Quotes About Contentment

Governments encourage this pacification by various distractions, what used to be called "bread and circuses." They know it will keep us small, content, and uninterested in those "weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and good faith" (Matthew 23:23) that have attracted all great souls. A

Only later in life can we perhaps join with Thomas Merton, who penned one of my favorite lines, "If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted."7

In the second half of life, we are not demanding our American constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness or that people must have our same experiences; rather, simple meaning now suffices, and that becomes in itself a much deeper happiness. As the body cannot live without food, so the soul cannot live without meaning.

I believe, necessary for both joy and truth in this world.

It is strange that when people have so much, they are so anxious about not having enough—to do, to see, to own, to fix, to control, to change.

The joyful acceptance of a limited world, of which I am only a small moment and limited part—this is probably the clearest indication of a man in his fullness.

Live simply so that others may simply live.

So what? Few men, Miles reflected, lived so comfortably within the confines of a two.word personal philosophy.

Miss Beryl: Doesn't it bother you that you haven't done more with the life God gave you? Sully: Not often. Now and then.

La forma más rápida de engendrar un nuevo deseo es satisfacer uno antiguo.

We do not want what's good for us.

the quickest way to beget a new desire, Bea knew, was to satisfy an old one...

she'd come to believe life was like that: you could enjoy almost anything if you gave it enough time.

Had I been more, I'd be more. Simple.

you missed what you didn't have far more than you appreciated what you did have. It was for this reason he'd always felt that owning things was overrated. All you were doing was alleviating the disappointment of not owning them.

I earned good money,' he said. 'I was driving in good teams, I was winning races, I had pole positions … basically, not a lot to prove. So what is the point to take still the risk? That was my question to myself last week. But the other side is, what is the rest of your life?

When it comes to happiness, remember, it is experiences that represent really good value for the money.

When people can afford necessities in life, an increase in income dones not result in a significantly happier life.

In all my life— though surrounded by many people— I had not had a single satisfying, sustained relationship with another human being and, not having had any, I did not miss it. I made no demands whatever upon others.

Kate leaned against the windowpane and smiled.

he lay down in the middle of the field in the sun on his back and closed his eyes, and felt wind, sun, the ground below him...The sun confused him, with its warmth, the brightness. He dozed throughout the rest of the afternoon. His life meant something. he was his own man, belonged to no one.

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

Happiness is just the absence of pain. It's the best I can hope for.

Betsy: Do you have daddy issues, Warren? Warren: Dad was supportive, intelligent, read to me as a kid, left me a trillion dollars. It's hard to complain.