Quotes About Contentment

there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom.

How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God! . . .

It's just this, my dear boy. One must do one of two things: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for one's rights in it; or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as I do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.

If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied. And it's true, as papa says,—that when we were brought up there was one extreme—we were kept in the basement, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now it's just the other way—the parents are in the wash house, while the children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live at all, but to exist altogether for their children.

I won't say life wouldn't be worth living without it, but it would be dull

He felt himself, and did not want to be any one else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to low passion.

I am like a hungry man who has been given food. He may be cold, his clothes maybe tattered, he may feel ashamed, but he is not unhappy. Me unhappy? No, this is my happiness.

con amor siempre se es feliz, puesto que la felicidad está en uno mismo. Egor

un trabajo que, según parece, es de provecho; luego, el descanso, la naturaleza, los libros, la música, el amor al prójimo; esa es la felicidad para mí y no pienso que haya nada superior a ello.

wealth, power, and life—all that men so painstakingly acquire and guard—if it has any worth has so only by reason of the joy with which it can all be renounced.

There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter's room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life.

Man is created for happiness, that happiness lies in himself, in the satisfaction of simple human needs; and that all unhappiness is due, not to privation but to superfluity.

Not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!

When during those first days he remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: "Well, what of it? So much the better!

Cuánta gente, colmada de todo, se queja de continuo, lo encuentra todo mal y no acierta a gozar nunca de nada! Debemos mirar siempre hacia los que tienen menos que nosotros y contentarnos, y gozar de lo que poseemos sin alimentar nuestro espíritu de quimeras

La vida es siempre bella si sabemos mirarla con ojos apacibles, con luz de un alma en paz

And yet he wondered, was it enough? It must be... there was nothing else.

If you have easy self-contentment, you might have a very, very cheap source of happiness.

Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the pause of happiness

For me, love is happiness and inspiration.

I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.

I don't even hate books anymore.

I don't want to be a star, merely dying.

Except for a couple of hours in the morning which I passed in the company of a sage I stayed in bed without food only a few mouthfuls of water "you are a fine looking old man" I said to myself in the mirror "and what is more you have the correct attitude You don't care if it ends or if it goes on And as for the women and the music there will be plenty of that in Paradise" Then I went to the Mosque of Memory to express my gratitude