Materialism Quotes

“The soul of this man is his clothes.”

“We will have rings and things and fine array”

“Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.”

“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.”

“Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind, more than quick words, do move a woman's mind.”

“When a man becomes cultivated, he develops a new respect for who he is. This causes him to be ashamed of his past identification of himself and others according to things, i.e. property.”

“Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.”

“A man in a cave or in a camp, a nomad, will die with no more estate than the wolf or the horse leaves.”

“As long as civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.”

“Our expenses are all for conformity.”

“Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit.”

“And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.”

“Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.”

“A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life.”

“Wealth, taste and leisure can bring many things but they do not bring happiness.”

“We shouldn't want things and we should be satisfied with no thing. Furthermore, we don't deserve whatever we would like to have in our lives because we think we have been bad, we feel insufficient, or somebody else has convinced us that we're not worthy.”

“The whole constitution of property on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading.”

“Whatever posessions and objects of its desires the lower self may obtain, it hangs on to them, refusing to let them go out of greed for more, or out of fear of poverty and need.”

“Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.”

“People are distracted by objects of desire, and afterwards repent of the lust they've indulged, because they have indulged with a phantom and are left even farther from Reality than before. Your desire for the illusory is a wing, by means of which a seeker might ascend to Reality. When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame and that fantasy flees. Preserve the wing and don't indulge such lust, so that the wing of desire may bear you to Paradise. People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion.”

“You can't accumulate anything, because anything you get you have to give away. We all know this. We watch our bodies go through the aging process. We know we came in here with nothing, and we know we're going to leave with nothing. There's nothing to own. There's nothing to get. The only thing you can do with your life is give it away. The best, happiest moments in your life are always when you're giving something away.”

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

“If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more.”

“Wealth and poverty are seen for what they are. It begins to be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, and poverty consists in feeling poor. The rich, as we reckon them, and among them the very rich, in a true scale would be found very indigent and ragged.”

“It makes no difference where you go, there you are. And it makes no difference what you have, there’s always more to want. Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.”