Materialism Quotes

A woman can smell mink through six inches of lead.

The gentleman sees what is right while the small man sees what is profitable.

Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might be proud to call his own - but I wish to sell out

I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.

A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.

He who owns little is little owned.

The problem isn't materialism as such. Rather it is the underlying assumption that full satisfaction can arise from gratifying the senses alone. Unlike animals whose quest for happiness is restricted to survival and to the immediate gratification of sensory desires, we human beings have the capacity to experience happiness at a deeper level which, when achieved, can overwhelm unhappy experiences.

a fully belly is little worth where the mind is starved.

Not everything," he said. "Not the important things. My kids are safe. You're safe. That's all I really care about. This" - he said motioning - "is just stuff. Most of it can be replaced. It just takes time.

The avarice of the old: it's absurd to increase one's luggage as one nears the journey's end.

Who ever saw his old clothes, - his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

The Master said, “A true gentleman is one who has set his heart upon the Way. A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not even worth conversing with.” (Analects 4.9)

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.

It seems like a lot of people seek their peace in things. And most of us are not even satisfied with the things we have... we always want more.

Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.

Much of everyday life is filled with opportunities to be distracted. Our possessions... entertainment... cares and anxieties... and even the passionate desire and pursuit of things, some good and not so good, can keep our minds and hearts caught up in a flurry of activity.

Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.

Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

Fame or integrity: which is more important? Money or happiness: which is more valuable? Success or failure: which is more destructive? If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.

The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.

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.

If a man owns land,the land owns him.

The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die.

We wanted to more richly experience why we were alive, not just make a better life, and so people went in search of things. The great thing that came from those that time was to realize that there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late sixties and early sixties. We were going in search of something deeper.

The More we value things, the less we value ourselves

I don't need 15 houses. Owning real estate doesn't mean much to me. I don't like to think about things like that. I don't need 12 boats, or even the world's largest boat with a crew of 80. I'd have to take care of them, to worry about them. I get a lot more fun out of life without all the bells and whistles.

Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

What can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.

Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.

The trite objects of human efforts-possessions, superficial success, luxury-have always seemed contemptible to me.

What I know for sure: Having the best things is no substitute for having the best life. When you can let go of the desire to acquire, you know you are really on your way.

I am a poor mendicant. My earthly possessions consist of six spinning wheels, prison dishes, a can of goat's milk, six homespun loincloths and towels and my reputation, which cannot be worth much.

Bury my body and don't build any monument. Keep my hands out so the people know the one who won the world had nothing in hand when he died.

The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

Inner values like friendship, trust, honesty and compassion are much more reliable than money - they always bring happiness and strength.

What you possess in the world will be found at the day of your death to belong to someone else. But what you are will be yours forever.

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

Man does not live by bread alone. Many prefer self-respect to food.

A knight whose heart is set upon the Way, but who is ashamed of wearing shabby clothes and eating coarse food, is not worth calling into counsel.

The animal man lives in the senses. If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable; or if something happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses both his misery and his happiness begin and end.

You have found that you were more secure before you accumulated so much. See what greed has imposed on you: You have filled your house and now you fear burglars. You have hoarded money and lost sleep. See what greed has commanded you: "Do this!" And you did it.

There is a city in which you find everything you desire-handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind-all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.

Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.

What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?" Grandeur has but little," said Elinor, "but wealth has much to do with it." Elinor, for shame!" Said Marianne. "Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.

Success - To rise from the illusion of pursuit to the disillusion of possession.

The last suit that you wear, you don't need any pockets.

We have come to accept bigger and bigger things as meaning greater and greater efficiency, more and more prosperity and more and more freedom. The two do not go together of necessity.

I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.

If we were second class citizens we'd be driving old Cadillacs and living good. If we were first class we'd be driving a Rolls Royce.

Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.

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

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.

Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity-thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism.