Quotes about possession
page 5

“He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.”

Horace Walpole book The Castle of Otranto

Source: The Castle of Otranto

Happiness, Soul

“True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Source: A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

“Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world
acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.”

Patrick Califia-Rice (1954) American writer

Variant: Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.

Wisdom, Women, Truth, World

“I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love, World, Making love, Joy

“He had possessed the arrogance of a tall member of a short race, with no obligation save to be tall.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

“Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Freedom

“You say my name like a lover, so soft, so sweet. I want to lick the word from your lips, sip the exhaled breath from your mouth. I want to possess you utterly. Right now. Right here.”

Elizabeth Hoyt (1970) American writer

Source: Notorious Pleasures

Lovers

“Aimee-"If someone's possessed by a demon, how do you get the demon out?"
Xedrix-"Call a priest.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

“Some people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece

People

“Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Faith, Personality

“Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality… One can't possess reality, one can possess images--one can't possess the present but one can possess the past.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

Source: On Photography

Way, Reality, Past

“If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Whoever possesses God in their being has Him in a divine manner, and He shines out to them in all things; for them all things taste of God and in all things it is God's image that they see.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

God

“Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Gratitude

“I'm an animal with you," he murmured. "I want to mark you. I want to possess you so completely there's no separation between us.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Animals

“If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Variant: if your love is only a will to possess, its not love
Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Love

“Trevor possessed many of the qualities of a vampire without actually being one. He constantly preyed on me, was deeply charismatic, and tried to suck the life out of me.”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: Cryptic Cravings

Life

“These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Life, Memory, Past

“It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.”

Aldous Huxley book The Perennial Philosophy

Source: The Perennial Philosophy

World

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Travel, Waiting, Past

“True beauty is rare, and seldom recognized by the one who possesses it.”

Francine Rivers book A Voice in the Wind

Source: A Voice in the Wind

Beauty

“The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign.”

Joanne Harris book Blackberry Wine

Source: Blackberry Wine

Madness

“And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?”

Ann Druyan (1949) American author and producer

Question, Learning

“The magic of sex is it's acquisition without the burden of possession. No matter how many women you take home, there's never a storage problem.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Asfixia

Women, Sex, Home, Problem

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Love, Light

“Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion… Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Life, Money, People, Way

“The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Books, Reading

“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Housing

“I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.”

Anthony Powell book The Valley of Bones

Source: The Valley of Bones

Life, Books, Literature, Time

“Words were all he knew; they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand white cats with whom he shared a one-room apartment.”

Mark Helprin (1947) US author, journalist, commentator

Cats

“You can only possess beauty through understanding it.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Beauty, Understanding

“Irony, perfect definition: that for which I want to possess it, I would no longer want once I possessed it.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Perfection

“That was the moment he got the idea he possessed me in a certain way, and that was the moment I grew tired of him.”

Jamaica Kincaid Lucy

Source: Lucy

Way, Idea

“… happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release…”

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

Happiness, Courage

“He saw that no one owned anything really. It's all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we'll desert them in the end.”

Ian McEwan book Saturday

Source: Saturday

“Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“I feel a little like the moon who took possession of you for a moment and then returned your soul to you. You should not love me. One ought not to love the moon. If you come too near me, I will hurt you.”

Anaïs Nin book Delta of Venus

Source: Delta of Venus

Love, Feeling, Soul, Hurt

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions.”

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

Personality

“Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Nature

“What a person is for himself, what abides with him in his loneliness and isolation, and what no one can give or take away from him, this is obviously more essential for him than everything that he possesses or what he may be in the eyes of others…”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Personality, Loneliness

“Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level”

Gustave Flaubert book November

Source: November

Soul

“The state of man's mind, or the elementary phase of mind which he so far possesses, conforms precisely to the state of the world as he so far views it”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

World

“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud…”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 1, p. 6
Context: The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity — it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Love, Life, Death, Beauty

“All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.”

