Possessed Quotes - Page 25

• Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Philosophy, Increase, Should

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “Enquiry into the present state of polite learning. The citizen of the world”, p.234

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The person whose clothes are extremely fine I am too apt to consider as not being possessed of any superiority of fortune, but resembling those Indians who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world in a bob at the nose.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Clothes, Gold, Bob

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The works of Oliver Goldsmith. 2: Enquiry into the present state of polite learning; The citizen of the world”, p.259

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Aunt Mimi possessed a horror of silence, which she battled with endless chat. The Typhoid Mary of the Telephone started her calls at 6:30 each morning.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Morning, Aunt, Talking

  8 Copy quote

• Awareness of time as flying has some advantages; it precludes boredom, for one thing. It matters little that younger people find older people boring or slow. Older people have a right to resist being rushed, to stand and stare at the fragile world that has become so unspeakably dear to them. For the lucky ones, who will not have to leave while they are still in love with life, there will come a later time when that passion too will fade, but while one is still possessed by that great tenderness, it must be yielded to.

  Germaine Greer

  Passion, Love Life, People

  4 Copy quote

• I wish the English still possessed a shred of the old sense of humour which Puritanism, and dyspepsia, and newspaper reading, and tea-drinking have nearly extinguished.

  Norman Douglas

  Drinking, Reading, Tea

  Norman Douglas (1982). “South Wind”, p.282, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• war is, in some not yet entirely defined sense, a self-replicating pattern of behavior, possessed of a dynamism not unlike that of living things.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  War, Self, Patterns

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2011). “Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War”, p.225, Granta Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fancy, an animal faculty, is very different from imagination, which is intellectual. The former is passive; but the latter is active and creative. Children, the weak minded, and the timid are full of fancy. Men and women of intellect, of great intellect, are alone possessed of great imagination.

  Joseph Joubert

  Children, Animal, Men

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. Or they enlarge a reality that is felt to be shrunk, hollowed out, perishable, remote. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, Reality, Way

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Movie people are possessed by demons, but a very low form of demons.

  Edna O'Brien

  People, Demon, Form

  6 Copy quote

• What one thinks continually, they become; what one cherishes in their heart and mind they make a part of the pulsation of their heart, through their own blood cells, and build in their own physical, that which its spirit and soul must feed upon, and that with which it will be possessed, when it passes into the realm for which the other experiences of what it has gained here in the physical plane, must be used.

  Edgar Cayce

  Heart, Thinking, Cells

  24 Copy quote

• The masses are still ungrateful or ignorant. They prefer murder, poisonings, and crimes generally to a literature possessed of style and feeling.

  George Sand

  Ungrateful, Feelings, Ignorant

  George Sand (2009). “Letters of George Sand”, p.140, Cosimo, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are boxers possessed of such remarkable intuition, such uncanny prescience, one would think they were somehow recalling their fights, not fighting them as we watch.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Sports, Fighting, Thinking

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “On Boxing”, p.9, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery, a blessing and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed it. Had both been blessed - or cursed - with it, there would have been much keener competition for the apple.

  Stella Benson

  Blessed, Blessing, Apples

  Stella Benson (1916). “I Pose”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am possessed by love and have no options.

  Elizabeth Smart

  Elizabeth Smart (1945). “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept ; And, The Assumption of the Rogues & Rascals”, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Psychics, Healthy, Endurance

  46 Copy quote

• Both therapy and friendship possessed the common denominator of discovering a self.

  Dorothy Gilman

  Self, Common, Discovering

  Dorothy Gilman (1967). “Uncertain Voyage”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everyone seems possessed with the desire of writing articles upon me and sends me long lists of all I am to say.

  Kate Greenaway

  Writing, Long, Desire

  6 Copy quote

• Money is a jealous mistress If you want money you must want only money. ... I must tell you the one secret of life, there is only one: everything is a jealous mistress, everything is terribly possessive, and, by God, we want to be terribly possessed if we want to get somewhere - and we want to be terribly possessed - anyhow; or what is life?

  Christina Stead

  Money, Passion, Jealous

  Christina Stead (1948). “A little tea, a little chat”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I possessed what is called the best of hearts -- a dangerous possession, as it is generally accompanied by the strongest passions, and the weakest judgment.

  Lady Caroline Lamb

  Passion, Heart, Judgment

  Lady Caroline Lamb (1822). “Graham Hamilton”, p.5

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Fashion, Greatness, Men

  117 Copy quote

• It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.

  Christina Stead

  Creativity, Vanity, Creative

  7 Copy quote

• An idea discovered is much better possessed.

  Neil Young

  Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• The search for truth can be compared to a cat chasing her tail: frantic in her pursuit, her quarry nevetheless eludes her; despite the fact that all the world can see it's right there, it remains just beyond her reach. It cannot be possessed because, paradoxically, it is already part of her.

  Gina Barreca

  Cat, Humor, Facts

  10 Copy quote

• It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

  Iain Banks

  Civilization, Might, Emptiness

  5 Copy quote

• Henry Kissinger is possessed of a truly superior intelligence, in addition to which he has two qualities which, unfortunately, many great men lack: he is able to listen and he has a very subtle sense of humour.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Men, Two, Quality

  "The Shah's Story". Book by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, p. 144, 1980.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source