Quotes about Materialism

In the matter of piety, poverty serves us better than wealth, and work better than idleness, especially since wealth becomes an obstacle even for those who do not devote themselves to it.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close knit communities, and our faith in God , too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption .

Our sight is dimmed by the tyranny of the urgent, by the siren call of success, by the seductive beauty of physical things, by our inability to admit our own problems, and by the casual relationships within the body of Christ that we mistakenly call fellowship.

For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.  It has led Individualism entirely astray.  It has made gain not growth its aim.  So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be.  The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.

We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces

what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose'-how does the quotation run?-'his own soul'?

He felt that life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it to be stereotyped into any form was death. He saw that people should not be too serious over material, common interests: that to be unpractical was to be a great thing: that one should not bother too much over affairs. The birds didn't, why should man?

They spend their whole earthly existence trying to save, enhance, and enrich their lives. And what happens? They lose the most important things in their life: an intimate relationship with God and with others.

This "world" is marked by three spiritual dynamics that John identifies as "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16).

The desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life.

He loved to handle cash, and he drove himself and all that belonged to him in the direction of money as if it were as far off as heaven and as if he were running out of time;

Cash is filling up the holes he bored in the top of it. He is trimming out plugs for them, one at a time, the wood wet and hard to work. He could cut up a tin can and hide the holes and nobody wouldn't know the difference. Wouldn't mind, anyway. I have seen him spend a hour trimming out a wedge like it was glass he was working, when he could have reached around and picked up a dozen sticks and drove them into the joint and made it do.