Quotes About Contentment

you have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits

You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.

I have no large desire to sacrifice much of my personal habits, intellectual pleasures, and personal standards in order to become a billionaire like Warren Buffett, and I certainly do not see point of becoming one if I were to adopt Spartan (even miserly) habits and live in my starter house.

Two weekends in Philadelphia are not twice as pleasant as a single one—I've tried.

social treadmill effect: You get rich, move to rich neighborhoods, then become poor again. To that add the psychological treadmill effect; you get used to wealth and revert to a set point of satisfaction. This problem of some people never really getting to feel satisfied by wealth (beyond a given point) has been the subject of technical discussions on happiness.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it. Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that is what you are seeking.

The question remains whether optimizers are unhappy because they are constantly seeking a better deal or if unhappy people tend to optimize out of their misery.

all we need is the ability to accept that what we have on our hands is better than what we had before

Aside from the misperception of one's performance, there is a social treadmill effect: You get rich, move to rich neighborhoods, then become poor again. To that add the psychological treadmill effect; you get used to wealth and revert to a set point of satisfaction. This problem of some people never really getting to feel satisfied by wealth (beyond a given point) has been the subject of technical discussions on happiness.

But you are already there; why take more risks?

Excess wealth, if you don't need it, is a heavy burden.

wealth itself does not really make one happy (above, of course, some subsistence level); but positive changes in wealth may

Excess wealth, if you don't need it, is a heavy burden.

You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.

when you leave people alone, they tend to settle for practical reasons.

true wealth consists in worriless sleeping, clear conscience, reciprocal gratitude, absence of envy, good appetite, muscle strength, physical energy, frequent laughs, no meals alone, no gym class, some physical labor (or hobby), good bowel movements, no meeting rooms, and periodic surprises, then it is largely subtractive (elimination of iatrogenics).

They were financially free, and secure, not because of their means but because of their lack of wants.

When you become rich, the pain of losing your fortune exceeds the emotional gain of getting additional wealth, so you start living under continuous emotional threat.

Wealthy' is meaningless and has no robust absolute measure; use instead the subtractive measure 'unwealth,' that is, the difference, at any point in time, between what you have and what you would like to have.

people might prefer to do something other than maximize their economic interests.

Y entonces, nos sentimos inexplicablemente felices, desmesuradamente felices por ese helado que tomaremos dentro de poco; nos preguntamos: ¿cómo es posible tanta felicidad ante la perspectiva de un helado, en nosotros que somos tan adultos en nuestros vertiginosos pensamientos, que estamos tan extrañamente perdidos en un mundo de sombras?

And then sometimes it comes over me and I wonder why it happened to us. We're plain as salt, us Tucks. We don't deserve no blessings—if it is a blessing. And, likewise, I don't see how we deserve to be cursed, if it's a curse. Still—there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes.

So she was unprepared for the homely little house beside the pond, unprepared for the gentle eddies of dust, the silver cobwebs, the mouse who lived—and welcome to him!—in a table drawer.

I think it's very painful, and that it's better not to have any doubts. I envy those who don't have any; I envy them a lot. They are happy people.