Quotes About Contentment

know how happy I am when one of them is very happy. How happy I was to

I remind myself, Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (Cribbed from Voltaire.) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don't do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant dinner that I never host.

This self-knowledge is crucial because we can build a happy life only on the foundation of our own nature, our own interests, and our own values.

In particular, I'd realized that although I possessed all the elements of a happy life, too often I took my circumstances for granted and allowed myself to become overly vexed by petty annoyances or fleeting worries. I'd wanted to appreciate my life more, and to live up to it better.

It's easier to complain than to laugh, easier to yell than to joke around, easier to be demanding than to be satisfied.

course it's not enough to sit around wanting to be happy; you must make the effort to take steps toward happiness by acting with more love, finding work you enjoy

Happiness depends partly on external circumstances, and it also depends on how you view those circumstances

Remember, the reason to clear clutter is because, somehow, that clutter is diminishing your happiness. If you don't care, don't bother.

would seek happiness in the ways that seemed most natural to me.

And a sense of purpose is very important to happiness. But

Epicurus agreed, albeit in slightly more poetic phraseology: Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.

I feel unsettled at any time when I'm not writing. And I mean that. There's a sense of peace, and of being in the right place, that I experience only when I'm writing.

Don't grieve limitations

It's true that novelty and challenge bring happiness...but routine can also bring happiness. The pleasure of doing the same thing in the same way every day...take[s] on a certain beauty and provide[s] a kind of invisible architecture...

True, money can't buy happiness. But spent wisely, it can buy things that contribute mightily to a happy life.

book Happier, Tal Ben-Shahar

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Reluctantly, Kazuko accepts one of the tomatoes. "This is absurd. You have nothing and you're giving us food," she says. He stares hard at her: "The less I have, the happier I am.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

I don't believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.

He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought him.

What could be better than to sit besides the fire with a book and a glowing lamp while the wind beats outside the windows...

If you want to be happy, it is necessary not to be too intelligent.

And on the endless dusty ribbon of the highway, on sunken roads vaulted over by branches, on paths between stands of grain that rose to his knees, the sun on his shoulders and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the night's bliss, his spirit at peace and his flesh content, he would ride on his way ruminating his happiness, like someone who keeps savoring, hours later, the fragrance of the truffles he has eaten for dinner.