With the increase of wealth the mania of covetousness increases.

The more we desire for that which is superfluous, the more we meet with difficulties; our strength and possessions are spent in unnecessary things, and are wanting when required for that which is necessary.

It does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants

The more one gets the more one wants

We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

Sometimes wealth and power merely created the desire for more of the same.

To crave wealth and honor, to demand power, to pile up riches, to gather all those vanities which seem to make for pomp and empty display, that is our furious passion and our unbounded desire. On the other hand, we fear and abhor poverty, obscurity, and humility, and we seek to avoid them by all possible means.

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer things a Man wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supply'd.

The kinds of purchases surveyed in the news generally sit well beyond necessity. In acquiring them, what we are after is rarely solely or even chiefly just material satisfaction; we are also guided by a deeper, often unconscious desire for some form of psychological transformation. We don't only want to own things; we want to be changed through our ownership of them. Once we examine consumer behaviour with sufficient attention and generosity, it becomes clear that we aren't indelibly materialistic at all. What makes our age distinctive is our ambition to try to accomplish a variety of complex psychological goals via the acquisition of material goods.

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.