A Quote by Sydney J. Harris

We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.

Sydney J. Harris

Quote Topics

Able Only Otherwise Our Possess Possessed Possessions Renounce Simply Truly

Quote Author

Sydney J. Harris
American - Journalist
September 14, 1917 - December 8, 1986

Being 'poor in spirit' (a Christian virtue) means being detached from things - being able to possess goods without being possessed by them. It meansputting people ahead of possessions - and seeing material things only as instruments for serving God and the needs of others.

James Stenson

We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.

Simone Weil

Possessions. The very word is potent - suggestive as it is of ownership both material and erotic. To possess. Possession. Possessed.

Hamish Bowles

It is easier to renounce worldly possessions than it is to renounce the love of them

Walter Hilton

To be unattached is not to renounce the world. If you renounce the world you are attached to the world; otherwise why should you renounce it? What is the point in renouncing it if you are not attached to it? Only attachment renounces. If you are really non-attached there is no question of any renunciation.

Rajneesh

Only what we have lost forever do we possess forever. Only when we have drunk from the river of darkness can we truly see. Only when our legs have rotted off can we truly dance. As long as there is death, there is hope

Brother Theodore

To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them. This is the only way that you will be truly rich.

Muhammad Ali

In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.

Max Lerner

To possess money is very well; it may be a valuable servant; to be possessed by it is to be possessed by the devil, and one of the meanest and worst kind of devils.

Tryon Edwards

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.

Susan Sontag

No longer possessed by possessions, we may become open enough to become possessed by God.

David Adam

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Our possessions don't own us any more, because we don't possess them.

Dan Davis

Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.

Peace Pilgrim

We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, drastic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality. To know God, you only need to renounce one thing - your sense of division from God