Punya

“ I did not suspect, before I became a householder, that the mere possession of property was capable of making a man an object of such unflagging interest to his fellow creatures. I find it very pleasing—the solicitude with which these newly-made acquaintances (the venders, agents, and other polite gentlemen) regard me, and attend upon me, and seek to gain my approval. It is sweet to be beloved. ”

“ But for whom was it written, unless it was for each one of us: “Hedge thy possession about with thorns, and bind up thy silver and gold, and make a door and a bar for thy mouth, and a yoke and a balance for thy words”? [6] Thy possession is thy mind, thy gold thy heart, thy silver thy speech: “The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in the fire.” [7] A good mind is also a good possession. And, further, a pure inner life is a valuable possession. ”

“ Another Form of the same Desire.—The desire of possession may be regarded, also, as a modification of the desire of power. That influence over others which power implies, and which is, to some extent, commanded by superiority of personal strength or prowess, by genius, by skill, by the various arts and address of life, or by the accident of birth and hereditary station, is still more directly and generally attainable, by another, and perhaps a shorter route—the possession of wealth. This, as the world goes, is the key that unlocks, the sceptre that controls, all things. ”

“ Our earthly possessions are, after all, but life-holdings, and the grace with which we part with them at the end of life’s journey shows the heart in its least disguised form. The moment of will-writing is a solemn one. The insight we get into the character of the testator is genuine and unvarnished. Property does not always bring with it comfort and happiness, and those who have to deal with wills find that it is frequently as difficult to dispose of one’s possessions as it is to acquire them. ”

“ Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they beget in your land: and they shall be your possession: and ye shall take them for an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; and they shall be your bondmen forever. ”

“ Such is human nature, at least my share of it;—though I shall think better of myself, if I have sense to stop now. If I have a wife, and that wife has a son—by any body—I will bring up mine heir in the most anti-poetical way—make him a lawyer, or a pirate, or—any thing. ”

“ If the good things of which thine house is full, which thou hast longed to possess, and feared to lose, could make answer to thee, would they not cry out to thee, As thou wishest to have us good, so do we also wish to have a good owner? ”

“ The disposition of a family property, even though it be one so small as mine, is, to my thinking, a matter which a man should not make in accordance with his own caprices,—or even with his own affections. ”

“ One day the merchant called his daughters to him and said, “My children, I find it will be necessary for me to go on a long journey. I am no longer a rich man, but I wish to bring home a gift to each one of you, so tell me what you would like to have.” ”

“ What is the best possession a human life can have? Judging from the efforts made to secure wealth, fame, and power, the answer would seem to be that they—wealth, fame, and power—are the best possessions any one can have. ”

“ Consider, child, if you can, what does a man possess? He has, I say, Property—all his own—which cannot be taken from him or shared with another—Property in his brain, his trade, his wit, his craft, his art, his skill, his invention, his enterprise, his quickness to grip an opportunity. Again, he has his wife and children—sometimes a very valuable Property: he has, besides, his memories, his knowledge, his experience, his thoughts, his hopes, his projects, and intentions: he has his past and he has his future: he has, or thinks he has, his inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven. ”

“ The adjectival expression of the idea of possession.—All the world over, a property is a possession; and persons, at least, may be said to be the owners of their attributes. Whatever may be the nature of words like mine and thine, the adjectival character of their Latin equivalents, meus and tuus, is undoubted.
The ideas of partition and possession merge into one another.—A man's spade is the possession of a man; a man's hand is the part of a man. ”

“ She recalled the happy days of her childhood, before her father, by the extraordinary and most unexpected bequest of a distant relative, became possessed of property to what extent she could form no idea. She knew that this relative had quarrelled with the heir-at-law, and left all to one he had never seen. ”

“ The Gift must be a first Gift, no one must have had earlier use of it, no one must even have had earlier chance of longing for it. You must be certain the possession is your very own—wherefore the giving in infancy. ”

“ But when you think of the earthly possessions which will be your inheritance, do not forget that they will be yours but for a while, that in due season they will pass from your grasp, and your portion will be where neither money, nor worldly position, nor any of those things which men value here, are of any account. ”

“ Until the day of your birth, which robbed me of your mother, I was unmindful of augmenting my patrimony and the dowry brought me by my wife; the moment I had a son, however, that sentiment of foresight, which becomes a sacred duty to a father, took possession of me, developing slowly into a love of economy, then into parsimony, and finally into avarice. ”

“ It is wonderful, this sudden possession, the possession rightly, even in all the conventional, in all that the weakling centuries dictate. No wonder that I am dazed. Ever as the world revolves, come new revelations of thought and of all existence. ”

“ I do not own a house, or a single foot of land, a horse, mule, carriage, or wagon, nor wife, nor child, but what the Lord gave me, and if He wants them, He can take them at His pleasure, whether He speaks for them, or takes them without speaking. ”

“ Yet hear me, friends! we have now to deal with another people, small and feeble when our forefathers first met with them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them. ”

“ The objects being here to be consider`d as the property of the person, we are apt to join them together, and place them in the same light. Suppose, therefore, a great and a small object to be related together; if a person be strongly related to the great object, he will likewise be strongly related to both the objects, consider'd together, because he is related to the most considerable part. ”

“ In a word, he was gaining for himself a priceless possession—a possession worth more to its owner than gold, or silver, or precious stones; a continual delight and never-failing comfort—a knowledge of good books. ”

