Quotes About Contentment

Most people today are not getting what they want. Not from their jobs, not from their families, not from their religion, not from their government, and, most important, not from themselves. Something is missing in most of our lives. Part of what's missing is purpose. Values. Worthwhile standards against which our lives can be measured. Part of what's missing is a Game Worth Playing.

Socrates may have concluded that his most valuable possession was his leisure. "Beware the barrenness of a busy life" is a quote commonly attributed to him.

life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing; it's about learning to live with the missing parts.

Tao Te Ching says that it is only through retreat rather than pursuit, through inaction rather than action, that we acquire wisdom. "Those with less become content," says the Tao, "those with more become confused." The poems, still widely read, have been hailed as a hermit manifesto for more than two thousand years.

Such a display of beauty and happiness is not possible without contentment,

There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain,' Knight said.

Maybe, I thought, Knight would talk about the marrow. He sat quietly, whether thinking or fuming or both, it was hard to tell. But he eventually arrived at a reply. It felt like some great mystic was about to revel the meaning of life. "Get enough sleep," he said. He set his jaw in a way that conveyed he wouldn't be saying any more. This was what he had learned. I accepted it as truth.

One becomes free, Socrates seems to have taught, not by fulfilling all desires but by eliminating desire.

Those with less become content," says the Tao, "those with more become confused." The

My desires dropped away. I didn't long for anything. I didn't even have a name. To put it romantically, I was completely free.

Our whole lives, Jefferies said, are wasted traveling in endless small circles; we are all "chained like a horse to an iron pin in the ground." The richest person, Jefferies believed, is the one who works least. "Idleness," he wrote, "is a great good." For Jefferies, like

I think that most of us feel like something is missing from our lives, and I wondered then if Knight's journey was to seek it. But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing; it's about learning to live with the missing parts

But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing; it's about learning to live with the missing parts.

How many things there are that I do not want. —SOCRATES, CIRCA 425 B.C.

Those with less become content," says the Tao, "those with more become confused.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death." —Leonardo da Vinci

Stupidity, selfishness and good health are the three prerequisites of happiness, though if stupidity is lacking the others are useless.

As Schopenhauer remarked: 'With possession, or the certain expectation of it, our demands immediately increase and this increases our capacity for further possessions and greater expectation…to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is.

Happy is the man whose wants are few. The fewer the wants, the happier the person. One

Amor fati. Love your fate. A friend of mine used to say that. The secret of happiness.

As our lives speed up more and more, so do our children's. We forget and thus they forget that there is nothing more important than the present moment. We forget and thus they forget to relax, to find spiritual solitude, to let go of the past, to quiet ambition, to fully enjoy the eating of a strawberry, the scent of a rose, the touch of a hand on a cheek...

There is nothing the heart doesn't already have. It's the mind that thinks it needs something more.

If I don't get food in my mouth, I'm still happy. If my pants are round my ankles, as long as I don't get arrested for indecent exposure, I'm happy. I'm worried about keeping my hair, not how it's combed.

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectation.