre courage, lorsqu'il s'agit de concourir à le briser.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 44, 27082 2892-7]
On women

Women, Sex, Courage, Question

“Self-possession was the strongest part of Harvard College, which certainly taught men to stand alone, so that nothing seemed stranger to its graduates than the paroxysms of terror before the public which often overcame the graduates of European universities.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men, Universe, Parting

“For the image possesses qualities which, under certain circumstances, can make it much more interesting than the object which inspired it. The portrait of a commonplace person can astound us with an air of distinction, reminding us that the best portrait is that which resembles the painter, not the model.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Personality

“The use of riches is better than their possession.”

Fernando de Rojas La Celestina

Act II.
La Celestina (1499)

“Kait was immediately bored. Children Kaitlin’s age possess no context; one video event is much like another.”

Robert Charles Wilson book The Chronoliths

Source: The Chronoliths (2001), Chapter 3 (p. 32)

Children, Age

“The IWW's affirm as a fundamental principle that the creators of wealth are entitled to all they create. Thus they find themselves pitted against the whole profit-making system. They declare that there can be no compromise so long as the majority of the working class lives in want while the master class lives in luxury. They insist that there can be no peace until the workers organize as a class, take possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of production and distribution and abolish the wage system. In other words, the workers in their collectivity must own and operate all the essential industrial institutions and secure to each laborer the full value of his product.
It is for these principles, this declaration of class solidarity, that the IWWs are being persecuted, beaten, imprisoned, murdered. If the capitalist class had the sense it is reputed to have, it would know that violence is the worst weapon that can be used against men who have nothing to lose and the world to gain.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

What is the IWW? (1918)

Men, World, Peace, Sense

“Julia Hayden, the colored school teacher, one of the latest victims of the White man's League, was only seventeen years of age. She was the daughter of respectable parents in Maury County, Tennessee, and had been carefully educated at the Central College, Nashville, a favorite place for the instruction of youth of both sexes of her race. She is said to have possessed unusual personal attractions as well as intelligence. Under the reign of slavery as it is defined and upheld by Davis and Toombs, Julia Hayden would probably have been taken from her parents and sent in a slave coffle to New Orleans to be sold on its auction block. But emancipation had prepared for her a different and less dreadful fate. With that strong desire for mental cultivation which marked the colored race since their freedom, in all circumstances where there is an opportunity left them for its exhibition, the young girl had so improved herself as to become capable of teaching others. She went to Western Tennessee and took charge of a school. Three days after her arrival at Hartsville, at night, two white men, armed with their guns, appeared at the house where she was staying, and demanded the school teacher. She fled, alarmed, to the room of the mistress of the house. The White Leaguers pursued. They fired their guns I through the floor of the room and the young girl fell dead within. Her murderers escaped.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

"Louisiana and the Rule of Terror" http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=EL18741010.2.9#, The Elevator (10 October 1874), Volume 10, Number 26.

Men, Fate, Youth, Age

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

Luke the Evangelist one of the four evangelists

2:44-45 NIV
Acts of the Apostles

“Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 14 (30 November 1787) Full text at Wikisource http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers/No._14. This quotation was used on the official invitations to the 1985 presidential inaugural of President Ronald Reagan. 1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Happiness, People, World, Knowledge

“Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.”

Joan Didion book Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"The Howard Hughes Underground," http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=7&sid=e10e8a49-3c75-4cb4-8d00-c35bb5bdf29a@sessionmgr4001 The Saturday Evening Post (23 August 1967) "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38," http://books.google.com/books?id=_pgrUFe9Fh8C&q=%22Americans+are+uneasy+with+their+possessions+guilty+about+power+all+of+which+is+difficult+for+Europeans+to+perceive+because+they+are+themselves+so+truly+materialistic+so+versed+in+the+uses+of+power%22&pg=PA71#v=onepage Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

