Quotes About Possessions

The Buddha and his monks and nuns practiced voluntary poverty. They owned only three robes, one bowl, and one water filter. Are we able to live simply, content with just what we need? Or are our religious institutions simply building and acquiring more and more?

The world at large does not judge us by who we are and what we know; it judges us by what we have.

We think that the more we have, the happier we will be. We never know what tomorrow might bring, so we collect and save as much as we can. This means we need a lot of money, so we gradually start judging people by how much money they have.

Don't ask me why, but it always feels intrusive to look at other people's junk.

When we live generously, joy is ours because we invest more in people than possessions.

Each of us have things and thoughts and descriptions of an amazing universe in our possession that kings in the 17th Century would have gone to war to possess.

What might we aspire to instead, if not more possessions? 'Wherever and whenever we are excessive in our lives it is the sign of an as yet unknown deprivation,' argues the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. 'Our excesses are the best clue we have to our own poverty, and our best way of concealing it from ourselves.'72 When it comes to consumerism, perhaps the poverty that we aim to conceal lies in our neglected relationships

With all the hundreds of dresses and shoes I have, it would be an absolute crime if I don't have a little girl. I have a whole room at home filled with my stage wear.

Genuine mental health would involve a balanced interplay of both modes of experience, a way of life in which one's identification with the ego is playful and tentative rather than absolute and mandatory, while the concern with material possessions is pragmatic rather than obsessive.

Men hold two views of what happiness consists in, viz, having, and doing. To possess much, or to do some great thing, constitutes the sum of human blessedness according to popular theory.

Americans love the story of the immigrant who comes through Ellis Island with no possessions but struggles to success and happiness. It is the story that most defines us, and we tell it to ourselves over and over. But for the real immigrants, each story was different, and the happiness of the ending changed with every telling.

Our recent research indicates that an absence of warmth, acceptance, and support characterizes the early family life of many hoarders, perhaps leading them to form strong emotional attachments to possessions.

Invariably, people who suffer from hoarding problems fail to maintain even the most rudimentary organization of their stuff—but not from lack of effort. Like Irene, most have spent countless hours trying to organize their possessions, with little success. Deficits in executive functions such as planning, categorization, organization, and attention leave them lost amid a sea of things, unable to figure out what to do next.

Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always.

Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always." - Mixtli (Aztec)

Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always." - Mixtli (Aztec)

Oh. Sorry. I just kinda have a thing for cabinets. And chests. And caskets, trunks, crates, cartons... all kinds of boxes, I guess.

A rich man's wealth is not in the amount of lands and materials he holds, but in the measure of his consciousness.

If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.

Why do money and possessions so rarely bring the happiness we expect? Because they often distance us from one another, rather than bringing us closer, emphasizing status gaps, not narrowing them. And, finally, what causes much of life's most agonizing pain? This, too, is related to relationships—those we lose, fail to maintain, or that become one-sided or abusive.

The path of self-realisation is the most difficult. -We acquire a sense of worth either by realising our talents, or by keeping busy, or by identifying ourselves with something apart from us - be it a cause, a leader, a group, possessions, and the like. Of the three, the path of self-realisation is the most difficult. It is taken when other avenues to a sense of worth are more or less blocked.

Maybe people don't prize possessions now like they did in the premillenium. How could they? All their money goes into the Net. For games, or business, or television—things that come over the wires.

In portaging from one river to another, Wabanakis had to carry their canoes and all other possessions. Everyone knew the value of traveling light and understood that it required leaving some things behind. Nothing encumbered movement more than fear, which was often the most difficult burden to surrender.

Al trasladarse de un río a otro, los wabanakis tenían que acarrear sus canoas y el resto de sus posesiones. Todos conocían el valor de viajar ligero y comprendían que ello requería dejar atrás algunas cosas. El miedo, con frecuencia la carga más difícil de abandonar, era lo que más entorpecía el movimiento.