Quotes About Contentment

Enjoy your life, fill your belly with wine and food, and accept death. The Gods kept immortality for themselves, death is the lot of man.

except how much all of us give up in this life, sooner or later, because we can never have all that we want. You'll find out soon enough. We're blessed, my dear. Quite blessed, but no life is without sacrifices.

All I want here is a certain space, a certain peace. Or not to be here at all.

And I've more reason now than ever to say that happiness is not what I will ever know, or will ever deserve to know. I am not so much in love with happiness.

It struck me as I looked around the little room, with its scent of ink and old paper, its scent of leather book binding and burning coals, that I could spend my whole life here happily, and that, in fact, I was living a life now so superior to anything that I'd ever lived before that I almost wanted to cry.

Sitting still all summer . . . was the height of my ambition.

I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of all the world without you.

There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.

And she thought what a clean, simple life she would have led if it weren't for love.

She saw herself riding in the passenger seat, Sam behind the wheel. Like two of those little peg people in a toy car. Husband peg, wife peg, side by side. Facing the road and not looking at each other; for why would they need to, really, having gone beyond the visible surface long ago. No hope of admiring gazes anymore, no chance of unremitting adoration. Nothing left to show but their plain, true, homely, interior selves, which were actually much richer anyhow.

Face it,' I said. 'There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got,' I said.

he was a party-giver." "But he never felt party-giving was really his true life," Poppy reminded her. "Well, no." "And that's where he and I differed," Poppy said. "Because I was always telling him, 'Look,' I said. 'Face it,' I said. 'There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got,' I said.

Mom? Was there a certain conscious point in your life when you decided to settle for being ordinary?' 

She wasn't always angry. She had lots of good days.

I broke my days into separate moments," he said. "See, it's true I didn't have any more to look forward to. But on the other hand, there were these individual moments that I could still appreciate. Like drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning. Working on something fine in my workshop. Watching a baseball game on TV.

Let it be is the theme that dominates his existence. He sees himself as being ruled by a dreamy mood of acceptance that was partly the source of all his happiness and partly his undoing.

When does the time come when you stand in front of your grown-up woman's mirror and feel contentment for what you see? Ever?

She seemed to have fallen in love again. In love with her own husband! The convenience of it pleased her—like finding right in her pantry all the fixings she needed for a new recipe.

There's my downfall, son. I mean with anyone, any one of these lady friends, I just can't resist a person I make happy.

And that's where he and I differed, Poppy said. Because I was always telling him, 'Look,' I said. 'Face it,' I said. 'There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got,' I said.

eventually you did. Happy endings all around.

Time softened on Sundays; it stretched itself out in vast rubbery lengths, and by two o'clock, there was more of it than would ever be needed for anything. There was no point in reading a book, writing a letter, or playing a game, because time was too flaccid ever to proceed to the moment in which the plot would twist, the letter would be sent, or the game would be won.

And she's certainly a good cook." Miss Betts sighed. "The epitaph of the spinster.

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.