Hoarding Quotes

“At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Entrei numa livraria. Pus-me a contar os livros que há para ler e os anos que terei de vida. Não chegam! Não duro nem para metade da livraria! Deve haver certamente outras maneiras de uma pessoa se salvar, senão… estou perdido.”
― Almada Negreiros, A Invenção do Dia Claro

“When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”
― Basil the Great

“Your home is living space, not storage space.”
― Francine Jay

“Hoard food and it rots. Hoard money and you rot. Hoard power and the nation rots.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Adjustment Day

“We immortals aren't misers - we don't hoard! Such things are pointless.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“She lived with the doctor on Via Po, in a gloomy, dark apartment, barely warmed in winter by just a small Franklin stove, and she no longer threw out anything, because everything might eventually come in handy: not even the cheese rinds or the foil on chocolates, with which she made silver balls to be sent to missions to “free a little black boy.”
― Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

“Hoarding can never end, for the heart of man always covets for more, its raging appetites can only be quenched by the heavy sands of the grave.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom

“So why do we call her crazy for piling her trailer full of more cats than she could take care of but applaud when somebody accumulates more money than they can spend? They're both hoarders.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“... Whose forbidden hold was this?
What had he provoked? He wrapped trembling fingers around
the first small, shining thing he found, and fled. For the vault
was more than a treasury: piles of preciouses nested
beneath the coils of a snoring serpent. It was a bed.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf

“In his love for these peculiar places, he was like an anthropologist, or an accountant. i couldn't tell which, because I was never certain what lay beneath M's fascinations. Sometimes I imagined they were a sign of sorrow, a wish to care for and preserve things on the brink of disappearance. Other times, I thought that they were nothing more than a tedious desire to accumulate.”
― Aysegül Savas, Walking on the Ceiling

“I don't have money to buy a bunch of land. I don't know how much you think land goes for nowadays, but it's not a dollar an acre anymore."
Ryker smirked. "Trust me when I say I have more than enough money for it."
I balked. "How? You live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with no real job and nothing around you."
"And I'm a dragon, Dani. A dragon who likes his gold."
Slowly, so slowly, it sank in. He did mercenary work, that much I knew, and that kind of thing paid well, right? Dragons hoarding treasure seemed like something out of a fairy tale, but then again so did dragons until a few weeks ago. The confident look on his face said it all.”
― Sabrina Blackburry, Dirty Lying Dragons

“While the elite used magic to build their palaces and fuel their lavish lives, ordinary people suffered. That was the crux of the argument for the revolution. The world and its resources belonged to everyone, they said--- which included everything kept locked up inside the Great Library. All that knowledge, the power to make lives better, was shelved away. Reserved for use by only the wealthy, when it should belong to everyone. And that's why I never really believed they'd hurt the library--- and why I don't understand why they did. They knew books were power.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Spellshop

“Over the years I would learn that sharing money with love and in solidarity is a delicate process, far more difficult than hoarding it. But until we live in a more equal world, sharing (responsibly) is the best you can do.”
― Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me

“I hoard books. Books feel like home!”
― Avijeet Das

“2020 was the year of hoarding.”
― Steven Magee

“The more space they, hoarders, have available, the more space they fill. Perhaps this is actually the goal--to fill space.”
― Randy O. Frost, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

“He didn't say, Uncluttered

is the privilege of the rich these days.
Or: In
a world of built-in obsolescence, saved

means saddled with.”
― Linda Gregerson, The Woman Who Died In Her Sleep: Devotional Poems Celebrating Mortality, Beauty, and the Human Spirit―High Art with Gravity

“My trouble is
I always try to save
everything

old clocks and calendars
expired words buried
in open graves

But hoarded grains of sand
keep shifting as rivers
redefine boundaries and seasons”
― Naomi Long Madgett, Exits and Entrances

“The more material things that we possess, the less clear life becomes. Therefore, if you want clarity, have a garage sale.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The problem with collecting other people's junk is you just don't know what to do with it when you don't want it anymore. You feel bad about throwing it to the curb. It's too much trouble to sell. So you keep it around, knowing if you can't redeem it, exactly, you've at least rescued it. Somewhat.”
― Lisa Samson, A Thing of Beauty

“Mr. Geronimo was a hoarder of fuel, gas masks, flashlights, blankets, medical supplies, canned food, water in lightweight packets; a man who expected emergencies, who counted on the fabric of society to tear and disintegrate, who know that superglue could be used to hold cuts together, who did not trust human nature to build solidly or well. A man who expected the worst.”
― Salman Rushdie, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

“The tenth commandment forbids coveting because doing so denies the goodness of God. Jesus speaks against hoarding because doing so denies the goodness of God. Coveting implies a lack in God's present provision and hoarding anticipates a lack in God's good provision in the future. Neither mind-set will translate into generosity. Generosity flourishes only when we do not fear loss.”
― Jen Wilkin, In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character

“Hoarding means both depleting natural resources and creating a storage problem. Neither does it make sense to hoard food away from the needs of others.”
― Randy Woodley, Journey to Eloheh: How Indigenous Values Lead Us to Harmony and Well-Being

“MOBIUS: Neon, you’ve been living in the Nonprofit Matrix, a world controlled by wealthy individuals and corporations, who created a sector to delude people from seeing how they’re hoarding money, avoiding taxes, and furthering inequity while convincing people they are the solutions to the problems they cause.

NEON: What are you talking about? I’m a good person. My nonprofit helps a lot of people.

EQUITY: That’s true, it does. But remember that improv workshop you took once, where you learned about “Yes and”?

NEO: Yes. And?

EQUITY: You are helping people AND you are helping capitalism uphold itself by charity-washing its most egregious offenses. You see, by setting up foundations and donating to nonprofits, the extremely wealthy get to feel good about themselves while the masses are tricked into believing excessively wealthy people are good. This is how wealth disparity maintains itself.”
― Vu Le

“This book is not about mindless consumption or the pursuit of material possessions for the sake of it. It's about using your resources to create a life you love, one that is rich in experiences,
fulfillment, and impact.”
― Trang Kieu Nguyen, Fuck Minimalism, I Want Money: A Counterintuitive Guide to Decluttering, Downsizing, and Saying "Goodbye" to the Minimalist Mindset

“Clutter, like emotional chaos, has a way of running in families, passed down like curly hair or blue eyes or musical ability.”
― Jennifer Howard

“Clutter, like emotional chaos, has a way of running in families, passed down like blue eyes or curly hair or musical ability.”
― Jennifer Howard

“The walls are lined with Bankers Boxes and plastic bins. These boxes contain things like rag dolls with missing eyes and tablecloths permanently marred with mustard stains because my mother does not believe in throwing anything away. In her opinion, failures of foresight are the worst kind.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise

“The American Dream, as we know it, is abundance. It's a dream to amass houses, children, cars. It's a dream to collect things of value. But it is an equally American dream to be able to abandon, drop everything, to jettison, without guilt, anything that weighs you down.”
― Emily Mester, American Bulk: Essays on Excess