Not About Material Things Quotes & Sayings

The paradox of soul-satisfaction is this: When I die to myself, my soul comes alive. God says the wrong approach to soul thirst is through human achievement and material wealth. So soul-satisfaction is not about acquiring the right things but about acquiring the right soul. It is not something you buy, but something you receive freely from God. Hear these great words of the prophet Isaiah: "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and [your soul] will delight in the richest of fare." And it will be satisfied. — John Ortberg

Doing the same things you did when the economy was good is not good enough. You will have to put more coals on the fire in a poor economy to get the same heat you received in a good economy. You must give more energy, more thought, more service, and get into positive thinking material more frequently. Become more selective about who you spend time with. Love a little more, hate a little less. Think about it. You can progressively move on an upward path toward any goal. The choice is yours as to who or what controls you! — Bob Proctor

This entire ordeal taught me a valuable lesson. People are important-not things. I was no longer keeping up with the Joneses, material things or lots of money; that mattered very little to me. Life isn't about having, is about being. — Silvia Corradin

Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea - whether it's about politics or sports - what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can't stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology - rigid and unyielding. — Dan Ariely

Thoughts and ideas are not phantoms. They are real things. Although intangible and immaterial, they are factors in bringing about changes in the realm of tangible and material things. — Ludwig Von Mises

Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions. — Ludwig Von Mises

That's where we start making changes From the deepest and softest.
It's not the world that we needed to change It is the people who inhabit the world. It's not machines that we need to change. It is the people who use those machines. Even with people we can start the change from the softer things such as the way we breathe, and the way we feel about or toward other people and other living beings. These soft parts shape Our behaviors and our choices, both on a personal and a global scale. In this respect, they are fundamental, more so than any material changes. — Ilchi Lee

It is astonishing that centuries of biblical scholarship have miscast these words as an appeal by Jesus to put aside "the things of this world" - taxes and tributes - and focus one's heart instead on the only things that matter: worship and obedience to God. Such an interpretation perfectly accommodates the perception of Jesus as a detached, celestial spirit wholly unconcerned with material matters, a curious assertion about a man who not only lived in one of the most politically charged periods in Israel's history, but who claimed to be the promised messiah sent to liberate the Jews from Roman occupation. — Reza Aslan

The whole point of education is that it should give a man abstract and eternal standards, by which he can judge material and fugitive conditions. If the citizen is to be a reformer, he must start with some ideal which he does not obtain merely by gazing reverently at the unreformed institutions. And if any one asks, as so many are asking: 'What is the use of my son learning all about ancient Athens and remote China and medieval guilds and monasteries, and all sorts of dead or distant things, when he is going to be a superior scientific plumber in Pimlico?' the answer is obvious enough. 'The use of it is that he may have some power of comparison, which will not only prevent him from supposing that Pimlico covers the whole planet, but also enable him, while doing full credit to the beauties and virtues of Pimlico, to point out that, here and there, as revealed by alternative experiments, even Pimlico may conceal somewhere a defect. — G.K. Chesterton

We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consumerism needs children who do not stay attached to their toys for very long and learn to expect the next round of presents as soon as possible. When consumerism succeeds, our attachments are shallow, easily broken, so we can move on to the next thing we're supposed to get. Being a good consumer means desiring new things, not cherishing old ones. And the new things you're supposed to desire are not always material things. Spirituality is now a consumerist enterprise, too. — Phillip Cary

One does not dislike the half of everything. You bore me, you young people, when you talk about one sex or the other, as if they were separate things. There is only one human entity and that is a man and a woman. The man is the silhouette, the woman is the detail. The one often spoils or makes the other. But apart they are so much material. Don't be a fool. — Margery Allingham

Get rid of all that is unnecessary. Wabi-sabi means treading lightly on the planet and knowing how to appreciate whatever is encountered, no matter how trifling, whenever it is encountered. [ ... ] In other words, wabi-sabi tells us to stop our preoccupation with success
wealth, status, power, and luxury
and enjoy the unencumbered life. Obviously, leading the simple wabi-sabi life requires some effort and will and also some tough decisions. Wabi-sabi acknowledges that just as it is important to know when to make choices, it is also important to know when not to make choices: to let things be. Even at the most austere level of material existence, we still live in a world of things. Wabi-sabi is exactly about the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from freedom of things. — Leonard Koren

