Possession Quotes - Page 27

• The sight of a wedding always has a disturbing effect on young girls; at such moments a mysterious sense of solidarity with their own sex takes possession of them.

  Stefan Zweig

  Girl, Sex, Sight

  "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is also possible to say precisely why. Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am therefore more than the other man who does not know this and that. I have greater possibilities and also greater temptations. Anyone who deals with truth - as we theologians certainly do - succumbs all too easily to the psychology of the possessor. But love is the opposite of the will to possess. It is self-giving. It boasteth not itself, but humbleth itself.

  Helmut Thielicke

  Love Is, Men, Opposites

  33 Copy quote

• Odors can be highly transitory, depending on the air currents. If this is happening in your house, ask if there are any possessions of that deceased loved one still around. If it happens elsewhere, consider just how many millions of people use the same perfume or smoke the same brand of cigar as someone you knew.

  Seth Shostak

  Air, People, House

  4 Copy quote

• For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Faith, Believe, Self

  4 Copy quote

• The breakdown of Plato's philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence of this state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to coincide with possession of ruling power in the state.

  John Dewey

  Plato, Philosophy, Would Be

  "Democracy and Education". Book by John Dewey, 1916.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Mind, Aim Of Education, Increase

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Enjoy, Loses

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law?s treatment.

  David Mamet

  Ignorance, Law, Perfect

  David Mamet (2011). “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture”, p.74, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the underdog were always right, one might quite easily try to defend him. The trouble is that very often he is but obscurely right, sometimes only partially right, and often quite wrong; but perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable difficulties of understanding him.

  Jane Addams

  Pigs, Understanding, Trying

  Jane Addams (1961). “Twenty Years at Hull-House, with Autobiographical Notes, by Jane Addams. With a Foreword by Henry Steele Commager, Drawings by Norah Hamilton”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ... have countries attacked. The lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the presence of a few criminals in a village, city, or convoy for example, the entire village, city or convoy set ablaze.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Country, Jesus, Cities

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to George W. Bush, www.washingtonpost.com. May 9, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Games, Wish, Add

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1212, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• La possession de ce qu'on aime est une joie plus grande encore que l'amour. Possessing what one loves is an even greater joy than love itself.

  Marcel Proust

  Love Is, Joy, One Love

  4 Copy quote

• A theologian should be thoroughly in possession of the basis and source of faith--that is to say, the Holy Scriptures. Armed with this knowledge it was that I confounded and silenced all my adversaries; for they seek not to fathom and understand the Scriptures; they run them over negligently and drowsily; they speak, they write, they teach, according to the suggestion of their heedless imaginations.

  Martin Luther

  Running, Writing, Imagination

  Martin Luther (2017). “Martin Luther's Table Talk”, p.80, Gideon House Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Virtually the entire inflow was therefore Asiatic, and all but three or four thousand of that inflow originated from the Indian subcontinent... It is by 'black Power' that the headlines are caught, and under the shape of the negro that the consequences for Britain of immigration and what is miscalled 'race' are popularly depicted. Yet it is more truly when he looks into the eyes of Asia that the Englishman comes face to face with those who will dispute with him the possession of his native land.

  Enoch Powell

  Eye, Race, Land

  "Still to Decide" by Enoch Powell, Eliot Right Way Books, (p. 209), 1972.

  92 Copy quote

  Show source

• The prerequisite for an ideology is possession of a basic truth.

  Saul Alinsky

  Ideology, Prerequisites

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Reveille for Radicals”, p.12, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In particular, it is absurd to hope to banish envy of other people's possessions or fortunes, if only because the spirit of envy can lead to emulation and ambition and have positive consequences.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Ambition, People, Envy

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.74, Atlantic Books Ltd

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• God reveals Himself to a devotee who feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions: the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man, the child's attraction for its mother, and the husband's attraction for the chaste wife. If one feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions, then through it one can attain Him.

  Ramakrishna

  Mother, Children, Husband

  Ramakrishna, Mahendra Nath Gupta (1942). “The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna”, Ramakrishna Vivekanada Center

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Lying, Intellectual, Quests

  Richard Hofstadter (2012). “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”, p.30, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The property of manliness in a man is a great possession, but perhaps there is none that is less understood, which is more generally accorded where it does not exist, nor more frequently disallowed where it prevails.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Doe, Understood

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children”, p.2078, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The present generation finds itself the heir of a vast patrimony of science; and it must needs concern us to know the steps by which these possessions were acquired, and the documents by which they are secured to us and our heirs for ever.

  William Whewell

  Needs, Generations, Heirs

  William Whewell (1857). “History of the Inductive Sciences from the Earliest to the Present Time”, p.3

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel quite unable to adopt the opinion that the moment goods pass into the possession of the consumer they cease altogether to have the attributes of capital.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Opinion, Moments, Attributes

  William Stanley Jevons (1871). “The Theory of Political Economy”, p.245

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When a tree, a natural product, is felled, is society put into possession of no greater produce than that of the mere labour of the woodman?

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Tree, Natural, Produce

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.76

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happiness is the possession of the excellence proper to us, and of the power subservient to it.

  Xenocrates

  Excellence, Subservient

  8 Copy quote

• By getting as close to the true idea of religion, of spirituality as it is possible for us to get.. ...we would be in possession of the only tangible relationship tot the deity in things.

  Marsden Hartley

  Ideas, Would Be, Tangible

  "Marsden Hartley". Book by Gail R. Scott, p. 44, 1988.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange our experiences...Experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.

  Walter Benjamin

  Fall, Taken, People

  "Illuminations". Book by Walter Benjamin, 1950.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source