Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.
Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.
As there is no worldly gain without some loss so there is no worldly loss without some gain.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.
It all depends on whether you have things, or they have you.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
Junk is something you keep for years and then throw out two weeks before you need it.
Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.
Materialism is the only form of distraction from true bliss.
Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.
Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.
Oh, what a void there is in things.
Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.
Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.
Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.
Production and consumption are the nipples of modern society. Thus suckled, humanity grows in strength and beauty; rising standard of living, all modern conveniences, distractions of all kinds, culture for all, the comfort of your dreams.
Somebody said to me, ''But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.'' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ''Now, let's write a swimming pool.''
The best things in life aren't things.
The essence of worldliness is exclusion of God.