Abbey Lincoln Quotes

What belongs to someone, belongs to someone.

No one owns anything. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them. And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point wasting my time looking after things that aren't mine.

There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property.

You can never lose anything that really belongs to you, and you can't keep that which belongs to someone else.

A relation is formed betwixt every man and the fruits of his own labour, the very thing we call property, which he himself is sensible of, and of which every other is equally sensible. Yours and mine are terms in all languages, familiar among savages, and understood even by children. This is a fact, which every human creature can testify.

The things that are ours cannot be given away, or taken away, or lost. We break our hearts, all of us, trying to keep things that do not belong to us — and to which we have no right.

I want to feel that I own things.

There is, of course, a difference between what one seizes and what one really possesses.

I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

What is true belongs to me!

If you ever want something badly, let it go. If it comes back to you, then it's yours forever. If it doesn't, then it was never yours to begin with.

Property is proper to man.

If something is mine, then I want to keep it.

That which you look upon as your own you may keep only so long as the world allows you to own it.

Possessions are usually diminished by possession.

Property isn't theft: it's nothing.

Those two fatal words, Mine and Thine.

Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.

Property is theft. Nobody "owns" anything. When you die, it all stays here.

What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing.

How folks lay claim to a loved one is they give you a name of their own. They figure to label you as their property.

Oh Jesus God we did belong to each other. He was mine.

I recover my property wherever I find it.

Adam didn't look at him when he said, finally, "It doesn't matter how you say it. It's what you wanted, in the end. All your things in one place, all under your roof. Everything you own right where you can see.