I study everything that I do to become better all the time at my craft. The beauty for me about being an artist is that the dream will never die because I'm not obsessed with material things and don't care about the money and don't care about the attention of the public but only the love of my fans. For me it's about keeping the dream alive of how much more devoted, how much more honest, how much better of an artist can I become? That's the only fear that I ever have, that the dream will die. — Lady Gaga

Real poverty is when hunger pangs force from my mind all thoughts but those of food. Real poverty is when the children are not dressed warmly enough for winter. Real poverty is when the housing we can afford is not adequate to the needs of our families. On the other hand, real poverty is - equally - when I have eaten so much that I am uncomfortable, and again, my thoughts center on food. Or when I have so many clothes that I have to spend a lot of mental energy making choices among them or finding ways to store them. Or when, regardless of my living conditions, I am discontent and brooding about how to have more. Real poverty is when material things are uppermost and pressing - whether because we have too few or too many of them. It is poverty, because the human mind and spirit are made for higher things, worthier pursuits. — Maxine Hancock

Listing rights generally involves enumerating things you may do without interference (the right to free speech) or may not be done to you without your permission (illegal search and seizure, loud boy-band music in public places). They are protections, not gifts of material goods. Material goods and services must be taken from others, or provided by their labor, so if you believe you have an absolute right to them, and others don't choose to provide it to you, you then have a 'right' to steal from them. But what about their far more fundamental right not to be robbed? — Cliff Asness

I'd been looking around the world for clues as to what other countries were doing right, but the important distinctions were not about spending or local control or curriculum; none of that mattered very much. Policies mostly worked in the margins. The fundamental difference was a psychological one. The education superpowers believed in rigor. People in these countries agreed on the purpose of school: School existed to help students master complex academic material. Other things mattered, too, but nothing mattered as much. — Amanda Ripley

Little girls dream about growing up and living in a big house with a gorgeous husband and a pink plastic convertible. It's not until much later in life that you realize what really matters. Love isn't about what you have or who you know. It's about how you earn what you have and how you treat those you love. The material things don't matter when your heart is full of joy and contentment. — Lisa De Jong

The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details s cutting a hanged man from a tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of the man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter ob him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. — Chinua Achebe

Blessings are not about money or material things only as the modern world makes it. We can do simply things that can change people's life. For example:
1. To listen to those who need to be heard(bleating cry).
2. To speak kind words to the vulnerable ones.
3. To show and give care to those who are in need.
4. To pray for others or on behalf of the others. — Euginia Herlihy

The main trend with the theme episodes is that anywhere there is a misconception about the way the physical world works, we're finding fertile material. Whether it's in a phrase like "going over like a lead balloon" or "a needle in a haystack," or tackling movie myths or even a genre, like MacGyver or James Bond, we're finding that all these things can lead to people believing the world works in a certain way. It might not be correct, but we can test out if it's true. — Adam Savage

I'm not the kind of person who would throw himself into some exciting or dangerous situation just to get material. So I tend to go about my normal, boring life and just try to look at things a little more closely. — Adrian Tomine

I have my own high standards for what I want in a partner and how I want to be treated. I bring a lot to the table. I'm not talking about material things but what I have to offer as a person - love and loyalty and all the things that make a good relationship. — Jennifer Lopez

First World countries may have great infrastructure, material comfort and modernity, but these cannot compare with the way the homeland speaks to a Filipino's heart. There may be potholes in the street where I live but they 'speak' to me in a way that a flawless highway in a developed foreign country cannot. I may be upset by the potholes, but the feeling is a familiar one, and it is easier to endure than alienation in a foreign land. The things that upset me about the country 'speak' to me in that same familiar language. In fact, it is so familiar that my sense of humor can run circles around the very things I complain about. But that is precisely the problem: because these have become too familiar, I am no longer moved by them - at least not enough to be able to change things. Indeed, they have become 'my' potholes. Life in the Philippines may be hell at times, but it remains our home. — Jim Paredes

