Quotes About Materialism

A large part of many people's lives is consumed by an obsessive preoccupation with things. This is why one of the ills of our times is object proliferation. When you can no longer feel the life that you are, you are likely to try to fill up your life with things.

Paradójicamente, lo que mantiene en marcha la llamada «sociedad de consumo» es el hecho de que intentar encontrarte a ti mismo a través de las cosas no funciona. La

The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming.

It will attempt to ensure its survival by finding something else to identity with, for example, a mental image of yourself as someone who has transcended all interest in material possessions and is therefore superior, is more spiritual than others. There are people who have renounced all possessions but have a bigger ego than some millionaires.

Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease.

The people in the advertising industry know very well that in order to sell things that people don't really need, they must convince them that those things will add something to how they see themselves or are seen by others; in other words, add something to their sense of self.

Los que no han encontrado su verdadera riqueza, que es la alegría radiante del Ser y la profunda e inconmovible paz que la acompaña, son mendigos, incluso si tienen mucha riqueza material. Buscan afuera mendrugos de placer o de realización para lograr la aceptación, la seguridad o el amor, mientras llevan dentro un tesoro que no sólo incluye todas esas cosas sino que es infinitamente mayor que todo lo que el mundo pueda ofrecer.

You need to be alert and honest to find out, for example, whether your sense of self-worth is bound up with things you possess. Do certain things induce a subtle feeling of importance or superiority? Does the lack of them make you feel inferior to others who have more than you? Do you casually mention things you own or show them off to increase your sense of worth in someone else's eyes and through them in your own?

The prosperity of today becomes the empty consumerism of tomorrow.

Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more.

Designer labels are primarily collective identities that you buy into. They are expensive and therefore "exclusive." If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid.

While trying to find yourself in things, you may end up losing yourself in things.

The whole advertising industry and consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought to find their identity through things.

people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within. So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete.

But we cannot really honor things if we use them as a means to self-enhancement, that is to say, if we try to find ourselves through them.

A large part of many people's lives is consumed by an obsessive preoccupation with things. This

When you can no longer feel the life that you are, you are likely to try to fill up your life with things.

The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself. If everyone lived in a mansion or everyone was wealthy, your mansion or your wealth would no longer serve to enhance your sense of self.

my civilization is not even skin deep - it does not go deeper than my clothes.

Don't you ever mind, she asked suddenly, not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?

his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

There was money enough... but she asked so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. He thought of her as walking bare-footed through a stony waste. No one would understand her- no one would pity her- and he, who did both, was powerless to come to her aid.

Undine's white and gold bedroom, with sea-green panels and old rose carpet, looked along Seventy-second Street toward the leafless tree-tops of the Central Park. She went to the window, and drawing back its many layers of lace gazed eastward down the long brownstone perspective. Beyond the Park lay Fifth Avenue—and Fifth Avenue was where she wanted to be!

he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.