. . . for though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world.
Philosophy. . . should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.
no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed
An idea discovered is much better possessed.
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.
And in that moment I possessed and lost the whole world and everything in it and was left with the feeling and the knowledge, which is love, that no matter how we give ourselves we always end up losing. That to love is to lose, the moment we agree to the bargain. And that, being human, we keep standing there wanting to lose more.
Cats don't need to be possessed; they're evil on their own.
What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?
The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I'm outside Ajay's newsagent's. I'm on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I'm massive on Handie's furniture shop, King's Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I've possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout.
The wealthy seldom possess wealth: oftener they are possessed by it.
He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!
All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,--an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.
The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.
My parents thought, 'Oh, my God! What's wrong with him? He's possessed or something. ' All of a sudden, I stood up and started saying my lines. From then on, that was it. I knew there was something special about the theater for me, something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself.
The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.
This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.
He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.
Love seeks not to possess, but to be possessed.
The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he didn't know he possessed.
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.