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When I behold what pleasure is Pursuit,
What life, what glorious eagerness it is,
Then mark how full Possession falls from this,
How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit,--
I am perplext, and often stricken mute.
Wondering which attained the higher bliss,
The wing'd insect, or the chrysalis
It thrust aside with unreluctant foot.
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Source: Sonnet--Pursuit and Possession
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As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich;
as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
Author: Bible
Source: II Corinthians (ch. VI, v. 10)
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Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is
thine eye evil, because I am good?
Author: Bible
Source: Matthew (ch. XX, v. 15)
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For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even
that which he hath.
Author: Bible
Source: Matthew (ch. XXV, v. 29)
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That possession was the strongest tenure of the law.
Author: Bidpai (Pilpay)
Source: The Cat and the Two Birds (chap. v, fable iv)
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Exclusive property is a theft against nature.
[Fr., La propriete exclusive est un vol dans la nature.]
Author: Bidpai (Pilpay)
Source: The Cat and the Two Birds (chap. v, fable iv)
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When we have not what we love, we must love what we have.
[Fr., Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime,
Il faut aimer ce que l'on a.]
Author: Roger de Bussy-Rabutin (de Bussy)
Source: Lettre a Mme. de Sevigne
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I die,--but first I have possess'd,
And come what may, I have been bless'd.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: The Giaour (l. 1,114)
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Britannia needs no bulwarks
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain wave,
Her home is on the deep.
Author: Thomas Campbell
Source: Ye Mariners of England
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Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the
English that of the sea, to the Germans that of--the air!
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Source: Essays--Richter
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This is the truth as I see it, my dear,
Out in the wind and the rain:
They who have nothing have little to fear,
Nothing to lose or to gain.
Author: Madison Julius Cawein
Source: The Bellman
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What is dishonorably got, is dishonorably squandered.
[Lat., Male parta, male dilabuntur.]
Author: Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Source: Philippicoe (II, 27)
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Ah, yet, e'er I descend to th' grave,
May I a small House and a large Garden have.
And a few Friends, and many Books both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too.
And since Love ne'er will from me flee,
A mistress moderately fair,
And good as Guardian angels are,
Only belov'd and loving me.
Author: Abraham Cowley
Source: The Wish (st. 2)
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Of a rich man who was mean and niggardly, he said, "That man does
not possess his estate, but his estate possesses him."
Author: Laertius Diogenes
Source: Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Bion, III)
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Property has its duties as well as its rights.
Author: Thomas Drummond
Source: Letter to the Tipperary Magistrates
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My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Author: Robert Lee Frost
Source: Mending Wall
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It may be said of them [the Hollanders], as of the Spaniards,
that the sun never sets upon their Dominions.
Author: Thomas Gage
Source: New Survey of the West Indies--Epistle Dedicatory, London, 1648
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For what one has in black and white,
One can carry home in comfort.
[Ger., Denn was man schwarz auf weiss besitzt,
Kann man getrost nach Hause tragen.]
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Source: Faust (I, 4, 42)
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The proud daughter of that monarch to whom when it grows
[elsewhere] the sun never sets.
[Lat., Altera figlia
Di quel monarea a cui
Ne anco, quando annotta, il Sol tramonta.]
Author: Giambattista Guarini
Source: Pastor Fido, on the marriage of the Duke of Savoy with Catherine of Austria
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Wouldst thou both eat thy cake and have it?
Author: George Herbert
Source: The Church--The Size
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Possession means to sit astride the world
Instead of having it astride of you.
Author: Charles Kingsley
Source: Saint's Tragedy (I, 4)
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It is said, that the thing you possess is worth more than two you
may have in the future. The one is sure and the other is not.
[Fr., Un tiens vaut, ce dit-on, mieux que deux tu l'auras.
L'un est sur, l'autre ne l'est pas.]
Author: Jean de la Fontaine
Source: Fables (V, 3)
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The English, a spirited nation, claim the empire of the sea; the
French, a calmer nation, claim that of the air.
[Fr., Les Anglais, nation trop fiere
S'arrogent l'empire des mers;
Les Francais, nation legere,
S'emparent de celui des airs.]
Author: Louis XVIII
Source: said in 1783 when he was Comte de Provence during period of Montgolfier aeronautical experiments
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Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession,
many.
Author: James Russell Lowell
Source: Among My Books--New England Two Centuries Ago
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Cleon hath ten thousand acres,--
Ne'er a one have I;
Cleon dwelleth in a place,--
In a cottage I.
Author: Charles Mackay
Source: Cleon and I
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