A Quote by William Boyd

We all possess, like it or not, the people we know, and are possessed by them in turn.

William Boyd

Quote Topics

Know Like People Possess Possessed Them Turn

Quote Author

William Boyd
British - Novelist
Born: March 7, 1952

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

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one. The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

Lois McMaster Bujold

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hinderances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them.

Baruch Spinoza

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. Or they enlarge a reality that is felt to be shrunk, hollowed out, perishable, remote. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images.

Susan Sontag

The best way to stay away from They is really simple. Stay with the people who have some passion. Stay with the people who know the truth. I like to find the They and turn them into We. I like to take the Theys and herd them. People that are skeptical, the Theys, I can bring them to We as much as I can.

Tony Robbins

We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn't generosity-it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.

Rod Serling

The problem with University degrees, particularly the more spectacular ones, is that people who possess them can fall into the trap of thinking people who don't have them don't know anything.

Robert Genn

We do not possess an 'ego.' We are possessed by the idea of one.

Wei Wu Wei

Love seeks not to possess, but to be possessed.

Robert Hugh Benson

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.