All global ambitions are based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated from common human reality that I am convinced it is wrong and that most people would agree with me if they could perceive an alternative. We might be able to see that if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found - in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends, and real communities are built - then we would be so self-sufficient we would not even need the material "sufficiency" which our global "experts" are so insistent we be concerned about. — John Taylor Gatto

It's not really about the material. It's about our capacity to shape things. — Theaster Gates

I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things? — Thomas Huxley

It's an interesting thing that we have not copyrighted our ideas about liberty or tried to charge others to use them, or even to credit us when they do so. We've given these ideas away freely. To what end? We have not calculated the benefit to ourselves much. Some have said that we do what we do for purely selfish or mercenary reasons, that we fought in Iraq, for example, because of our oil interests. Such views are not only deeply cynical but also fail to account for much else that we do. Are we being self-serving in what we've done in Africa to combat AIDS? Are we being self-serving in sending ships and supplies to disaster areas around the world? Unless we are hopelessly bound by cynicism, we have to acknowledge that the United States has been remarkably and consistently generous in sharing what it has, whether material things or ideas. — Eric Metaxas

One of the truly bizarre things about our current cultural situation is that the leading figures of the scientific establishment seem genuinely amazed that the citizens do not accept finch-beak variation as proof of the claim that humans, like all animals and plants, are accidental products of a purposeless universe in which only material processes have operated from the beginning. — Phillip E. Johnson

I turn to Libby. "You're kind. Probably the kindest person I know. You're also forgiving, at least a little, but I'm hoping a lot, and in my book that's a superpower." Her eyes are on mine, and there's a lot going on there. "You're smart as hell, and you don't take people's crap, least of all mine. You are who you are. You know who that is, and you aren't afraid of it, and how many of us can say that." She's not smiling, but it's not about what her mouth is doing. It's about her eyes. "You're strong too. It's not just a matter of being able to knock down a guy with a single shot to the jaw." (Everyone laughs, except her.) "I'm talking about inner strength. Like, if I would draw that inner strength it might look a lot like a triangle made of carbyne. That's the world's strongest material. You also make things better for people around you... — Jennifer Niven

The trouble is that when you read criticisms about the other films that I've made you get the impression that they're all about themes, or problems, or ideas. But those are actually things that develop out of characters, out of images and out of other things. These more abstract things develop while working on the material, and out of it. It's not a theoretical exercise from the outset. — Michael Haneke

When we allow material things to be more important than spiritual things, we lost a lot of very important ways in life, many fear dying and are so concerned about what they do if someone stole all their position, did we not come into this world naked? can we take all our riches with us when we pass? is success what really makes a man or women hear? can we actually buy real love? the twisted ways of thinking come from greedy people, a person who work hard should be paid more than one who work less but that's not the case here, it is all backwards this is what a man has brought forth because of the attitude that being certainly religion or family tree entitles them to it what they really forget is what we are from the same family — Wisdom

The basic fact about life on planet earth is that God has not created evil and God has not created imperfection, limitations and suffering. These things were created by human beings. These things manifested in the material world because human beings made the choice to focus their attention on imperfection. — Kim Michaels

My father's book is about is about a number of things, but about Houdini's rage to not be a failure like his father, and it's also about converting X-rated material, namely bondage, into family friendly safe fare, which is what he did. It's also about death and resurrection, and rising to live again another day when everyone thinks you're dead. — Nicholas Meyer

Testimony in new age writing affirms the way in which embracing a love ethic transforms life for the good. Yet a lot of this information only reaches those of us who have class privilege. And often, individuals whose lives are rich in spiritual and material well-being, who have diverse friends from all walks of life who nurture their personal integrity, tell the rest of the world these things are impossible to come by. I am talking here about the many prophets of doom who tell us that racism will never end, sexism is here to stay the rich will never share their resources. We would all be surprised if we could enter their lives for a day. Much of what they are telling us cannot be had, they have. But in keeping with a capitalist-based notion of well-being, they really believe there is not enough to go around, that the good life can only be had by a few. — Bell Hooks