“I find, by your Excellency's letter to General Sullivan, that you expect the enemy are going to evacuate New York, and that it is probable they are coming eastward. I can hardly think they mean to make an attempt upon Boston, notwithstanding the object is important; and, unless they attack Boston, there is no other object worthy their attention in New England. I am rather inclined to think they mean to leave the United States altogether. What they hold here now, they hold at a great risk and expense. But, suppose they actually intend to quit the Continent, they will endeavour to mislead our attention, and that of our allies, until they can get clear of the coast. The Admiral is fortifying for the security of his fleet; but I am told his batteries are all open in the rear, which will be but a poor security against a land force. General Heath thinks there ought to be some Continental troops sent here : but the Council will not turn out the militia; they are so confident the enemy are not coming here. If your Excellency thinks the enemy really design an attack upon Boston, it may not be useless for you to write your opinion to the Council Board, for I suspect they think the General here has taken the alarm without sufficient reasons. The fortifications round this place are very incomplete, and little or nothing doing upon them. I have given General Heath my opinion what parts to take possession of, if the enemy should attempt the place before the Continental army gets up. From four to five hundred troops have arrived at Halifax; their collective strength will make a formidable army.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (September 1778)

Confidence, Thinking, Parting

“Caution and conservatism are expected of old age; but when the young men of a nation are possessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the noise and strife caused by the new applications of the truth, Heaven save the land! Its funeral bell has already rung.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Notes from Plymouth Pulpit (1859)

Men, Truth, Age

“I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite — only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it — for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Letter to Harrison Gray Otis Blake (6&7 December 1856), as published in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (1958), p. 444; a line within this has been most quoted since 1865 in the form "I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it."

Thinking, Sense, Parting, Wealth

“This chapter [of the destruction of temples], however, though significant, was only a part of the Muslim behaviour-pattern as recorded by Muslim historians of medieval India. The other parts were:
1) mass slaughter of people not only during war but also after the armies of Islam had emerged victorious;
2) capture of large numbers of non-combatant men, women and children as booty and their sale as slaves all over the Islamic world;
3) forcible conversion to Islam of people who were in no position to resist;
4) reduction to the status of zimmis or non-citizens of all those who could not be converted and imposition of inhuman disabilities on them;
5) emasculation of the zimmis by preventing them from possessing arms;
6) impoverishment of the zimmis through heavy discriminatory taxes and misappropriation of a major part of what the peasants produced;
7) ruination of the native and national culture of the zimmis by suppressing and holding in contempt all its institutions and expressions.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Women, Men, War, Children

“We usually assume that when people steal things, they steal because they want them. They may want them because they can eat them, wear them or otherwise use them; or because they can sell them; or even-if we are given to a psychoanalytic turn of mind because on some deep symbolic level they substitute or stand for something unconsciously desired but forbidden. All of these explanations have this in common, that they assume that the stealing is a means to an end, namely, the possession of some object of value, and that it is, in this sense, rational and utilitarian. However, the fact cannot be blinked-and this fact is of crucial importance in defining our problem-that much gang stealing has no such motivation at all.”

Albert K. Cohen (1918–2014) American criminologist

Source: Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang, 1955, pp. 24-32

People, Motivation, Problem, Sense

“The blacksmith, by main force, unclosed the infant's hand, and found within the palm a small heap of glittering fragments, whence the mystery of beauty had fled forever. …Owen Warland …looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Life, Beauty, Reality, Sense

“Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor for the moment; he did what as legislator he could, permanently to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man, of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone, not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legislation, especially that of Solon,(68) introduced this principle--diametrically opposed to the maxims of the earlier ordinances as to bankruptcy-- into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed. According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf of his creditor.(69) The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed a debtor, who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments, not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom by the cession of his property;(70) nevertheless for the really insolvent that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points, had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years; a direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally, when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights or could not be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent the right--on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based-- of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether it might suffice to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin a new financial existence, in which he could only be sued on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected in the liquidation, if he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Restriction on 'usury' or restrictions on the laws in relation to the collection of interest
Vol. 4, pt. 2, translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Fear, Law, Freedom, Help

“Suppose that a man found his person and his means of survival incessantly menaced […]Even though this man might be asked to surrender a very considerable portion of his time and of his labor to someone who takes it upon himself to guarantee the peaceful possession of his person and his goods, wouldn't it be to his advantage to conclude this bargain?Still, it would obviously be no less in his self-interest to procure his security at the lowest price possible.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 20-21

