Quotes About Contentment

The problem is that "bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters," and because they cannot control their desires, they can never find contentment.4

one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.

After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen.

It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united."3

One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get.

A much better, albeit less obvious way to gain satisfaction is not by working to satisfy our desires but by working to master them. In particular, we need to take steps to slow down the desire-formation process within us. Rather than working to fulfill whatever desires we find in our head, we need to work at preventing certain desires from forming and eliminating many of the desires that have formed. And rather than wanting new things, we need to work at wanting the things we already have. This

anger, as I've said, is incompatible with joy.

Seneca's comment to Lucilius that "the man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.

Around the world and throughout the millennia, those who have thought carefully about the workings of desire have recognized this—that the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

According to Seneca, "A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is." He therefore recommends that we "do away with complaint about past sufferings and with all language like this: 'None has ever been worse off than I. What sufferings, what evils have I endured!'" After all, what point is there in "being unhappy, just because once you were unhappy?"21

When the number of options available is limited, it is foolish to fuss and fret. We should instead simply choose the best of them and get on with life. To behave otherwise is to waste precious time and energy.

How, after all, can we convince ourselves to want the things we already have? THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question.

Musonius Rufus tells us that if we live in accordance with Stoic principles, "a cheerful disposition and secure joy" will automatically follow.

There was also agreement that one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.

In my research on desire, I discovered nearly unanimous agreement among thoughtful people that we are unlikely to have a good and meaningful life unless we can overcome our insatiability. There was also agreement that one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.

WHAT DO YOU WANT out of life?

Seneca reminds us how small our bodies are and poses this question: "Is it not madness and the wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little?

Lao Tzu observed that "he who knows contentment is rich.")

This, at any rate, is the advice Buddha gave to Anathapindika, a man of "unmeasurable wealth": "He that cleaves to wealth had better cast it away than allow his heart to be poisoned by it; but he who does not cleave to wealth, and possessing riches, uses them rightly, will be a blessing unto his fellows.

This is because the desire for luxuries is not a natural desire. Natural desires, such as a desire for water when we are thirsty, can be satisfied; unnatural desires cannot.12 Therefore, when we find ourselves wanting something, we should pause to ask whether the desire is natural or unnatural, and if it is unnatural, we should think twice about trying to satisfy it.

Whereas most people valued fame and fortune,6 a Stoic's primary goal in life was to attain and then maintain tranquility—to avoid, that is, experiencing negative emotions while continuing to enjoy positive emotions.

And although wealth can procure for us physical luxuries and various pleasures of the senses, it can never bring us contentment or banish our grief.

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.

For each desire we fulfill in accordance with this strategy, a new desire will pop into our head to take its place. This means that no matter how hard we work to satisfy our desires, we will be no closer to satisfaction than if we had fulfilled none of them. We will, in other words, remain dissatisfied.