A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
Thomas Browne

A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.
Alexander Smith

An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment.
Felix Adler

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Pliny the Elder

Animals are in possession of themselves; their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14 or December 25, September 11 may seem full of significance to some people, while to other people it is just another day.
J. M. Coetzee

As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.
Susan Sontag

At last the best of artisans ordained that that creature to whom He had been able to give nothing proper to himself should have joint possession of whatever had been peculiar to each of the different kinds of being.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

At my age, I realize that my most precious possession is time, and I've got too much unfinished work to do to spend even a minute talking about myself.
Benny Carter

At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it.
Yukio Mishima

Base Ball, to be played thoroughly, requires the possession of muscular strength, great agility, quickness of eye, readiness of hand, and many other faculties of mind and body that mark the man of nerve.
Henry Chadwick

But when I direct I become possessed, a possession I've never quite understood.
Ted Kotcheff

Clothes should look as if a woman was born into them. It is a form of possession, this belonging to one another.
Geoffrey Beene

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
Andre Gide

Considered now as a possession, one may define culture as the residuum of a large body of useless knowledge that has been well and truly forgotten.
Albert J. Nock

Desire then is the invasion of the whole self by the wish, which, as it invades, sets going more and more of the psychical processes; but at the same time, so long as it remains desire, does not succeed in getting possession of the self.
Samuel Alexander

Disarm, disarm. The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
Julia Ward Howe

Dissatisfaction with possession and achievement is one of the requisites to further achievement.
John Hope

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Each of us have things and thoughts and descriptions of an amazing universe in our possession that kings in the 17th Century would have gone to war to possess.
Kary Mullis