The lust of avarice as so totally seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them than they possess their wealth.
Pliny the Elder

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
Stephen Vizinczey

The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.
Arthur Koestler

The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men.
William Godwin

THE rich possess ample means to realize any theory they may chuse to adopt in the education of their children, regardless of the cost; but it is not so with him whose Subsistence is derived from industry.
Joseph Lancaster

The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.
Herbie Hancock

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
Voltaire

The violinist must possess the poet's gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within.
Yehudi Menuhin

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.
Alice Walker

There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.
Gail Sheehy

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.
Billy Graham

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
Napoleon Hill

There is one Quality, which has somewhat so heavenly in it; that by so much the more we are possess'd of it, by so much the more we draw nearer to the Great Author of Nature.
Eliza Haywood

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage

They that possess the prince possess the laws.
John Dryden

Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?
Frank Herbert

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything.
Morihei Ueshiba

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
Salman Rushdie