Kiran Desai book The Inheritance of Loss

Source: The Inheritance of Loss

Color, Mountain, Water

“Nothing," she said softly. "A queen must possess nothing to rule because she has to give everything she has to her people. Even her life.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Life, People

“This life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Cette vie est un hôpital où chaque malade est possédé du désir de changer de lit. <br class="br">XLVIII: "Anywhere out of the world" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Anywhere_out_of_the_world <br class="br">Le Spleen de Paris (1862) <br class="br">Source: On Wine and Hashish

Life, Change

“You’re not the only one who can get possessive. I’m very proprietary about what’s mine.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

“I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions, because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“Even if you forget everything else I want you to always remember that you are a person of value, and you have a friend who loved you enough to give you his most valued possession.”

Bette Greene book Summer of My German Soldier

Source: Summer of My German Soldier

Love, Personality, Forgetting

“To create souls in men, to create fine happiness and fine despair she must remain deeply proud - proud to be inviolate, proud also to be melting, to be passionate and possessed.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Men, Happiness, Soul, Passion

“I'll leave it to you, Sassenach," he said dryly, "to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Feeling, Imagination

“I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,
that Joplin had the last drunken throat,
that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

“I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

“But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

People, Dead

“If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Vanity of Existence

Life

“every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer…”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Variant: He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.
Source: Night

Question

“Molly was arrested. Possession.”
I blinked at him. “She was possessed?”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

People

“To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gift -absolute gifts- which have not been acquired by one's effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Soul, Courage, Effort

“A genius is simply one who has taken full possession of his own mind and directed it toward objectives of his own choosing, without permitting outside influences to discourage or mislead him.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

“It was all the things you could never understand and could never possess that made you ache.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Stay

Understanding

“Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always.”

Gary Jennings book Aztec

Source: Aztec

Life, Hope, Memory

“You both should feel honored.”
“Right, very honored,” I said. “Always wanted to be possessed!”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Feeling

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

11 April 1942.
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

History

“But now we've finally taken full possession of what is rightfully ours, because everyone must feel their own pain--and as awful as that is, it's also wonderful.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

Pain, Feeling

“The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Source: A Backward Glance

Marriage, People, Sense

“And moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul… the brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.”

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) American author

Soul, Courage

“A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Imagination

“It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks latenesses, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patchings to repair great rents in the quotidian.”

John Updike book Couples

Source: Couples (1968), Ch. 2

Time

“We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?”

Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier

Part One, Ch. I (p. 7)
Source: The Good Soldier (1915)
Context: No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison — a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.
And yet I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. It was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from the mouth of stone dolphins. For, if for me we were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires, acting — or, no, not acting — sitting here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?

“The world follows its own course. Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The world follows its own course.”

Haruki Murakami book The Strange Library

Source: The Strange Library

World

“You saw my leg?"
"How can a man help what he sees?" he said. "And, if I could add, you possess a very fine leg.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Help

“Your ideal possession candidate's a thirteen-year-old recently orphaned schizophrenic girl three days away from her period on her way to see the shrink with whom she's romantically besotted.”

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

Way, Girl

“Why, oh why, had Jace picked a fight with a pack of wolves? What had possessed him? Then again, it was Jace. He'd pick a fight with a Mack truck if the urge took him.
-Clary, pg.40”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Fight

“Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

People

“We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

God, Truth, Learning

“It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Women, Men, Marriage, Appearance

“I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

To Fanny Brawne (July 25, 1819)
Letters (1817–1820)

Death

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Truth, Universe

“I didn't like anyone except me having their hands all over him. There had been possession in Wolf's touch, and Adam belonged to me.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Wolf

“She's got the kind of ethereal, unselfconscious beauty some young girls possess that breaks your heart. Or theirs.”

Ilsa J. Bick (1957) American writer

Source: Drowning Instinct

Beauty, Girl, Heart

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

People, Appearance

“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Men, Truth

“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”

Eudora Welty book One Writer's Beginnings

One Writer's Beginnings(1984)
Context: It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

Love, Books, Time

“I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Personal inscription on a copy of Mother Goose in Prose (1897) which he gave to his sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster, as quoted in The Making of the Wizard of Oz (1998) by Aljean Harmetz, p. 317
Letters and essays
Context: When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.

Love, Learning, Heart

“Don’t accumulate possessions; accumulate experiences!”

Mark Batterson (1969) American pastor and writer

In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day: How To Survive And Thrive When Opportunity Roars
Variant: Don’t accumulate possessions, accumulate experiences or vice versa

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Variant: It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Truth, Universe, Relationship, For Wife