Quotes about possession
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“Never be ruled by possessions, and never, ever make wealth more important to you than your self-respect and your dignity." - Lady Taylor”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Wealth

“What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

Life, Reality

“A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

Life, Beauty

“It is not an act of bravery to try to save your own village. It is an instinct to protect what you possess. Bravery is when you step in to help when you have nothing to lose.”

Gail Tsukiyama The Samurai's Garden

Source: The Samurai's Garden

Help

“Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

Truth

“At moments like this I envy those who have found a safe haven in which to bestow their hearts; or perhaps I envy them for having a heart to bestow. I often feel that I myself am without one, and possess in its stead merely a heart shaped stone.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Feeling, Heart, Envy

“All of us have darkness inside us, and at times it possesses and seduces us in ways we never thought possible.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

Way, Time

“It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.”

Agatha Christie book The Clocks

Source: The Clocks

Books, Way, Strong

“Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Learning, Time

“Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Passion, Hurt, Anger

“When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Strong, Appearance

“He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Knowledge

“All men are equal - all men, that is, who possess umbrellas.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

Men

“Beautiful women rarely possess sufficient depth of character to survive without their pretty feathers.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Women, Beauty

“O what a blessed day that will be when I shall… stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all!”

Richard Baxter (1615–1691) English Puritan church leader, poet, and hymn-writer

Pain, Fear, Tear, Rage

“There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed.”

Carrie Fisher (1956–2016) American actress, screenwriter and novelist

“We demand that sex speak the truth […] and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves wich we think we possess in our immediate consciousness.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction

Truth, Sex, Thinking

“Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Life, Beauty, Art, Joy

“My sister, with her ratty red-highlighted hair and her linen pajamas and her combat boots—how could she possibly worry about being possessed by a goddess? What goddess would want her, except the goddess of chewing gum?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Sister

“Teachers' using grades and the fear of failure mould the brains of the young until they have lost every ounce of imagination they might once have possessed.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Source: Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge

Fear, Imagination, Failure, Teachers

“We all fail to appreciate each day just how much we already possess. Light, air, freedom, the companionship of friends.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Freedom, Light

“She will remain sane and she will live as she was meant to live, richly and deeply, among others of her kind, in full possession and command of her gifts.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

“Kate Daniels, trained negotiator. When in possession of some valuable information, give it away to the first sexy man you see with no guarantee of return.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Training

“Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Feeling, Sense, Personality

“Climb the day, Drop your dreams, Possess the day.”

Gail Carson Levine Fairest

Source: Fairest

Dreams

“If she know how strongly he felt, she'd have run out the door. He wasn't used to the possessive, or the savage joy she brought to his heart. It ate at his control, so he turned his attention to the music. He understood music.”

Patricia Briggs book Cry Wolf

Source: Cry Wolf

Music, Heart, Joy

“Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Theologians

The Theologians, translated by James E. Irby (1964)

“For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Source: Slammerkin

People, Books, Reading

“I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence.”

Evelyn Waugh book Vile Bodies

Source: Vile Bodies

Hunger, People

“How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

People

“It is within our power not to make a judgement about something, and so not disturb our minds; for nothing in itself possesses the power to form our judgements.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure and the memory so possessed him that for the moment there was nothing to do but to pretend.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Pain, Pleasure, Memory

“Nick‘s eyes widened as a total state of befuddled huh possessed him. Was he in the
Twilight Zone?”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

“No one had ever said such things to her before. People were intimidated by her self-possession and no-nonsense demeanor. No man would ever dream of calling her adorable, sweet, darling… and certainly no one had ever made herthat way.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Suddenly You

People, Dreams, Way

“The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”

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

Source: Walden and Other Writings

Behavior, Soul, Parting

“When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.”

Zoë Heller (1965) British writer

Source: Notes on a Scandal: What Was She Thinking?

“Who's possessing who now, Casper?”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself.”

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet

Source: Canzoniere: Selected Poems

Love, Tear, Memory

“Many invest wisely in business matters, but fail to invest time and interest in their most valued possessions: their spouses and children.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Source: Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

Children, Business, Time

“In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Love, Youth

“We are the Edema Ruh, and the thing we value most every man possesses. You can tell us your story.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“When she had been married a little while, she concluded that love was half a longing of a kind that possession did nothing to mitigate.”

Marilynne Robinson book Housekeeping

Source: Housekeeping

Love

“Would like to join me? (Astrid)
I think I’d look strange in a bikini. (Zarek)
Was that a joke? Can it be you made a real joke? (Astrid)
Yeah, I must be possessed or something. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Thinking

“Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian

Personality

“Our weapon is our knowledge. But remember, it may be a knowledge we may not know that we possess.”

