Quotes About Materialism

When I get a little money I buy books," he confessed to a friend. "If any is left, I buy food and clothes."13

Human societies are based on the human tendency to want things, and are geared to satisfying those wants: possessions or facilities to bring ease and personal satisfaction. The results are frequently disappointing, and always terminate in the embarrassing non sequitur of death.

In fact, I'd just like to own something. Everyone thinks I'm glamorous, rich and famous but all I've got is some recording equipment and a battered old BMW.

Anxiety creates its own treasures and they in turn beget further care. When we seek for security in possessions we are trying to drive out care with care, and the net result is the precise opposite of our anticipations. The fetters which bind us to our possessions prove to be cares themselves.

When one no longer knows what one owes oneself and others, where the sense for human quality and the strength to respect boundaries cease to exist, chaos is at the door. When for the sake of material comfort one tolerates impudence, one has already surrendered, there the floods of chaos have been permitted to burst the dam at the place where it was to be defended, and one becomes guilty of all that follows.

What a waste of time it is to take so much care of this body, feeding it the most succulent dishes, dressing it in the most fashionable clothes, and trying to make it look younger than it really is. The body has no other destination than the cemetery where it will be burned, buried, or fed to the birds.

Even when you find yourself in the best of situations, you never feel it is enough. You always want more. You give little thought to others' wishes and desires, and only want favorable circumstances for yourself. If you do the slightest favor for someone, you feel you have done something quite extraordinary. That you are so preoccupied with your own happiness and welfare, and neglect the welfare and happiness of others, is the reason you are wandering in samsara.

si nous ne parvenons pas à nous dégager des besoins les plus futiles, nous en voudrons toujours plus que nécessaire

nous avons de quoi nous vêtir et nous loger, mais nous aimerions tellement avoir des vêtements plus remarquables,

nous avons de quoi nous vêtir et nous loger, mais nous aimerions tellement avoir des vêtements plus remarquables, une demeure plus vaste, plus confortable.

It is foolish to hold tightly to material possessions. We do not own them, but they can own us.

The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of the soda can, which when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years." --Guido Sarducci

Crockery has been withdrawn from American culture below a certain level.

You shop in malls instead of mercados, you watch football instead of fútbol, you become another consumer in a giant machine that consumes consumers.

When I was three years old and in my mother's arms, she looked down at me and said, "Son, the way I'm taking care of you now, when you get old, always have a woman to take care of you like this." Dig this! All I'm goin' do is rest and dress, buy gasoline and lean. I'm goin' buy diamond rings and have the best of everything. I'm goin' pimp whores.

We don't need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.

Whether you buy a new TV, or car, (etc.) or any other "material" thing is often "immaterial" to God.

The important thing in life is not what you get, but what you throw out.

Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.

Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions.

A billion years or so into eternity, how many toys we accumulated during this life will not seem too terribly important.

That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes.

If you are attached to the things of this earth, you should give alms sufficient to enable you to punish your avarice by depriving yourself of all that is not absolutely necessary for life.

You spend the first part of your life collecting things ... and the second half getting rid of them.