Quotes About Contentment

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free - The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year. After all I am alive only by accident.

This is what it is to be complete. It is horrible.

The hardest thing is to live richly in the present without letting it be tainted out of fear for the future or regret for the past.

to learn that while you dream and believe in Utopia, you will scratch & scrabble for your daily bread in your home town and be damn glad if there's butter on it

And there is the fallacy of existence: the idea that one would be happy forever and aye with a given situation or series of accomplishments.

And while Constantin and I sat in one of those hushed plush auditoriums in the UN, next to a stern muscular Russian girl with no makeup who was a simultaneous interpreter like Constantin, I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.

A small, answering point in my own body flew towards it. I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery -- air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, This is what it is to be happy.

I am unattached; My heart is very quiet.

Ä°stediÄŸim bütün kitaplar? okuyamam, olmak istediÄŸim bütün insanlar olamam ve istediÄŸim hayatlar? süremem, istediÄŸim bütün becerileri edinemem. Öyleyse ne istiyorum?

A small, answering point in my own body flew toward it. I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery- air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, This is what it is to be happy.

I was thinking that if I'd had the sense to go on living in that old town I might just have met this prison guard in school and married him and had a parcel of kids now. It would be nice, living by the sea with piles of kids and pigs and chickens, wearing what my grandmother called wash dresses, and sitting about in some kitchen with bright linoleum and fat arms, drinking pots of coffee.

Now I know how people can live without books, without college. (...)and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more...

I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter—for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.…

Now I know how people can live without books, without college. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth.

I was only purely happy until I was nine years old. I had never really been happy again.

I felt my lungd inflate with the inrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'This is what it is to be happy.

I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'This is what it is to be happy.

felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery – air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'This is what it is to be happy.

Sentí que mis pulmones se inflaban con la avalancha de paisajes: aire, montañas, árboles, personas. Pensé: esto es lo que es ser feliz.

it gives me such a sense of peace to draw; more than prayer, walks, anything.

If I didn't think, I'd be much happier.

His big, pleasant, ugly black-clad wife, very broad-beamed, came out. Said she also milked goats; described frisky games of little kid with hand motions. Moon brightening through clouds as we left, clear-cut pine tree jagged against sky. Man happy, own world, out of earth; brother kept three cows on hill beyond railroad station. Left feeling good day; light yellow-green eyes of goats.