Agatha Christie book The A.B.C. Murders

Source: The A.B.C. Murders

Knowledge

“For God's sake, let's take the word 'possess' and put a brick round its neck and drown it… We can't possess one another. We can only give and hazard all we have.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Busman's Honeymoon

Source: Busman's Honeymoon

God

“I thought there was a good chance the fridge was possessed. It was subtle about it, but I had its number. I knew its ways. Oh yes.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Hunt the Moon

Way, Chance

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a married man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an heir.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Duke and I

Truth, Universe

“The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies”

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) American author

Source: The Awakening and Selected Stories

Soul, Courage

“The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life

Life, Soul, Memory, Heart

“The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

Pain, World, Light

“We will not be dictated to by men with less intelligence, energy, initiative and ambition than we ourselves possess.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Men, Intelligence

“[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.”

Aristophanés The Knights

Source: The Knights

Nature

“Can the plural possessive express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Art, Feeling, Learning, Heart

“Then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A Paradise within thee, happier far.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

“I can't imagine what possessed you to propose to me."
"Well that will give you something to puzzle over any time you can't sleep.”

Georgette Heyer (1902–1974) British historical romance and detective fiction novelist

Source: Behold, Here's Poison

Imagination, Sleep, Time

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ego must be in want of a woman to cut him down to size”

Melissa Nathan (1968–2006) British writer

Truth, Universe

“Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.”

Hendrik Willem van Loon (1882–1944) Dutch-American historian, journalist and author

“You may think that what you’d like to recapture from your youth is your looks, your physical fitness, your simple pleasures, but what you really need is the fluidity of mind you once possessed.”

Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War

Source: The 33 Strategies of War

Pleasure, Youth, Thinking

“Love one another, but let’s try not to possess one another.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Love

“If love is like a possession, maybe my letter are like my exorcisms”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Love

“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

Epilogue.
Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)

Appearance, Time

“If all my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Communication

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks

World

“Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost

“Or perhaps it is some combination of spirit and desire, love and hope, some alchemy that we each possess and can put to use, if we first know where to look without flinching.”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

Love, Hope

“I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.”

Henry James Roderick Hudson

Source: Roderick Hudson

People

“She had not really a sensitive soul, but to put it in exact terms, was possessed by an uncontrollable feeling of mind”

Alessandro Baricco book Ocean Sea

Source: Ocean Sea

Feeling, Soul

“If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won't need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers.”

Toni Bentley (1958) Australian writer

Lovers, Idea, Clothes

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a thirty-something woman in possession of a satisfying career and fabulous hairdo must be in want of very little”

Shannon Hale book Austenland

Source: Austenland

Truth, Universe

“. The language of love is like that, possessive. That should be the first warning that it's not going to encourage anyone's betterment.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Love

“Youthfulness is not determined by age. It is determined by one's life force. One who possesses hope is forever young. One who continually advances is forever beautiful.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

Life, Youth, Age, Beauty

“I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

“It is because people live in the things they possess instead of in their relationship to God that God seems at times to be cruel.”

Grace Livingston Hill (1865–1947) 20th-century novelist

God, People, Time

“I’ve told you before, I love like a madman,” he said. “Immoderate, jealous, possessive… I’m absolutely intolerable.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

Love

“If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you don't already possess”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Books, Question

“I, the man of color, want only this: That the tool never possess the man. That the enslavement of man by man cease forever. That is, of one by another. That it be possible for me to discover and to love man, wherever he may be.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks

Love, Color

“Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth-breather there is.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

"Cowboy Librarians" (13 December 1997)
A Prairie Home Companion
Source: Dusty and Lefty: The Lives of the Cowboys

God, People, Question

“Memories are nice little possessions. As long as you don't ignore the present when you take them out to play.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Memory

“When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.”

Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash

Source: Snow Crash

“My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Men, Feeling

“She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess.”

Helen Oyeyemi (1984) British author

Source: Mr. Fox

World

“Opinion is a fitting thing but truth outlasts the sun - if then we cannot own them both, possess the oldest one.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Truth, Sun

“He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Address on The Method of Nature http://www.infomotions.com/alex2/authors/emerson-ralph/emerson-method-734/ (1841)

Love, Time, Drawing

“There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn't retrieve them when they were gone. The very act of caring made them impossible to regain.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

“Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Books

“No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?… It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Past, Future

“Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.”

William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Source: 1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

Truth, Fear, Lovers

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Dreams