Quotes About Contentment

I had known contentment before, brief snatches of time in which I pursued solitary pleasure: skipping stones or dicing or dreaming. But in truth, it had been less a presence than an absence, a laying aside of dread: my father was not near, nor boys. I was not hungry, or tired, or sick. This feeling was different.

I knew how pleasure looked on him.

Don't let me ever compete with anyone! If I'm a worm and no man, let me enjoy my life as a worm. Let me stop showing off to anyone... Let me live my life free from the opinions, good or bad, of all other people!

The things that make us happy make us wise.

It was to have been a quiet evening at home.

answer?" I shrugged. "Answer shmanser. In the immortal words of Popeye, I yam what I yam. I know my patterns and limitations, needs and hang-ups. So I go on. Right? I endure. I enjoy what I can. There aren't any more forks in the road to take. Keep walking.

And it was okay because it had to be. There wasn't any other choice. Sometimes it is a relief not to have a choice. I will have to get Meyer to explain this concept to me.

A man's wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on ten dollars, and has everything else he desires, he really is rich.

His whole life long, even in those few moments when he had experienced some inkling of satisfaction, contentment, and perhaps even happiness, he had preferred exhaling to inhaling—just as he had begun life not with a hopeful gasp for air but with a bloodcurdling scream.

Contentment can only happen as we increase desire, let it run itself out towar its fulfilment, and carry us along with it.

When we taste something that we think is good, our longings cease to ache, for a minute, but later we find ourselves empty once more, needing to be filled again and again.

I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world." (L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)

We know if we could truly love, and be loved, and never lose love, we would finally be happy.

Something has gone wrong in us, very wrong indeed. So wrong that we have to be told that joy is found not in having another man's wife, but in having our own. But the point is not the law; the point is the joy.

And as I do, even as I say it out loud—I give everyone and everything to you—my soul cooperates a good bit. I'm settling down.

His statement to himself should have been 'I possess this now,therefore I am happy' , instead of what it so Victorianly was: 'I cannot possess this forever, therefore I am sad.

But he was absolutely alone. No one ever wrote to him. Visited him. Totally alone. And I believe the happiest man I have ever met.

The honest poor are the moneyless vulgar rich. Poverty forces them to have good qualities and pride in other things besides money. Then when they have money they don't know what to do with it. They forget all the old virtues, which weren't real virtues anyway. They think the only virtue is to make more money and to spend. They can't imagine that there are people to whom money is nothing. That the most beautiful things are quite independent of money.

Man is a highly acquisitive creature, brainwashed by most modern societies into believing that the act of acquisition is more enjoyable than the fact of having acquired, that getting beats having got.

We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.

wrote to him. Visited him. Totally alone. And I believe the happiest man I have ever met.

Focusing on what we don't have is a waste of time and energy. To really make a difference, let's instead focus out energy on succeeding within the box.

Pentru tanarul Lennan urma apoi o perioada stranie, in care nu-si dadea seama de la un minut la altul daca era sau nu fericit, cautand sa fie mereu cu Anna, agitandu-se daca nu reusea, necajindu-se daca ea vorbea sau zambea altuia;cand se afla insa alaturi de ea tot nelinistit si nemultumit era, suferind din pricina timiditatii sale

For the moment at least, we fall into that class of fishermen who fancy themselves to be poet/philosophers, and from that vantage point we manage to pull off one of the neatest tricks in all of sport: the fewer fish we catch the more superior we feel. -----