Quotes About Contentment

Yes, thought Mma Ramotswe, the world can be very discouraging. But we cannot sit and think about all the things that have gone wrong, or could go wrong. There was no point in doing that...There was much for which we could be grateful, whatever the sorrows of this world.

She stopped. It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

That place is the place we have always been, and if you think that where you have been is where you should be, then why go to another place that you do not know at all and may not be as good as the place you were in before somebody came along and said to you that you must go forwards—which is not what you wanted to do?

There were times, she thought, when 'ah' said everything that needed to be said

Mma Ramotswe smiled, but only to herself.

But it seemed to her that Mma Ramotswe needed persuading, and so she continued, "What else do you need in life, Mma? You have a fine husband—which is one of the most important things that anybody can have.

And then," Mma Potokwane continued, "you have a successful business. You have the two children. You have your Zebra Drive home. You have so much, Mma." She looked at her friend with a touch of reproach. "You have nothing further to achieve, Mma. Nothing.

It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.

We should be happy when people have chairs," he admonished. "We should be happy, even if we do not have a chair ourselves.

But she had never once regretted what she had done under the influence of tea, and would not start doing so now.

Ulf nodded. "Many of us have to settle for something," he said. "And then we find the thing we've settled for is as good as the thing we wanted to do in the first place.

now: he had a kind wife who had a very good government job and he had a house with new furniture, purchased on his wife's salary, and a car that went with his wife's job. All of that was far more important than being noticed by women, and yet, and yet…

He took to wearing a Greek merchant navy captain's cap, and spending his mornings at the marina telling the staff what to do. "Sure thing, Captain Eddie," they replied. But they never did what he asked them to do, and Eddie never noticed. So everybody was content.

By comparison with such lives, our days were inconsequential indeed, and yet even though our canvas was small, still we could paint a masterpiece—as long as we were content for it to be a miniature.

It was far better to accept what had happened and make the best of it. It was also the case, he reflected, that Mma Ramotswe usually got her way. She was so nice about it, so disinclined to be insistent or pushy, but she usually got him to do what she wanted—and he was happy enough about that when all was said and done.

Who is happier, those who are aware, and doubt, or those who are sure of what they believe in, and have never doubted or questioned it? The answer, she had concluded, was that this had nothing to do with happiness, which came upon you like the weather, determined by your personlaity.

suddenly realised that if he felt that he had achieved nothing it was because he had failed to cherish what he had in fact done. He had filled his days doing ordinary, unexceptional things and thought nothing of them. But they were far from nothing:

Poor Erik," muttered Anna. "No," said Ulf. "No. Not poor Erik—fortunate Erik." Anna gave Ulf a dubious look. "But all he thinks of..." "...is fishing. Yes, but does that make him unhappy? Quite the contrary: Erik is utterly happy. Erik is completely resolved.

The world was an imperfect place--as the events of the last few days had demonstrated--but within that vale of tears there were many sites and times of quietude and contentment, and this place and this moment on the veranda was one such.

Yes, she agreed, there are times when I am unhappy and times when I am happy. There are more happy times than unhappy ones, I think.

like yearning to be a swan when you were demonstrably a bird of a different feather;

If efficiency were the only value in this life, then we would be content to eat bland but nutritious food every day--and the same food at that. That would keep us alive, but it would make for very dull mealtimes.

Znajdujemy w ?yciu to, czego szukamy, powiedzia? kiedy? do niej ojciec. I mia? racj?: je?li szukasz w ?yciu szcz??cia, znajdziesz szcz??cie, je?li szukasz nieufno?ci, zazdro?ci i nienawi?ci, to znajdziesz nieufno??, zazdro?? i nienawi??.

The real art in going through life with dignity and with a modicum of happiness was to accept what you were, and, at the same time, to accept others—and to love them all equally.