#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.”

“Softly and kindly remind yourself, ''I cannot own anything.'' It is a valuable thought to keep in mind as you struggle to improve your financial picture, worry about investments, and plan how to acquire more and more. It is a universal principle which you are part of. You must release everything when you truly awaken. Are you letting your life go by in frustration and worry over not having enough? If so, relax and remember that you only get what you have for a short period of time. When you awaken you will see the folly of being attached to anything.”

“Money won't make you happy... but everybody wants to find out for themselves.”

“Ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet--nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather.”

“Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.”

“We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are thevictims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment.”

“Where is the peace in more is better? This idea keeps us exclusively in the physical domain. You can replace the more is better belief with an inner serenity that doesn't need more to be acceptable. There is no peace in more is better, and if it doesn't being peace to your life, then it's something you want to discard.”

“Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye.What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high,And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher,Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.”

“Our age is very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, and you shall find it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency of coffee and toast, with a daily newspaper; a well glazed parlor, with marbles, mirrors and centre-table; and the excitement of a few parties and a few rides in a year.”

“For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.”

“We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly - the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.”

“Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.”

“I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,Those undreamt accidents that have made meSeeing that Fame has perished this long while,Being but a part of ancient ceremonyNotorious, till all my priceless thingsAre but a post the passing dogs defile.”

“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition”

“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”

“Hundreds and hundreds of beautiful horses in the parade and a man without a silver saddle is a vagrant.”

“The squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.”

“I have a suit in my closet with the pocket cut out. It's a reminder to me that I won't be taking anything with me. The last suit I wear won't need any pockets.”

“Money, success, and the external trappings have chased after me wherever I have gone. These things show up in my life, and I just keep passing them on. I don't hang onto them myself at all. I have very few needs like that.”

“Comfort and luxury are usually the chief requirements of life for your ego - its top priorities tend to be accumulations, achievements, and the approval of others.”

“As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.”

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

“All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.”

“Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day.”

“Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.”

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