Possessed Quotes - Page 9

• The rainbow is such a remarkable phenomenon of nature, and its cause has been so meticulously sought after by inquiring minds throughout the ages, that I could not choose a more appropriate subject for demonstrating how, with the method I am using, we can arrive at knowledge not possessed at all by those whose writings are available to us.

  Rene Descartes

  Writing, Discovery, Rainbow

  11 Copy quote

• You want to know the biggest illusion about success? That it's like a pinnacle to be climbed, a thing to be possessed, or a static result to be achieved. If you want to succeed, if you want to achieve all your outcomes, you have to think of success as a process, a way of life, a habit of mind, a strategy for life.

  Tony Robbins

  Success, Thinking, Mind

  Tony Robbins (2012). “Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement”, p.412, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world has done that already - possessed the Congo and pillaged her and dominated her and robbed her of agency and occupation. Love is something else, something rising and contagious and surprising. It isn't aware of itself. It isn't keeping track. It isn't something you sign for. It's endless and generous and enveloping. It's in the drums, in the voices, in the bodies of the wounded made suddenly whole, by the music, by each other, dancing.

  Eve Ensler

  Love, Agency, Voice

  4 Copy quote

• Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Power, Growth

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.461, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind - men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others - men and women who are capable of disciplining themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Strong, Men, Self

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1950). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1944-1945, Volume 13”, p.378, Best Books on

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... being perpetually charmed by his familiar siren, that is, by his geometry, he neglected to eat and drink and took no care of his person; that he was often carried by force to the baths, and when there he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and with his finger draws lines upon his body when it was anointed with oil, being in a state of great ecstasy and divinely possessed by his science.

  Plutarch

  Math, Oil, Fire

  7 Copy quote

• Everyone is possessed with an irresistible desire to know his relationship to the Infinite.

  David O. McKay

  Desire, Infinite, Irresistible

  4 Copy quote

• The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

  Lionel Trilling

  Fantasy, Poet, Mark

  Lionel Trilling (2012). “The Liberal Imagination”, p.45, New York Review of Books

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge... no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command... But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Envy, Mind, May

  "Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible". Book by Arthur C. Clarke, 1962.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whatever capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from somebody else. I would spend any conceivable amount of zeal and eloquence if I possessed it to try to make people grasp this idea. Capital is force. If it goes one way it cannot go another. If you give a loaf to a pauper you cannot give the same loaf to a laborer. Now this other man who would have got it but for the charitable sentiment which bestowed it on a worthless member of society is the Forgotten Man.

  William Graham Sumner

  Mean, Men, Ideas

  William Graham Sumner (1971). “Sumner today: selected essays of William Graham Sumner, with comments by American leaders”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a grand thing to see a man thoroughly possessed with one master-passion. Such a man is sure to be strong, and if the master-principle be excellent, he is sure to be excellent, too.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Strong, Passion, Men

  Charles Spurgeon (1989). “The Soul Winner”, p.249, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mother Dolores Hart's prose is a reflection of the inner beauty she has always possessed. A fascinating read... and read again!

  Robert Evans

  Mother, Reflection, Inner Beauty

  7 Copy quote

• The mineral kingdom consists of the fossil substances found in the earth. These are either entirely destitute of organic structure, or, having once possessed it, possess it no longer: such are the petrefactions.

  Torbern Bergman

  Substance, Earth, Kingdoms

  William Withering, Torbern Bergman (1822). “The miscellaneous tracts of the late William Withering: to which is prefixed a memoir of his life, character, and writings”, p.9

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.

  George Meredith

  Duty, Felicity, Possession

  'The Egoist' (1879) ch. 14

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great artistic talent in any direction... is hardly inherent to the man. It comes and goes; it is often possessed only for a short phase in his life; it hardly ever colors his character as a whole and has nothing to do with the moral and intellectual stuff of the mind and soul. Many great artists, perhaps most great artists, have been poor fellows indeed, whom to know was to despise.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Character, Artist, Men

  Hilaire Belloc (1940). “Characters of the Reformation”, p.66, Lulu.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Strong, Writing, Sacrifice

  "The Razor's Edge". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1944.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world that we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others.

  Bertrand Russell

  Adventure, Creative, Joy

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Roads to Freedom”, p.154, Routledge

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...congenital killers and criminals are possessed of not one but two Y chromosomes, bearing a double dose, as it were, of genetically undesirable maleness.

  Elizabeth Gould Davis

  Men, Two, Killers

  6 Copy quote

• If, Sir, I possessed the power of conveying unlimited sexual attraction through the potency of my voice, I would not be reduced to accepting a miserable pittance from the BBC for interviewing a faded female in a damp basement.

  Gilbert Harding

  Voice, Female, Interviews

  52 Copy quote

• We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Able, Renounce, Possession

  Sydney J. Harris (1976). “Best of Sydney J. Harris”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against the enterprise of an aspiring prince

  Edward Gibbon

  Freedom, Balance, Arms

  Edward Gibbon (1787). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.78

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us be done with the notion that religion is confined to petty pieties and small constraints. All too often people who have possessed these pieties have wrought great evil.

  A. Powell Davies

  People, Evil, Religion

  10 Copy quote

• As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity-'teleological activity.' He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of being such an agent, he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Men, Effort, Agents

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THORSTEIN VEBLEN Ultimate Collection: 8 Books & 50+ Business Essays and Articles in Warfare and Economics: The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning In America, Panem et Circenses, The Vested Interests and the Common Man, The Use of Loan Credit in Business…”, p.16, e-artnow

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beauty has nothing to do with possession. If possession and beauty must go together, then we are lost souls. A beautiful flower is not to be possessed, it's there to be beheld. … It's there for your pleasure.

  Diana Vreeland

  Beauty, Beautiful, Flower

  6 Copy quote

• I knew neither jealousy nor hate but was possessed by a rage to recreate a new world, the world which my eyes perceived, a world all to myself. I was poor but I knew that life is beautiful.

  Maurice de Vlaminck

  Beautiful, Hate, Eye

  10 Copy quote