Possessed Quotes

• 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

  Punishment, Criminals, Firsts

  Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.238, Penguin

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• Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.

  Khalil Gibran

  Love, Twilight Zone, Prophet

  Khalil Gibran, “Love”

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• Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Ideas, Giving

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steel (1840). “Selections from the Spectator: Embracing the Most Interesting Papers by Addison, Steel, and Others”, p.273

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• Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

  B. C. Forbes

  Business, Real, Riches

  B. C. Forbes (2005). “Keys to Success”, p.3, Lulu.com

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• 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

  Hurt, Anger, Passion

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• In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

  W. H. Auden

  Dog, Joy, Tails

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• A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.

  Joseph Addison

  Humility, Pride, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.301

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• No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.

  Sara Teasdale

  Friendship, Women, Memorable

  Sara Teasdale (1933). “Strange victory: by Sara Teasdale”

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• Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

  Dale Carnegie

  Inspirational, Success, Confidence

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• Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by a desire to change his bed.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Desire, Bed, Literature

  "The Essence of Laughter: And Other Essays, Journals, and Letters".

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• For love is sufficient unto love.

  Khalil Gibran

  Love Is, Age Love, Weddings And Love

  Khalil Gibran (2014). “The Prophet - Der Prophet”, p.24, Lulu.com

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• Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.

  W. G. Sebald

  Heart, Desire, Machines

  W. G. Sebald (2016). “The Rings of Saturn”, p.101, New Directions Publishing

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• I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.

  John Lennon

  Meaningful, Song, Morning

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• Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.

  Winston Churchill

  Peace, Together, Majority

  Winston Churchill (1966). “Churchill in His Own Words: Years of Greatness, Memorable Speeches of the Man of the Century”

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• Mankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.

  Francois Fenelon

  Wish, Moments, Depravity

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• To actually be possessed or possess someone in a way that is unimaginable when you're a young person struggling about your body and whether anybody would ever want you, that's a huge world and that doesn't shift because you're fifty; it doesn't shift because you're 80. It's a vision of the possibility of claiming the right to dream and imagine an impossible place that you were never allowed to go, but you want the world to have as a possibility in the future.

  Amber Hollibaugh

  Dream, Struggle, Vision

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Greek, Hibernation, Able

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook F 44, 1799.

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• There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

  Walter Lippmann

  Pride, Temptation, Arguing

  Walter Lippmann (1955). “Essays in the Public Philosophy”, p.85, Transaction Publishers

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• Ferdinand was a gold trader. He was a lawyer for mining companies. When he entered politics in l949, he had tons and tons of gold. When Bill Gates was a college dropout, Ferdinand already possessed billions of dollars and tons of gold. It wasn't stolen.

  Imelda Marcos

  College, Uranium Mining, Gold

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• If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

  Thomas Mann

  Ideas, Smell, Ifs

  Thomas Mann (2010). “Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories”, p.95, Vintage

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• I was never a class clown or anything like that, but I do remember being in the first grade and my teacher, Mr. Chad, told the class one day that we were going to do some exercises. He meant math exercises, but I stood up and started doing jumping jacks. To this day, I don't know what possessed me to do that, but all my friends cracked up.

  Will Ferrell

  Teacher, Math, Exercise

  "Will Ferrell says growing up in Irvine made him funny". Interview with Barry Koltnow, www.ocregister.com. July 23, 2008.

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• Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Endurance, Inquiring, Mates

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• Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.

  Roger Ebert

  Stars, Passion, Political

  Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.192, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.

  Denis Diderot

  Hurt, Men, Self

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• Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

  Edmund Burke

  Order, Liberty

  'Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol' (1777) p. 55

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