Quotes About Possessions

There is absolutely nothing that can replace money in the things that money does, but regarding the rest of the things in the world, money is absolutely useless.

It's great to have things as long as our things don't have us.

Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but rather by what one owns.

You'll never see a hearse towing a U-Haul.

I don't envy him. I think he's made too much money. The more material things you have, the more you have to lose.

We go on multiplying our conveniences only to multiply our cares. We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties.

There is also a fable told by Phaedrus, about how Simonides was once a victim of shipwreck. As the other passengers scurried about the sinking ship trying to save their possessions, the poet stood idle. When questioned, he declared, mecum mea sunt cuncta: everything that is me is with me.

Sometimes Felix seemed like an empty house, but he wasn't really. It was just that he kept all his possessions in a locked room. And when, once every few years, the door cracked open for a moment, she felt strangely moved to see herself within.

The endowment effect has obvious applications to quitting behavior. Selling something you own is the equivalent of quitting; you are quitting your ownership. Not selling something you own is a form of persistence. When you are deciding whether to sell your wine, or your car, or your house, you are choosing whether or not to persist in owning those things.

The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don't. Quests to faraway places or shopping sprees are no longer necessary. All you have to do is eliminate what you don't need by confronting each of your possessions properly.

I hate belongings. I hate clutter. It really bothers me because I can't think properly. If you've got distractions in front of you, your mind goes nuts.

People form strong attachments to their properties.

Property is a nuisance.

Neither can men, by the same principles, be considered as lands, goods, or houses, among possessions. It is necessary that all property should be inferiour to its possessor. But how does the slave differ from his master, but by chance?

Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions.

For centuries, prosperity has been easy to define in material terms. At a personal level, by how much one earns; how much one has.

We are, each one of us, not just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the things we call our own.

When I was 7, my proudest possession would have been my bookshelf 'cause I had alphabetized all of the books on my bookshelf.

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in Old Maid; the player who is finally with it has lost.

He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real.

Life is what we conceive it to be. For the farmer who considers his field to be everything, the field is an empire. For a Caesar whose empire is still not enough, the empire is a field. The poor man who possesses an empire, the great man a field. All that we truly possess are our own sensations; it is in them, rather than in what they sense, that we must base our life's reality. This has nothing to do with anything.

The creation of something complete and whole, be it good or bad – and if it's never entirely good, it's very often not all bad – yes, the creation of something complete seems to stir in me above all a feeling of envy. A completed thing is like a child; although imperfect like everything human, it belongs to us like our own children.

I'm not a big car person. I'm not into lots of fancy things.

There's no point in having a bunch of stuff that you're not going to wear. Why not just have a few things that you actually like?