Quotes About Contentment

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Most men are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Reading and naps, two of life's greatest pleasures, go especially well together.

He's also able to accept death. He's not happy about it, but he's perfectly calm. When I stop all this treatment, it will be because it's time to stop.

You can die now, with three healthy children, your husband of almost fifty years alive and well, and five grandchildren whom you love and who love you, all well, all happy'—well, I think Mom would have thought that wasn't a bad deal.

As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.

People believe when you're richer you'll be happier,' he said. 'When you focus on the goal you don't commit suicide. But what happens when you get there and it's not what you expect?

Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing desire.

That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.

Wie niet helemaal bereikt wat hij bereiken wil, raakt niet los van de vraag, of hij niet beter elke moeite iets te bereiken zou kunnen opgeven, in plaats van te doen of iets anders bereiken hem kan troosten voor het feit dat hij niet bereikt heeft, wat hij oorspronkelijk wou.

Wat zij mij gaf, was voldoende. Misschien waren het korstjes brood, eigenlijk voor de meeuwen bestemd; ik was er gelukkig mee, of kon doen alsof.

Overal door liefderijk water omhuld te zijn, nergens pijn of weerstand meer ontmoeten, is nog heerlijker dan slapen.

La falta de comodidades es fundamental para que el hombre se sienta bien consigo mismo

Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.

I am not afraid of tomorrow for I have seen yesterday and I love today

Faster cars, wider roads, and fancier fires do not make better picnics. Nor do cold wars produce warm hearts.

Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won't be able to fulfill.

the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.

One reason children are capable of joy is because they take almost nothing for granted.

Throughout the millennia and across cultures, those who have thought carefully about desire have drawn the conclusion that spending our days working to get whatever it is we find ourselves wanting is unlikely to bring us either happiness or tranquility.

We need, in other words, to learn how to enjoy things without feeling entitled to them and without clinging to them.

We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment.

Negative visualization, in other words, teaches us to embrace whatever life we happen to be living and to extract every bit of delight we can from it. But it simultaneously teaches us to prepare ourselves for changes that will deprive us of the things that delight us. It teaches us, in other words, to enjoy what we have without clinging to it.