Quotes About Materialism

Prayer is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. How to get things from God occupies most [books].

This doctrine of the material efficacy of prayer reduces the Creator to a cosmic bellhop of a not very bright or reliable kind.

We impoverish God in our minds when we say there must be answers to our prayers on the material plane the biggest answers to our prayers are in the realm of the unseen.

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

If I am identified with my relationship, with my house, or with my money, I am doomed to suffer.

The newly rich lost their balance and their stolidity, becoming as giddy and frivolous and aggressive as the worst.

Renunciation simply means a state of un-attachment. A big house and a new car should be enjoyed to their fullest so long as we accept them as things that can and will go away. We never really own anything; we hold title, rent, lease, use, and borrow things during our short visit here. Impermanence is just another name for perfection.

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.

Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise, he degrades and simplifies the client.

I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,My gay apparel for an almsman's gown.

That smooth-fac'd gentleman, tickling Commodity,Commodity, the bias of the world.

Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on 's are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come; unbutton here.

Saint-seducing gold.

We go to gain a little patch of groundThat hath in it no profit but the name.

The way you buy has a lot to do with the way you worship and who you worship and what you worship.

The economy as it is currently structured would grind to a halt if we ever looked at our stuff and simply declared, "It is enough. I am happy with what I have.

And that new Cadillac she came up in must have cost a bundle. Ten, twelve thousand, at least. Maybe more.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The world is too much with us.

getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ~ but like lemmings running headlong to the sea, we are oblivious.

It's easy to be overwhelmed by our desires for material things, but the fact is, most of us know what we truly value. Sometimes we just need a little reminder.

But these were only things. In return for them the wasicu wanted you to relinquish your own genius, which was not of things but of the spirit. From

Anything that exceeds our need becomes worldly, "Egyptian," something of Pharaoh, and it frustrates us from the economy of God's purpose....Our living and our existence depend on the provision from the heavenly source, not on the supply from the world.

According to my experience, I can testify that both riches and poverty pass away, but God abides. Whether we are rich or poor, God is.