Famous quotes containing the word possess:
“To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“At a certain age, we have already been struck by love; it no longer develops alone, according to its own mysteries and fateful laws while our hearts stand by startled and passive. We come to its assistance ... Recognizing one of its symptoms, we recall, we bring back to life the others. Since we possess its song engraved in its totality within us, we do not need for a woman to tell us the beginning—filled with admiration inspired by beauty—to find the continuation.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Old Drayton thought that a man that lived here, and would be a poet ... should have in him certain “brave, translunary things,” and a “fine madness” should possess his brain. Certainly it were as well, that he might be up to the occasion.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)