Peace, Time, Personality

“Like the intricately rational web of theology woven around the irrational mysteries of faith, the sober explanations of institutions for hoarding literary relics seem like elegant post-factum justifications for what is essentially a sense of sacred awe. An institution of learning seeks significant manuscripts because they possess qualities that scholarship cannot entirely reproduce — an authentic, holistic connection with the great writers of the past. It is not the intellectual content of the manuscript that is important but its material presence — ink spots, tobacco stains, pinworm holes, and foxing included.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Magical Value of Manuscripts," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ehop.htm The Hudson Review (Spring 1996); later published as an introduction to The Hand of the Poet: Poems and Papers in Manuscript, ed. Rodney Phillips (1997) Essays

Faith, Sense, Learning, Past

“The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher – in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician. Much, but not all, of this many-sidedness Marshall possessed. But chiefly his mixed training and divided nature furnished him with the most essential and fundamental of the economist's necessary gifts – he was conspicuously historian and mathematician, a dealer in the particular and the general, the temporal and the eternal, at the same time.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 170; as cited in: Donald Moggridge (2002), Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography, p. 424

Lie, Mood, Understanding, Nature

“Their [Athenians] history furnishes the classic example of the peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favourable. For the Athenians were not only brave and patriotic and capable of generous sacrifice, but they were the most religious of the Greeks. They venerated the constitution which had given them prosperity and equality and the pride of freedom…They tolerated considerable variety of opinion, and great license of speech…Thus they became the only people of antiquity that grew great by democratic institutions. But the possession of unlimited power, which corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding of monarchs exercised its demoralizing influence on the illustrious Democracy of Athens.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

People, Exercises, Democracy, History

“If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality. Of course, you can see that the Americans have kept their eyes peeled and they are carefully looking for even the slightest hint that technological advances are being made by an independent Islamic country. If an independent Islamic country is thinking about acquiring other kinds of weaponry, then they will do their utmost to prevent it from acquiring them. Well, that is something that almost the entire world is discussing right now.”

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1934–2017) Iranian politician, Shi'a cleric and Writer

"Rafsanjani's Qods Day speech (Jerusalem Day)" http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2001/011214-text.html, Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, in Persian, translated by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, original broadcast December 14, 2001] 2001

World, Thinking, Country

“Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, May 1, 2009, "Torture? No. Except …" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer050109.php3 at jewishworldreview.com. 2000s, 2009

Life, Guy, Evil, Time

“The seeking for truth is better than its loveless possession.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 182

Truth

“The duty and the right to express one's opinion freely may be meaningless—and on occasion even injurious to the best interests of the society—if those opinions are not based on sound thought, which, in its turn, presupposes the possession of sound knowledge.”

Muhammad Asad book The Principles of State and Government in Islam

Source: The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961), Chapter 5: The Citizens And The Government, p 86

Knowledge

“Included in this “almost nothing,” as a kind of geological afterthought of the last few million years, is the first development of self-conscious intelligence on this planet—an odd and unpredictable invention of a little twig on the mammalian evolutionary bush. Any definition of this uniqueness, embedded as it is in our possession of language, must involve our ability to frame the world as stories and to transmit these tales to others. If our propensity to grasp nature as story has distorted our perceptions, I shall accept this limit of mentality upon knowledge, for we receive in trade both the joys of literature and the core of our being.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Literary bias on the slippery slope", p. 252
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

World, Intelligence, Literature, Nature

“Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something. Only faith is sufficient. The Führer in Nuremberg said: 'Woe to him who does not believe!' He who does not believe has no soul. He is empty. He has no ideals. He has nothing to live for. He has no sunshine, no light, no joy in life. He is a poor, poor man. What is wealth? What are possessions? What does it all mean? Problems come despite them, only faith is left. Woe to him who does not believe!”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

Speech given on November 3, 1936. Quoted in Wir alle helfen dem Führer "Schicksal — ich glaube!" (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937), pages 103-114

Life, Faith, Soul, Understanding

“True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 17, The Brass Ring, IV

Love, Selfishness

“It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to… Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Thaxter (15 February 1778)

Education, Jealousy, Family, Sex

“As I study both the exoteric and the esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintain that human beings are endowed with Dharma-nature by birth. If this is the case, why did the Buddhas of all ages — undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment — find it necessary to seek enlightenment and engage in spiritual practice?”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

