Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest; but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us. – Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. – Henry David Thoreau

Seeing is believing, and if an American success is to count for anything in the world it must be clothed in the raiment of property. As often as not it isnt the money itself that means anything; it is the use of money as the currency of the soul. – Lewis H. Lapham