Quotes About Contentment

I simply adore being alone - I find it a consuming thirst - and when that thirst is slaked, then I am happy.

There is a big difference between being lonely and being alone. I am alone when I write, but I am rarely lonely.

Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.

To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.

I take much pleasure in being alone but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

as a childi supposei was not quitenormal.my happiest times werewheni was left alone inthe house on asaturday.

A month alone would make me so happy. Not good for my dating prospects.

It's far better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone — so far.

There are people who like to be alone without feeling lonely at all.

Do not follow vain desires; for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger.

Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.

The practice of gratitude is incompatible with negative emotions and may actually diminish or deter such feelings as anger, bitterness, and greed.

If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger how much happier we would all be.

Each of us needs to eliminate our anger, fear and greed. The roots of social conflicts and political tensions are in personal anger, fear and greed.

The world has room for many people who are content to live as humans, but only for a relative few intent upon living as giants or as gods.

The chance you had is the life you've got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people's lives, even about the you children being gone, but you mustn't wish for another life. You mustn't want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: 'Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.

Theoretically, there is always a better place for a person to live, better work to do, a better spouse to wed, better friends to have. But then this person must meet herself coming beck. Theoretically, there always is a better inhabitant of this place, a better member of this community, a better worker, spouse, and friend than she is. This surely describes one of the circles of Hell, and who hasn't traveled around it a time or two?

I knew a man who, in the age of chain-saws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts.

I know for a while again the health of self-forgetfulness. Sabbaths 2000 V

Wendell Berry's formula for a good life and a good community is simple and pleasingly unoriginal. Slow down. Pay attention. Do good work. Love your neighbours. Love your place. Stay in your place. Settle for less, enjoy it more.

It is possible, as I have learned again and again, to be in one's place, in such company, wild or domestic, and with such pleasure, that one cannot think of another place that one would prefer to be—or of another place at all. One does not miss or regret the past, or fear or long for the future. Being there is simply all, and is enough. Such times give one the chief standard and the chief reason for one's work.

He nearly always seems steady, reined pretty tight. But it's no trouble to look at him now and see that it has been a long time since he has been at rest in himself.

If you see the world's goodness and beauty, and if you love your own place in it (no deed required), then your love itself will be one of your life's great rewards.