As quoted in Eihei Dogen, Mystical Realist (2004) by Hee-jin Kim

Age, School, Birth, Nature

“But someone is bound to question … by what right I regard as Ideological State Apparatuses, institutions which for the most part do not possess public status, but are quite simply private institutions. As a conscious Marxist, Gramsci already forestalled this objection in one sentence. The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law, and valid in the (subordinate) domains in which bourgeois law exercises its ‘authority’. The domain of the State escapes it because the latter is ‘above the law’: the State, which is the State of the ruling class, is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the precondition for any distinction between public and private. The same thing can be said from the starting-point of our State Ideological Apparatuses. It is unimportant whether the institutions in which they are realized are ‘public’ or ‘private’. What matters is how they function.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 97

Law, Exercises, Question, Parting

“The material called iron or steel I hold in high respect. What it can do in arriving at a form economically, no other material can do... What associations it possesses are those of this century: power, structure, movement, progress, suspension, destruction, brutality.”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

quote, early 1950's
Source: 1950s, from 'Abstract Expressionism' (1990), p. 41

Quotes

“Once a person acknowledges that they possess some form of privilege, they are more likely to accept the reality that they are not in any way objective about the form of marginalization in question”

Julia Serano (1967) transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans-bi activist, and biologist

Leftist Critiques of Identity Politics (2018)

Way, Question, Reality, Personality

“Although one can sympathize with lay persons trying to break their attachment to a diet featuring meat, it is something else again to extend those sympathies to monks, priests, and teachers. What business have these latter to propound the Dharma when they possess neither the perception nor compassion to see the connection between meat eating and the killing of harmless animals, and when they lack the self-discipline to put Buddhist compassion before the pleasures of their palates? What right have they to wear the Buddha's robes when they won't or can't honor the bodhisattvic vows they recite daily to liberate all beings?”

Philip Kapleau (1912–2004) American Zen Buddhist monk

Source: To Cherish All Life (1981), p. 74

Pleasure, Business, Teachers, Animals

“A pin is worth fighting for if a principle is involved. The first war with Great Britain was for principle and it gave us our independence and national existence. The war of 1812 was for principle and gave us our maritime independence. The war with Mexico was for principle and gave us the subjugated possessions on our whole Pacific coast. The war for the Union was for principle and resulted in the restoration of the authority of the constitution and gave us a people, north and south, animated by a military spirit which will be equal to every possible requirement.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Interview with the Washington, D.C. Evening Star (12 March 1889)
1890s

War, People, Animals, Fight

“We must recognise that we have a great treasure to guard; that the inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries; that there is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause. Are we taking every measure within our power to defend that cause?”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Théâtre des Ambassadeurs, Paris, 24 September 1936, "Thank God For the French Army" Quoted in Never Give In!: Winston Churchill's Speeches https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bcKOAQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA111&ots=Xh9ffWodWa&dq=churchill%20better%20men%20than%20we%20have%20not%20died%20on%20the%20scaffold%20or%20the%20battlefield&pg=PA110#v=onepage&q&f=false (2013), p. 111. ISBN 9781472520852 The 1930s

Men

“God bestows His Compassion upon all beings, always, and His Love and His Way is to bring lives together by pressing them together. God possesses a Love which spreads and intermingles with all lives. In the same way, among human beings there is also such a true Love, such a true, real feeling. When that Love is operating, when it is working, then it is God's work to take it and put it in its appropriate place. That is the Form of Love. That Love, that Divine Love, has brought us together as one.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Truth & Light: Brief Explanations (1974)

Love, God, Way, Feeling

“He was not a friend to Paine's doctrines, but he was not to be deterred by a name from acknowledging that he considered the rights of man as the foundation of every government, and those who stood out against those rights as conspirators against the people. The dearest right of Englishmen was to the possession of their constitution, while it was maintained on its true principles; but if it was abused, the effect must infallibly be to inflame men's minds, and ministers alone would be responsible for the consequences which might ensue. If the people complained of grievances, let those grievances be removed, and their discontents would cease. If the people were put in possession of their rights, there would be no longer any fear of internal or foreign danger…The retreat of the duke of Brunswick, which he, along with his right hon. friend, and every friend of freedom, considered as matter of joy and exultation, had indeed thrown them into confusion.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (12 December 1792), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXX (London: 1817), pp. 41-42.
1790s

