Contentment Quotes
465 quotes
"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
"It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it."
"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough"
"A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness."
"Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived."
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances."
"Inventory:"Four be the things I am wiser to know:Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.Four be the things I'd been better without:Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.Three be the things I shall never attain:Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.Three be the things I shall have till I die:Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye."
"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."
"We're all golden sunflowers inside."
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon."
"Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty."
"[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever."
"And besides . . . I don’t want to leave you. Er, you guys.”He smiled, and it lit up his whole face. “Well, ‘we’ are certainly happy to hear that. Oh, and I’m also happy to watch our darling little love child dragon while you’re in St. Louis.”I grinned back."
"Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude."
"Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home."
"In a person's lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment, there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart."
"You have to open up to the world and learn optimism...Contentment with the past, happiness with the present, and hope for the future. Learned optimisim."
"A book of verses underneath the boughA flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thouBeside me singing in the wildernessAnd wilderness is paradise now."
"You don't have to be part of a couple to be happy, you know."
"he who is greedy is always in want"
"Ultimate prosperity is one's value within. It takes a man of depth, morality, and charm to be envied yet without a sign of wealth or romance. A passion to prove such inner worth is his permission to achieve whatever he desires."
"Lord, make me nowAs happy as the field.With flowers enriched..."
"I only seem negative to the fortunate. That's because I show the less fortunate that they aren't less fortunate after all."
"I think instead [of happiness] we should be working for contentment... an inner sense of fulfillment that's relatively independent of external circumstances."
"With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing."
"The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations."
"Imagination doesn't always make you long for what you cannot have, but rather thrive in what you do not have."
"Happy are those who evolve from within."
"The midsummer sun shines but dim, The fields strive in vain to look gay; But when I am happy in Him December's as pleasant as May."
"Our mission as humans is not only to discover our fullest selves in the technium, and to find full contentment, but to expand the possibilities for others. Greater technology will selfishly unleash our talents, but it will also unselfishly unleash others: our children, and all children to come."
"You will never get everything in life but you will get enough."
"When I’m depressed, I read Caeiro — he’s my fresh air. I become very calm, content, faithful — yes, I find faith in God, and in the soul’s transcendent living smallness, after reading the poems by that ungodly anti-humanist who goes unsurpassed on earth."
"Animals do it largely for the REPRODUCTION, but so-called Social Animals (People) do it regularly thinking that it will give them SATISFACTION."
"ur be the things I am wiser to know:Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.Four be the things I'd been better without:Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.Three be the things I shall never attain:Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.Three be the things I shall have till I die:Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye."
"I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it."
"He hated House members who longed only to run for the Senate, and senators who longed only to run for the presidency. He was appalled by what he felt television had done to the Senate by the mid-fifties. It had become a major launching platform for presidential campaigns. He thought television had ruined the Senate as a serious body. “All they do there is preen and comb their hair and run for President. It’s like a presidential primary over there,"
"And besides . . . I don’t want to leave you. Er, you guys.”He smiled, and it lit up his whole face. “Well, ‘we’ are certainly happy to hear that. Oh, and I’m also happy to watch our darling little love child dragon while you’re in St. Louis.”I grinned back."
"Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have."
"Live near to God, and so all things will appear to you little In comparison to eternal realities.--"
"That very breath wherewith they utter their complaints is a blessing and a fundamental one too for if God would withdraw that they were incapable of whatsoever else either have or desire."
"Materialistic things cannot make you truly happy; it’s your faith in God that can bring real satisfaction. And ofcourse, the love you give and receive will fill your life with cheer as well as laughter."
"Don't envy results, seek to know the process. Don't want a man's glory till you hear his story. Sometimes what you see is not even the destination, it's just the current location but the result of a long journey. God sometimes would bring you to a point where it is much more than the gift...He captures your heart. My friend, not everything in the kingdom is a gift, somethings are rewards."
"Always remember that you were once alone, and the crowd you see in your life today are just as unecessary as when you were alone."
"Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come--as though that time should be of another make from this which has already come and is ours."
"There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night."
Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
"Happiness is wanting what you have."
"Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied."
"Be like the flower, content with its nature."
"One honest John Tompkins, a hedger & ditcher, Although he was poor, did not want to be richer;For all such vain wishes in him were preventedBy a fortunate habit of being contented."
"He brewed his tea in a blue china pot, poured it into a chipped white cup with forget-me-nots on the handle, and dropped in a dollop of honey and cream. He sat by the window, cup in hand, watching the first snow fall. "I am," he sighed deeply, "contented as a clam. I am a most happy man."
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