Possess

Famous quotes containing the word possess:

“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)

“Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,—the sweet, without the other side,—the bitter.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“I had a consuming ambition to possess a miller’s thumb. I believe I have never since wanted anything more desperately than I wanted my right thumb to be flattened as my father’s had become, during his earlier years of a miller’s life.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)