Men, Pain, People, Fear

“Life possesses an amazing array of profoundly sad faces.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(This Mother's Son, p. 10).
Book Sources, The American Poet Who Went Home Again (2008)

Life, Sadness

“For a time our efforts seem to create, and to adorn, and to perfect, until we forget our origin and destination, substituting self for that divine hand which alone can unite the elements of worlds as they float in gasses, equally from His mysterious laboratory, and scatter them again into thin air when the works of His hand cease to find favour in His view.
Let those who would substitute the voice of the created for that of the Creator, who shout "the people, the people," instead of hymning the praises of their God, who vainly imagine that the masses are sufficient for all things, remember their insignificance and tremble. They are but mites amid millions of other mites, that the goodness of providence has produced for its own wise ends; their boasted countries, with their vaunted climates and productions, have temporary possessions of but small portions of a globe that floats, a point, in space, following the course pointed out by an invisible finger, and which will one day be suddenly struck out of its orbit, as it was originally put there, by the hand that made it. Let that dread Being, then, be never made to act a second part in human affairs, or the rebellious vanity of our race imagine that either numbers, or capacity, or success, or power in arms, is aught more than a short-lived gift of His beneficence, to be resumed when His purposes are accomplished.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Crater; or, Vulcan's Peak: A Tale of the Pacific http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11573/11573-h/11573-h.htm (1847), Ch. XXX

God, People, World, Imagination

“The last two thousand years have seen the development of elaborate monotheistic theologies; but in the process their single God has broken into many, or at least has assumed a number of distinct and indeed sometimes actively hostile forms; and their nominal universalism has degenerated into competition for the possession of absolute truth.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)

God, Hostility, Truth, Universe

“As I have noted elsewhere, and with the clarity of hindsight, I think Stan and Jack made a mistake when they decided to make Thor the “real” Thor. “Whosoever holds his hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor(r)!” That was really all I needed to know. But, of course, the rest of the Norse mythology began appearing early on, so it was only natural (if a tad anal) that fans should start writing in wondering what had happened to the real Thor.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2007
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20511&PN=1&TPN=3
Regarding Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s version of Thor

Nature, Thinking, Appearance

“When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“.. include prima facie but not ipso facto the following: (a) Homosexuality or gross indecency with another male person; (b) Possession of or trading in an illegal narcotic or other drug; (c) Living upon the earnings of prostitution; (d) Membership in the Communist Party or one of its front organizations (see schedule attached); (e) “Trainism”; (f) Advocating the violent overthrow of the government; (g) Slandering the President of the United States; (h)...”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

.
October “THE ROUGH DRAFT”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Personality

“I have from the beginning been adverse to distant expeditions for the purpose of expanding our colonial possessions. They are necessarily attended with a further division of our force, and with a diminution of our means of acting in Europe. Whilst we are acquiring colonies, the enemy is subjugating the Continent; and though I am by no means disposed to raise doubts of our ability to maintain the contest in this manner, I cannot help fearing the effect of any system which might enable the French, either completely to subdue the remaining Powers of the Continent, or to engage them in opinion against this country…In Europe the most formidable danger exists. It is there that every effort should be made to stop the career of the enemy. Our interest and our reputation are equally at stake. Our allies have a right to look to us for support, and our honour requires that we should not appear to be wanting to the common cause. With a view, therefore, to a continuance of the war on the Continent, I am strongly of opinion that we should immediately collect and prepare for embarkation the largest possible British force that can be made applicable to such a service.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Minute written whilst Foreign Secretary (autumn 1806) and docketed as 'objections intended to have been submitted to the King, if the plan for more extended operations in South America had been persevered in', quoted in Lieutenant-General Hon. C. Grey, Some Account of the Life and Opinions of Charles, Second Earl Grey (London: Richard Bentley, 1861), pp. 135-136.
1800s

War, Fear, Support, Effort

“More high-reaching, subtle, many-sided, curious and profound than the Greek, more noble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old Egyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilization, more intellectual than the European prior to the 18th century, possessing all that these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating and wide in influence of all past human cultures.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Foundations of Indian Culture (1953), p. 31

