Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

A lot of people are obsessed with their possessions, but that's not right. It's OK to own a lot of things as long as you're willing to share them.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

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

In no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States.

The opposite of consumption isn't thrift. It's generosity.

If we were to gain God's perspective, even for a moment, and were to look at the way we go through life accumulating and hoarding and displaying our things, we would have the same feelings of horror and pity that any sane person has when he views people in an asylum endlessly beating their heads against the wall.

The whole problem with the world today: private property. If no one owned anything, it would be a lot better. There's even an entire industry devoted to keeping an eye on other people's stuff. This is how stupid it's got. If you decide to get rid of a lot of your stuff, you can give it to a thrift shop or to Goodwill.

The opposite of consumption is not thrift - it is generosity.

Material possessions, in themselves, are good. We would not survive for long without money, clothing and shelter. We must eat in order to stay alive. Yet if we are greedy, if we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, then we make our possessions into a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! But this is to make possessions into a false god. Instead of bringing life, they bring death.

To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.

The world makes us look towards ourselves, our possessions, our desires.The Gospel invites us to be open to others, to share with the poor.

Those who have much are often greedy. Those who have little always share.

A willingness to share our possessions with one another is a very important aspect of true biblical community.

Sharing's only fun when it's not your stuff.

It’s hard, in America, not to equate ‘happiness’ with ‘things’.

Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.

The more stitches, the less riches.

While generosity may be the antidote for the dizzying effects of wealth, your appetite for more may function as an antidote against God-honoring generosity. Your appetite for more stuff, status, and security has the potential to quash your efforts to be generous. And that's a problem.

Life's too short for minimalism.

A certain degree of physical harmony and comfort is necessary, but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance instead of a help. Therefore the ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them seems to be a delusion and a snare.

Things, things, things. Always more things, and success is seen as the abundance of things.

A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country…. Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. MORE IS GOOD. MORE IS GOOD. We repeat it--and have it repeated to us--over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.

It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.