Quotes About Contentment

Lincoln said that "folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

So far as is known, it said, no bird ever tried to build more nests than its neighbor. No fox ever fretted because he had only one hole in which to hide. No squirrel ever died of anxiety lest he should not lay by enough nuts for two winters instead of for one, and no dog ever lost any sleep over the fact that he did not have enough bones laid aside for his declining years.

You will never succeed while smarting under the drudgery of your occupation, if you are constantly haunted with the idea that you could succeed better in something else.

No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger, says Beecher. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

About as poor business as one can engage in is that of going through life with one's eyes so fixed upon what others have, that he cannot enjoy or appreciate his own.

Phillips Brooks used to say that after a man has once discovered that he has been living but a half-life the other half will haunt him until he releases it, and he never again will be content to live a half-life.

Happiness is the soul's joy in the possession of the intangible.

If you have not what you like, like what you have until you can change your environment. Do not waste your vitality in hating your life; find something in it which is worth liking and enjoying, while you keep steadily at work to make it what you desire. Be happy over something, every day, for the brain is a thing of habit, and you cannot teach it to be happy in a moment, if you allow it to be miserable for years.

If we were all in our right places, doing the thing nature planned us to do, our work would be almost like play. Where the heart is there is no friction or discord, and friction and discord are what wear life out. These are what exhaust the vitality and waste the brain power. If you love your work, it will not be a grind. On the contrary, it will be a pleasure, a perpetual stimulus.

The trouble with us is that we try to find happiness where it does not exist, in transient, impermanent things; we try to find it in the gratification of desire; we seek it in animal pleasure. Happiness lives in giving, in doing, not in getting, in grasping.

no man will ever be willing to live a half-life when he has once seen that it is a half-life.

You, young man, make up your mind at the very outset of your career that whatever comes to you in life, that whether you succeed or fail, whether you have this or that, there is one thing you will have, and that is a happy, contented mind, that you will extract your happiness as you go along.

The trouble with us is that we generally want more to make us happy than we deserve, and we are not grateful enough for the many things that are ours to enjoy.

It is the juices of youth, the joy and gladness carried along through the busy years that make old age tolerable.

The great mass of people do not extract ten per cent, of the happiness possible in their everyday life, largely because they were never trained to think of the normal sources of enjoyment. Their minds are blank, except for the little grooves which their daily routine has stamped in their brain tissue.

Epictetus, the pagan philosopher, proved in his life the truth of his own words — A man can be happy without wealth, without family, without office or honor, without health, without anything that the world seeks after.

Who is the richest of men? asked Socrates. He who is content with the least, for contentment is nature's riches.

and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.

In the end, you and I are happier than many – happier than those who do not know love at all and than those who do not know how to find it.

Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of.

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

All is going well, very well, I couldn't ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what "just living" might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.