Quotes About Contentment

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom...You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.

Restated constructively, the end of the adventure already drags the course of the man; he (Cagliostro) is in love with satiety. But she (Seraphina) is in love with adventure. Her pitch is higher.

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book.

Happiness is neither virtue or pleasure nor this thing or that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.

Who shall say I am notthe happy genius of my household?

I praise the Frenchman [La Bruyère], his remark was shrewd—How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!But grant me still a friend in my retreatWhom I may whisper—solitude is sweet.

Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd!How sweet their memory still!But they have left an aching voidThe world can never fill.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urnThrows up a steamy column, and the cups,That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

...So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

He that holds fast the golden mean, And lives contentedly between The little and the great, Feels not the want that pinch the poor, Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn Throws up a steamy column and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful ev'ning in.

Most people', I say 'couldn't tell you if they're happy. They're simply baffled by the question. They might, if pressed, describe happiness as the absence of pain or any particular anxiety. They might cite small moments of exhilaration...but they'd admit that even these moments are shadowed by a cloud of apprehension'.

How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.

To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never, in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony.

Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won't have to hunt for happiness.

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.

Some of us might find happiness if we quit struggling so desperately for it.

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

Be happy because no one is seeing what you do, no one is listening to you, no one really cares what may be achieved, but sometimes accidents happen and beauty is born.

There is a tonic strength, in the hour of sorrow and affliction, in escaping from the world and society and getting back to the simple duties and interests we have slighted and forgotten. Our world grows smaller, but it grows dearer and greater. Simple things have a new charm for us, and we suddenly realize that we have been renouncing all that is greatest and best, in our pursuit of some phantom.