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Ownership and Possession Quotes and Quotations
You got a harem of seventy girls, you don't get to know any of them very well. It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. Ownership is to fear (tener es temer) Broad acres are a patent of nobility; and no man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is 4000 miles deep; and that is a very handsome property. The landscape should belong to the people who see it all the time. Whatever is not nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry loose is not nailed down. I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin. Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or on being. The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it is intolerable. Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership. Keep a thing seven years and you will find a use for it. You must lose a fly to catch a trout. He who wants a rose must respect the thorn. A man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for. I feel when people say 'bigger and better' they should say 'bigger and badder'. People are so overwhelmed with the prestige of their instruments that they consider their personal judgement of hardly any account. Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self? |