Quotes About Contentment

If any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone. For God hath made all men to enjoy felicity and constancy of good.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself.

There is but one way to tranquility of mind and happiness, and that is to account no external things thine own, but to commit all to God.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Freedom is not archived by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it.

If you want to improve, you must be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.

Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day – especially death – and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess.

Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.

Don't seek that all that comes about should come about as you wish, but wish that everything that comes about should come about just as it does, and then you'll have a calm and happy life.

Fortify yourself with contentment for this is an impregnable fortress.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices me wherever I am or whatever I do.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

Reading should serve the goal of attaining peace; if it doesn't make you peaceful, what good is it?

Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.

If you wish it, you are free; if you wish it, you'll find fault with no one, you'll cast blame on no one, and everything that comes about will do so in accordance with your own will and that of God.

He who is discontented with what he has, and with what has been granted to him by fortune, is one who is ignorant of the art of living, but he who bears that in a noble spirit, and makes reasonable use of all that comes from it, deserves to be regarded as a good man.

Stop honouring externals, quit turning yourself into the tool of mere matter, or of people who can supply you or deny you those material things.

Protect what belongs to you at all costs; don't desire what belongs to another.

He wants what he cannot have, and does not want what he can't refuse — and isn't aware of it. He doesn't know the difference between his own possessions and others'. Because, if he did, he would never be thwarted of disappointed. Or nervous.

Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you.

Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life. IX

I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

Do not wish that all things will go well with you, but that you will go well with all things.