Past

“The average person appreciates a value only “in the course of, and through comparison” with the possessions, condition, plight or quality of other persons. … The awareness that the acquisition and enjoyment of that value is beyond the person’s capacity … triggers two mutually opposite, but equally vigorous reactions: an overwhelming desire (all the more tormenting because of the suspicion that it might be impossible to fulfill); and ressentiment—a rancor caused by a desperate urge to ward off self-deprecation and self-contempt by demeaning, deriding and degrading the value in question, together with its possessors.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

Source: The Art of Life (2008), pp. 24-25 [Quote is from Max Scheler, “Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen”]

Question, Personality

“As Nozick acknowledges, a modern state should not feel morally constrained by property holdings which might have had a Lockean pedigree but in fact do not. In this regard it is interesting that one of the main uses of Lockean theory these days is in defending the property rights of indigenous people—where a literal claim is being made about who had first possession of a set of resources and about the need to rectify the injustices that accompanied their subsequent expropriation.”

Jeremy Waldron (1953) American lawyer

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – "Property and Ownership" http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/

People, Feeling

“It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

"In the Founders’ Room," Unholy Loves (1979)

“In AH 871 (AD 1466-67) he started for the conquest of Karnãl [Girnãr] which is now known as JûnãgaDh. It is said that this country had been in the possession of the predecessors of Rãi Mandalîk for the past two thousand years… Sultãn Mahmûd relied on the help of Allãh and proceeded there; on the way he laid waste the land of SoraTh… From that place the Sultãn went towards the temple of those people. Many Rajpûts who were known as Parwhãn, decided to lay down their lives, and started fighting with swords and spears in (defence) of the temple… Sultãn Mahmûd postponed the conquest of the fort to the next year… and returned to Ahmadãbãd.”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Mahmûd BegDhã of Gujarat (AD 1458-1511) Junagadh (Gujarat)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

People, Way, Past, Help

“1. The several divisions and branches are in charge of superintendents, who are held responsible for the successful working of their respective divisions, and for the maintenance of proper discipline and conduct of all persons employed thereon, except such as are in the employment of other offices "acting under directions from the general superintendent's office, as herein after stated. They possess all the powers delegated by the organization to the general superintendent, except in matters pertaining to the duties of general ticket agent, general freight agent, general wood agent, telegraph "management, and engine and car repairs.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856)

Cars, Success, Personality

“The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a "loving” mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

Love

“The distinguishing quality of most primitive art is the intense vitality which it possesses, because it has been made by a people in close touch with life, who felt simply and strongly, and whose art was a means of expressing vitally important beliefs, hopes and fears. Negro sculpture is essentially religious and cannot be detached from the tribal gods, priests and ancient rituals. When civilization destroyed these things, it also destroyed their Art. These carvings have a serious and pathetic power – a bigness and monumental simplicity born of the racial patience in bearing life with all its terror and mystery....(But as always, it was the artist who was the first to see in them a new thing – a new plastic conception – an artistic worth – a value as art – their importance as art).”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

1925 - 1940
Source: Primitive African Sculpture, Foreword, Lefevre Galleries, London 1933, p. ?

Life, God, People, Fear

“We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

"Men of Labor! Be Up and Doing" (editorial), American Federationist (May 1906)

Men, Hostility, Intelligence, Indifference

“The artist is the only one who detaches himself from life, opposes his personality against it, he is the only one who orders things as he wishes them to be in place of things as they are. Thus for him life is not a fait accompli, it is something to remake, to do again. He takes possession of his gifts in order to continue, to change, He makes his choice, it is he who creates the conceptions of beautiful and ugly, those are the things to preserve, the things to change. At the seat of the things that it is necessary to change he puts his desires, his aspirations, in one word, his personality…”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Life, Beauty, Change, Personality