“ There was a desire, as I was told by a member of the House of Commons, to infuse some new life into the "Lords" by the introduction of a limited number of life peers, men who did not desire or who had not the wealth to aspire to "founding a family." ”

“ I had been trained to believe that "a man's life (or a woman's) consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he or she) possesseth." It was a matter of family pride that none of my ancestors, on either side, had ever taken part in the mad race for wealth and luxury. ”

“ I have seen them very close, in birth and in death, in sickness and in health, in betrothal and in marriage, in poverty and in well-being, and all the time their one idea is property; to possess, to own, to provide a good portion for the daughter, to secure a good and well dot-ed wife for the son. Always property, ownership, possession, work, thrift, acquisition, individual gain. ”

“ Then growing to man’s estate, and some small practice of the law, I took a wife, by whom I have had many children; the keeping of us all being a great impoverishing to my estate, and the daily living of us all nothing but my daily industry. ”

“ Possession (here the author follows Paulus and Labeo in the Digest) is as when one’s feet are set upon a thing, when body naturally rests on body. To acquire possession is to begin to possess. Herein one considers both the fact and the right. The fact arises through ourselves or our representative. ”

“ Have you been saving more than one life?”
“Not more than one—a good deal less than one. Don’t let us get into a sentimental strain, pater. You are the chartered—ah, the chartered sentimentalist of the family. ”

“ As I do not intend to write a record of my family life, which with its abounding happiness—some great sorrows—successes and disappointments—must be a sacred thing, I shall only make such references to my family, or to those friends still happily with us, as may be necessary to my narrative. ”

“ And when, as in civilized life, the property acquired is of a kind not conducing to one order of gratifications, but is capable of ministering to all gratifications, the pleasure of acquiring property grows more distinct from each of the various pleasures subserved—is more completely differentiated into a separate emotion. ”

“ We all inherit, in a greater or less degree, the desire to possess our neighbour's goods; and, with the earliest development of the mind, comes the activity of that desire. It is seen in the child when he appropriates the plaything of another child, and in the so-called good and honest citizen when, in bargaining, he secures an advantage at the expense of his brother. ”

“ By it his whole property— (not so large as some of you might wish, but yet a goodly property for farmers like yourselves) —is to be divided this night, share and share alike, among such of his relatives as have found it convenient to be present here between the strokes of half-past seven and eight. If some of our friends have failed us through sloth, sickness or the misfortune of mistaking the road, they have our sympathy, but they can not have his dollars. ”

“ Now the poor man's father, Lord, the owner of much wealth and gold, treasures and granaries, who was residing in that town, had always and ever been thinking of the son he had lost fifty years ago, but he gave no utterance to his thoughts before others, and was only pining in himself and thinking: I am old, aged, advanced in years, and possess abundance of bullion, gold, money and corn, treasures and granaries, but have no son. ”

“ Each family has its pack-horse—perhaps a few families have two—carrying household goods. These are not so bulky as ours to-day, for pioneer life is simple, and the people have at most only what they need. ”

“ But if he sit down and consult the natural man—consult his own private feeling, and say, "Here is my poor wife, here are my children, and here is my farm, that I have earned with my own hands. I know how I came by my hard-earned property. ”

“ The great prosperity, the honor of the house, everything was foundering in a moment. Even her daughter might escape from her, and follow the infamous husband whom she adored in spite of his faults—perhaps because of his very faults—and might drag on a weary existence in a strange land, which would terminate in death. ”

“ The spare wealth of the family, stinted to spare it, is spent on this one youth. From the father to the daughters, all lay their bones to extraordinary work for him; the whole family is pinched in body that this one youth may go brave and full. ”

“ Each of these good people, it seems, lives in this hard world for no other end but to supply my wants. One of them is positive that he supplied my father with the necessaries of life before I was born. ”

“ Several may have sent similar gifts; but each is set out to the best possible advantage, with the name of the giver attached. And while the intrinsic value of each is not lost sight of, it is the loving thought of which it is the expression that is most prized. ”

“ In a thought or a wish a life, a drama, an epos.
There are inheritors, is it? by mystical generation
Heiring the wisdom and ripeness of spirits gone by; without labour
Owning what others by doing and suffering earn; what old men
After long years of mistake and erasure are proud to have come to,
Sick with mistake and erasure possess when possession is idle. ”

“ No family ought to be without it for it is at once cheap, valuable, and very interesting; containing matter compiled from all kinds of books, from all quarters of the globe, from all ages of the world, and in relation to every corporeal matter at all worthy of being remarked or remembered.—New Jersey Union. ”

“ So potent is this power exercised over the world by the gentle sway of manners that their possession is worthy the cultivation and care we put forth for the attainment of all gracious, pleasant things, and to their possessor is given the key to which all doors open. ”

“ The word possession itself has, in our use of it, a double significance. When we speak of a man “having a possession,” we may mean two things—either that he possesses, or else that he is possessed. A man with a possession of jealousy, or hatred, lust or covetousness, [Pg 5] has no real possession or control of those things, but is himself possessed or controlled by them, and so is rendered not stronger but weaker—subject to a master other than himself. ”

“ And certainly the presence of things in abundance, things empty and things vulgar and things absurd, as well as things convenient and useful, has produced the desire for the possession of things, the exaltation of the possession of things. ”

“ Whatever pleasure you may find in owning such an unremunerative piece of property you may enjoy without any fear of molestation, for I, as my father's sole heir, shall never lay claim to any share in it, and hereby authorize you to do with it as you think best. ”