Quotes About Contentment

quality of life isn't measured only by what we gain, but also by what we trade for it.

and old Indian saying: 'It's better to know one mountain than to climb many.

God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? ("Disappearing Act")

I wish I were a boy again-unquestioning, with no need to analyze the moment.

He kept thinking about Mary. What a fool he'd been to let her go. To think, with the thoughtless assurance of youth, that the world was replete with endless possibilities. He'd thought it a mistake to choose so early in life and embrace the present good. He'd been a great one for looking for greener pastures. He'd kept looking until all his pastures were brown with time. (Old Haunts)

Perhaps jungle life, despite physical danger, was a relaxing one. Surely it was free of the petty grievances, the disparate values of society. It was simple, devoid of artifice and ulcer-burning pressures.

But now, in the final hours, even hope had vanished. Yet he could smile. At a point without hope he had found contentment. He knew he had tried and there was nothing to be sorry for. And this was complete victory, because it was a victory over himself.

From that day on he learned to accept the dungeon he existed in, neither seeking to escape with sudden derring-do nor beating his pate bloody on its walls. And, thus resigned, he returned to work.

Non c'è da stupirsi che i bambini sono felici. Per loro la vita è facile. Un po' di fame un po', un po' di freddo, un po' di paura del buio. Tutto qui. Perché affannarsi tanto a crescere? La vita diventa troppo complicata.

She doesn't have to even give me supper. Im not hungry anyway. Im full. (Dress of White Silk)

When what you're doing isn't just a means to an end, you're in no hurry to get it done.

Life is something we need to stop correcting.

Je ne fais aucun mal en restant ici. I do no harm by remaining here.

reporter once asked Rockefeller how much is enough. His answer: Just a little bit more. And that's all we want: to eat and sleep, to stay dry and be loved, and acquire just a little bit more.

We're shaped to think the things we want will make us happy. But shaped to take only the briefest thrill in getting. Wanting is what having wants to recover.

She feeds him and sets him up with the TV. The screen is news, travel, the company of others, a reminder of the luck he'd had all life long and failed to see.

She drops the towel and splays into bed. The fall into the blankets lasts forever and keeps improving.

In the dark, she asks, What are you thinking? He's thinking that his life has reached its zenith, this very day. That he has lived to see everything he wants. Lived to see himself happy.

There's a whole lot of comfort in saying nothing.

Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all.

In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good.

Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now.

Know that things are okay as they are. This moment is as perfect as it can be. The saints called this the "sacrament of the present moment.

We have moved to a level where we have made happiness and contentment largely impossible. We have created a pseudo-happiness, largely based in having instead of being. We are so overstimulated that the ordinary no longer delights us. We cannot rest or abide in our naked being in God, as Jesus offers us.