Literary notes about Property (AI summary)
The term "property" in literature is employed with rich versatility, functioning as a marker of tangible assets, legal rights, and even intrinsic qualities. In some works, it denotes physical objects or land that are inherited, bought, or contested—as seen with references to tangible items like fruit or estates, and in discussions of contractual disputes ([1], [2], [3], [4]). In other contexts, it emerges as a symbol of status and personal identity, as when characters cling to or lose their property, which in turn underscores their social standing or personal agency ([5], [6], [7]). The word also surfaces in more abstract treatments, used to describe inherent traits or powers, and even in scientific contexts where it designates the qualities of air or water ([8], [9]). Overall, its usage bridges concrete legal and economic realities with broader metaphorical reflections on human life and societal structures ([10], [11], [12]).
- (1) All the fruit at this Show, that fails to get a prize, is the property of the Committee; (2) None of my peaches have got prizes; (3)
— from Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll - Technically I’m guilty of breach of contract and larceny of corporation property, but there are extenuating circumstances.”
— from The Lani People by Jesse F. Bone - His wife died in due course, and according to the English law he inherited the whole of her property.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - He inherited the Blackwater property while still a young man.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - 'They—they're mine, Oliver; my little property.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - It was sweet to think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer man by far than that son of James, that 'man of property.'
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. by John Galsworthy - It denotes that he is subject to government, indeed; but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith - The alphabet is general property, and everyone has the right to use it for the creation of a word forming an appellative sound.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - This property of air is responsible for the changes in weather.
— from How it Works by Archibald Williams - All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
— from The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx - Nevertheless, as a general proposition, it is a thousandfold more emphatically true that property is power.
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - "You cannot give a man his own property, can you?"
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney
