Why not leave their private sorrows to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess?

If we fear loss enough, in the end the things we possess will come to possess us.

The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.

Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings.

You only truly possess that which you cannot lose in a shipwreck.

The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die — whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.

The fulfillment we have in owning, in desiring, is temporary and illusory, because there is nothing at all we can have that we will not lose eventually. And so there is always fear.

We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us.

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.

We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.

We only have what we give.

Those things that are precious are saved only by sacrifice.

Within our awe we only know that all we own we owe.