“The famous Lord Hallifax (though so much talked of) was rather a pretender to taste, than really possessed of it.—When I had finished the two or three first books of my translation of the Iliad, that lord, "desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house." Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there at the reading.—In four or five places, Lord Hallifax stopped me very civilly; and with a speech, each time of much the same kind: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me.—Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a little at your leisure.—I am sure you can give it a little turn."—I returned from Lord Hallifax's with Dr. Garth, in his chariot; and as we were going along, was saying to the doctor, that my lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty, by such loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it was that offended his lordship in either of them.—Garth laughed heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long enough acquainted with Lord Hallifax, to know his way yet: that I need not puzzle myself in looking those places over and over when I got home. "All you need do, (said he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Hallifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those passages; and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."—I followed his advice; waited on Lord Hallifax some time after: said, I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed[; ] read them to him exactly as they were at first; and his lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, "Ay now, Mr. Pope, they are perfectly right! nothing can be better."”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

As quoted in Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [published from the original papers; with notes, and a life of the author, by Samuel Weller Singer]; "Spence's Anecdotes", Section IV. pp. 134–136.
Attributed

Pleasure, Books, Hope, Way

“He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil, and one of the worst kind of devils, for it shuts out the truth, and often leads to ruinous error.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 438.

Truth, Error

“Fie on possession,
But if a man be vertuous withal.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

The Franklin's Tale, l. 10998
The Canterbury Tales

“On achieving their desired end
Human powers cease to function,
And the soul sees that what it thought was right
Was wrong. A new exchange occurs
At that point where all light disappears;
A new and unsought state is needed:
The soul has
what it did not love,
And is stripped of all it possessed, no matter how dear.”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

The Lauds

Love, Soul, Light

“We had a very respectable force, as to numbers; between eight and nine thousand, rank and file, upon the ground; but of these we attempted to select a particular corps to possess ourselves of the enemy's lines, partly by force, and partly by stratagem; but w r e could not make up the necessary number that was thought sufficient to warrant the attempt, which was five thousand, including the Continental and State troops. This body was to consist of men, who had been in actual service before, not less than nine months. However, the men were not to be had, and, if they could have been found, there was more against it than for it. Colonel Laurens was to have opened the passage by landing within the enemy's lines, and getting possession of a redoubt at the head of Easton's beach. If we had failed in the attempt, the whole party must have fallen a sacrifice, for their situation would have been such that there was no possibility of getting off.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Men

“Any officer given the money to buy promotion and lucky enough to possess relations who could put him in the way of advancement was bound to rise, but even the less fortunate men who resented Wellesley's privileges were forced to admit that the young Colonel had a natural and chilling authority, and maybe, some thought, even a talent for soldiering. He was certainly dedicated enough to his chosen trade if that was any sign of talent.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, commenting on Colonel Arthur Wellesley, p. 103
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Men, Money, Way, Nature

“Andrew Holland was prosecuted in the UK for possessing "extreme pornography", a term which appears to mean porn that judges and prosecutors consider shocking. He had received a video showing a tiger having sex with a woman, or at least apparently so.
He was found innocent because the video he received was a joke. I am glad he was not punished, but this law is nonetheless a threat to other people. If Mr Holland had had a serious video depicting a tiger having sex with a woman, he still would not deserve to go to prison. … I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors.
A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
Perhaps I am spared because this photo isn't "disgusting", but "disgusting" is a subjective matter; we must not imprison people merely because someone feels disgusted. I find the sight of wounds disgusting; fortunately surgeons do not. Maybe there is someone who considers it disgusting for a parrot to have sex with a human. Or for a dolphin or tiger to have sex with a human. So what? Others feel that all sex is disgusting. There are prejudiced people that want to ban all depiction of sex, and force all women to cover their faces. This law and the laws they want are the same in spirit.
Threatening people with death or injury is a very bad thing, but violence is no less bad for being nonsexual. Is it worse to shoot someone while stroking that person's genitals than to shoot someone from a few feet away? If I were going to be the victim, and I were invited to choose one or the other, I would choose whichever one gave me the best chance to escape.
Images of violence can be painful to see, but they are no better for being nonsexual. I saw images of gruesome bodily harm in the movie Pulp Fiction. I do not want to see anything like that again, sex or no sex. That is no reason to censor these works, and would still not be a reason even if most people reacted to them as I do.
Since the law doesn't care whether a real human was really threatened with harm, it is not really concerned about our safety from violence, any more than it is concerned with avoiding suffering for corpses or animals. It is only prejudice, taking a form that can ruin people's lives.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Extreme Pornography Law in the UK" (2010) http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html 2010s

