Quotes About Contentment

Lie still, it said. If you do not rise, do not move, nothing can hurt you. Simply do nothing, say nothing, be nowhere.

But as your horizons contract—when you see the future ahead of you as finite and uncertain—your focus shifts to the here and now, to everyday pleasures and the people closest to you.

If we shift as we age toward appreciating everyday pleasures and relationships rather than toward achieving, having, and getting, and if we find this more fulfilling, then why do we take so long to do it? Why do we wait until we're old? The common view was that these lessons are hard to learn. Living is a kind of skill. The calm and wisdom of old age are achieved over time.

you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer.

Studies find that as people grow older they interact with fewer people and concentrate more on spending time with family and established friends. They focus on being rather than doing and on the present more than the future. Understanding

people reported more positive emotions as they aged.

life designed to be safe but empty of anything they care about.

It seemed as if, once aging led to debility, it was impossible for anyone to be happy. *

The lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer. *

we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it, we have only our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. They provide, ultimately, only torment.

And having a place that genuinely feels like your home can seem as essential to a person as water to a fish.

Studies find that as people grow older they interact with fewer people and concentrate more on spending time with family and established friends. They focus on being rather than doing and on the present more than the future.

We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.

THE MOTHER: You don't ask much of life, do you? THE LADY: Why should I? You don't get what you ask for anyway.

So we can be filled with holes and loss and wide expanses of unhealed geography - and we can also be excited by life and in love and content at the exact same moment.

Imperfections are attractive when their owners are happy with them.

You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break, and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.

Happiness is a treadmill of a goal for people who are not happy by nature. Being an unhappy person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested instead of happy.

But I think I would have been happier if the only thing that came out of his mouth was the sound of a turning page.

You would be amazed at what you can give up, lose or break and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.

Being an unhappy person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested instead of happy. You can be fascinated instead of happy.

Happiness is a wonderful goal for those who are inclined on a genetic level toward that emotional end of the spectrum. Happiness is a treadmill of a goal for people who are not happy by nature. Being an unhappy person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested instead of happy. You can be fascinated instead of happy.

I wish I had a tray table in my bedroom and I wish I smoked, just so I could extinguish my smoking materials

I had never before considered the possibility that I might never even want a drink yet still be left with this horrible, throbbing vacancy in the center of my being, right where my mental health and contentment were supposed to be.