On Owning Land

Blaise Pascal, Pensées #113 (Krailsheimer tr., p. 59):

It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it. 

Pascal is right:  what good will owning acres and acres of land do me? In the end a man needs only -- six feet.  And before the end I should be seeking truth, not lusting after land.  So I remind myself when the urge to buy land grips me.