Quotes About Contentment

Now I've done and said all I can do and say. I've come to the end of my personality, and now if I want anything it's peace, quiet. The ability, the opportunity to stay in my room and just stagger on. I suppose what I want, in a way, is death.

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

Let others consume their efforts in pointless trifles. Let others drain their energy in futile worries.

Men are not rich or poor according to what they possess but to what they desire. The only rich man is he that with content enjoys a competence.

There are no riches like the sweetness of content, nor poverty comparable to the want of patience.

To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.

What we learn from the story of Adam and Eve is simple. What we can have is never what we want. And when we can have what we wanted we want something else. It's human nature in a single luminous story. Our sin. Our fall. Our problem.

remarked: [I]f our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements , etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.4

I have found it is surprisingly difficult to remain sad when a cat is doing its level best to sandpaper one's cheeks.

you want most of all (see Psalm 84:11). Paul admitted that he had to "learn" the secret of contentment in every situation. So with all of us. That learning process can sometimes be painful, but it is worth all we have to go through to get that knowledge of God's new plan.

And yet this part of the story shows that God supplies our need in a way that is both extraordinary but also ordinary. The extraordinary: The flour and oil were never used up. The ordinary: There was just enough for each day. It was never a case of a hundred barrels of flour and oil being wasted before their eyes. The amount was small and always

there. Enough is enough. You do not need flour and oil for tomorrow; only for today. You can live only one day at a time. You can take only one bite at a time. What more could you cope with anyway? My dad's favorite verse was, "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33). The next verse goes on to say, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

I am perfectly well and happy here.... All I want is to be left alone to live my life as I wish and not as other people think best for themselves.

I must be very selfish, she thought, for I want to set nothing and no one right; all I want is to be left in peace to make what I can of this problem called life for myself and my children.

A sea-gull planed its way down to the water on curving, outstretched wings. The salt air blew coolly on her flushed cheeks, and she smiled to herself in her happiness.

But two things I have ever respected are warmth and the ability to sit still." Martha

She realized she'd never felt this happy.even at her old school, she had been an outsider, always the lonely girl,the one who stayed at home watching tv on Saturday nights while her friends went to parties and out on dates.

Do not be satisfied with God's calling or his gifts in your life. Be satisfied with Jesus Christ himself.1 —LIU ZHENYING (KNOWN AS BROTHER YUN)

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.

Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted – a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.

I can see myself sitting all day in my chair, immersed in lives, plots, and sentences, intoxicated by words and chimeras, paralyzed by satisfaction and contentment, reading until the deepening twilight, until I can no longer make out the words, until my mind begins to wander, until my aching muscles are no longer able to keep the book aloft. Joy is the anticipation of joy. Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan.

The cure for loneliness is solitude. —Marianne Moore, from the essay "If I Were Sixteen Today

I was living, I thought I was content, I was told I was happy. I did a marvelous impression of a man not crushed by dread. Once I felt your warm breath on my neck, I was no longer invisible, you saw me, you always saw me. Me cogitas, ergo sum.