The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
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It is extraordinary how the house and the simplest possessions of someone who has been left become so quickly sordid. Even the stain on the coffee cup seems not coffee but the physical manifestation of one's inner stain, the fatal blot that from the beginning had marked one for ultimate aloneness.
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The fact that we don't know this man, isn't important really. Cause his experience is our experience, and his fate is our fate. Vani tass, vani tatum, et omni i vani tass, says the preacher. All is vanity I think that's a pretty good epitaph for all of us. When we're stripped of all our worldly possessions and all our fame, family, friends, we all face death alone. But it's that solitude in death that's our common bond in life. I know it's ironic, but that's just the way things are. Vani tass, vani tatum, et omni i vani tass. Only when we understand all is vanity, only then, it isn't.
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Americans become unhappy and vicious because their preoccupation with amassing possessions obliterates their loneliness. This is why production in America seems to be on such an endless upward spiral: every time we buy something we deepen our emotional deprivation and hence our need to buy something.
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There are only two kinds of freedom in the world; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk who renounces possessions.
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All that the hand of man can uprear, is either overturned by the hand of man, or at length by standing and continuing consumed: as if there were a secret opposition in Fate (the unevitable decree of the Eternal) to control our industry, and countercheck all our devices and proposing. Possessions are not enduring, children lose their names. . . .
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All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: 'Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?'
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Make wisdom your provision for the journey from youth to old age, for it is a more certain support than all other possessions.
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Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.
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The real danger from advertising is that it helps to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious non-material possessions the confidence in the existence of meaningful purposes of human activity and respect for the integrity of man.
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Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old.
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Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?
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Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.
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I don't care what Aeryn says. You certainly look dead to me. I don't know your customs for these situations, not that I care. So I'll give you the Hynerian Ceremony of Passage. John Crichton, valued friend. Now wait a minute. Valued friend's a bit of a stretch. John Crichton, unwelcome shipmate. May you have safe transport to the hallowed realm. Actually, not our hallowed realm. That's for Hynerians. Go find your own hallowed realm. With the Ceremony of Passage completed, I declare you officially dead, and claim all your possessions for myself.
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Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men
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Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men?
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A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs...
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In order to form correct habits, we should seek the company of persons of sound moral and religious influence. We should constantly bear in mind that we may be fitting to inhabit the heavenly courts. The precious hours of probation are granted that we may remove every defect from the character; and we should seek to do this, not only that we may obtain the future life, but that we may be useful here. Young men and women should regard a good character as a capital of more value than gold or silver or stocks. It will be unaffected by panics and failures, and will bring rich returns when earthly possessions shall be swept away.
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You wake up in the morning, and your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.
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The wise man carries his possessions within him.
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Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into th...
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The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
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I shall always esteem it not much to live in a city where the laws do less than men, because that fatherland is desirable where possessions and friends can be securely enjoyed, not where they can be easily taken from you, and friends for few of thems
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Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.
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You wake up in the morning, and your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of un-manufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.
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A child's appetite for new toys appeal to the desire for ownership and appropriation: the appeal of toys comes to lie not in their use but in their status as possessions.
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We just came out with empty possessions and some untimely turnovers in the fourth quarter. That gave them a separation we never caught up to. We gave ourselves a chance, we just couldn't get it done at the end. We put forth maximum effort. They (Spurs) are obviously a championship team.
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Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions: and has often, ...
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The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.
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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.
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