Quotes About Contentment

Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, 'I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.

If you want to be happy for a year, win the lottery. If you want to be happy for life, love what you do.

We're not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy's assassin.

Joy, it is, which I've never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self – delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving.

As novelist Harry Crews once wrote, I'm the kind of person who—if he can't have too much of something—doesn't want any of it. In

Maybe he was. Maybe he had something to smile about these days.

But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.

It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.

If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. I would be a fox, or a tree full of waving branches. I wouldn't mind being a rose in a field full of roses. Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition. Reason they have not yet thought of. Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what. Or any other foolish question.

Have I lived enough? Have I loved enough? Have I considered Right Action enough, have I come to any conclusion? Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude? Have I endured loneliness with grace? - A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another—why don't you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.

how could there be a day in your whole life that doesn't have its splash of happiness?

Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate)

Do you think the wren ever dreams of a better house?

A Dream of Trees There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees, A quiet house, some green and modest acres A little way from every troubling town, A little way from factories, school, laments. I would have time, I thought, and time to spare, With only streams and birds for company, To build out of my life a few wild stanzas. And then it came to me, that so was death, A little way away from everywhere.

Today Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.

in this world I am as rich as I need to be.

What good does it do to lie all day in the sun loving what's easy? It never grew easy, but at least I grew peaceful:

I am so happy to be alive in this world I would like to live forever, but I am content not to. Seeing what I have seen has filled me; believing what I believe has filled me.

Oh, I would like to live in an empty house, with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass. No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass.

there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted— each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.