Death, Women, Pain, People

“Fascism never served the interests of Italian business... there is no credible evidence that Fascism controlled the nation's economy for the benefit of the 'possessing classes.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science, (2006), p. 7

Business

“Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Whispers of Immortality"
Poems (1920)

Death

“It need hardly be said that the social philosophy of the time did not remain unaffected by the political evolution and the industrial development. Slowly sinking into men's minds all this while was the conception of a new social nexus, and a new end of social life. It was discovered (or rediscovered) that a society is something more than an aggregate of so many individual units—that it possesses existence distinguishable from those of any of its components. A perfect city became recognized as something more than any number of good citizens—something to be tried by other tests, and weighed in other balances than the individual man. The community must necessarily aim, consciously or not, at its continuance as a community: its life transcends that of any of its members; and the interests of the individual unit must often clash with those of the whole.”

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield (1859–1947) British Baron and politician

Fabian Essays in Socialism &ndash; The Basis of Socialism &ndash; Historic http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Shaw/shwFS1.html#The%20Basis%20of%20Socialism,%20Historic,%20by%20Sidney%20Webb, The New Synthesis, I.1.47. Edited by George Bernard Shaw (1889)

Life, Men, Communication, Time

“I don't know by whom we might be threatened. What I do know is a government [sic] we have to be prepared for any eventuality, and I do know that possessions of those nuclear weapons has kept the peace between nuclear powers far better than the possession of conventional weapons did. You know when we only had conventional weapons Europe was at war again with 21–22 years. We have had 38 years peace and in another four or five years we will have the longest period of peace in Europe for centuries. That, to me, is the greatest prize of all, and…I'm prepared to allocate that expenditure to keep peace for the people for whom I'm responsible.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for Granada TV (1 June 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105096 First term as Prime Minister

War, People, Peace

“As far as talent goes, Marilyn Monroe was so minimally gifted as to be almost unemployable, and anyone who holds to the opinion that she was a great natural comic identifies himself immediately as a dunce…As a natural silent comedian Marilyn might possibly have qualified, with the proviso that she was not to be depended on to invent anything. But as a natural comedian in sound she had the conclusive disadvantage of not being able to speak. She was limited ineluctably to characters who rented language but could not possess it, and all her best roles fell into that category. She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Mailer's Marilyn
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

Nature, Dependency

“The successful construction of all machinery depends on the perfection of the tools employed; and whoever is a master in the arts of tool-making possesses the key to the construction of all machines… The contrivance and construction of tools must therefore ever stand at the head of the industrial arts.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 173; As cited in: Samuel Smiles (1864) Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers http://books.google.com/books?id=5trBcaXuazgC&pg=PA245, p. 245

Art, Success, Dependency, Perfection

“The relevant fact about the history of the British Isles and above all of England is its separateness in a political sense from the history of continental Europe. The English have never belonged to it and have always known that they did not belong. The assertion contains no element of paradox. The Angevin Empire contradicts it as little as the English claim to the throne of France; neither the possession of Gascony nor the inheritance of Hanover made Edward I or George III anything but English sovereigns. When Henry VIII declared that 'this realm of England is an empire (imperium) of itself', he was making not a new claim but a very old one; but he was making it at a very significant point of time. He meant—as Edward I had meant, when he said the same over two hundred years before—that there is an imperium on the continent, but that England is another imperium outside its orbit and is endowed with the plenitude of its own sovereignty. The moment at which Henry VIII repeated this assertion was that of what is misleadingly called 'the reformation'—misleadingly, because it was, and is, essentially a political and not a religious event. The whole subsequent history of Britain and the political character of the British people have taken their colour and trace their unique quality from that moment and that assertion. It was the final decision that no authority, no law, no court outside the realm would be recognised within the realm. When Cardinal Wolsey fell, the last attempt had failed to bring or keep the English nation within the ambit of any external jurisdiction or political power: since then no law has been made for England outside England, and no taxation has been levied in England by or for an authority outside England—or not at least until the proposition that Britain should accede to the Common Market.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to The Lions' Club, Brussels (24 January 1972), from The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), pp. 49-50
1970s

People, Law, History, Decision