Margaret Mitchell Quotes

Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.

Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest; but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.

Anything you think you "must have" usually comes to own you.

People like to own things.

The things I own are sacred.

How many BMWs do you need? How many Rolex watches you gonna wear in your lifetime, for crying out loud? What is it about that kind of desire? I don't understand it.

L.A., for me, is a perfect microcosm of America - because it's so profligate, and so glamorous, and so anti-intellectual, finally.

I'm not a materialistic person at all, but I always want the next thing; I've got a nice toolbox, but I still want another set of spanners.

If you live for this world, you are in the junk business. It's all just premature junk.

I think Los Angeles certainly grew out and grew up, but I don't think it matured. It lost the appeal and the hunger and the beauty of its adolescence and went straight to a middle-aged ugly, overfed monster seeking mindless pleasure and being obsessively acquisitive. It's so materialistic. It grew up, but it didn't mature.

This drive to always want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all three ideas are untrue. Possessions only provide temporary happiness. Because things do not change, we eventually become bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better versions.

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

What is it about possessing things? Why do we feel the need to own what we love, and why do we become jerks when we do? We've all been there- you want something, to possess it. By possessing something you lose it. You finally win the girl of your dreams, the first thing you do is change her. The little things she does with her hair, the way she wears her clothes or the way she chews her gum. Pretty soon what you like, what you changed, what you don't like, blends together like a watercolor in the rain.

I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven, when I awoke, I spent that on a NECKLACE.

I honestly don't think that I am cool enough or important enough that anyone would care about what I am doing at all hours of the day like "I just had a latte from Starbucks and now I am going to Barney's. Love me some shoes!

Slasher Hathaway marks his territory by spending money. He might as well have pissed on her. It means nothing.

A man that simply loads himself down with possessions of which he has no actual need, when he dies slips out of them--as a little insect might slip out of some parasite shell into which it has ensconced itself--into the grave, and is forgotten.

Going to a junkyard is a sobering experience. There you can see the ultimate destination of almost everything we desired.

Possessions are usually diminished by possession.

If you want something, if you take it for your own, you'll always be taking it from someone else.

Ideally, nothing should be embraced by a consumer firmly, nothing should command a commitment till death do us part, no needs should be seen as fully satisfied, no desires considered ultimate. There ought to be a proviso 'until further notice' attached to any oath of loyalty and any commitment. It is but the volatility, the in-built temporality of all engagements that truly counts; it counts more than the commitment itself, which is anyway not allowed to outlast the time necessary for consuming the object of desire (or, rather, the time sufficient for the desirability of that object to wane).

I want to feel that I own things.

The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere hitching post of every star, lets every man lead a very enticing double life.

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.