Quotes About Contentment

When she had fallen asleep on me, and the saw in the yard was quiet, and a blackbird was singing as the colors of things in the kitchen dimmed until nothing remained of them but lighter and darker shades of gray, I was completely happy.

We did not have a world that we shared; she gave me the space in her life that she wanted me to have. I had to be content with that.

What do you want now? Your whole life in one hour?

Así es la vida, nunca le sacarás todo el partido a lo que te ha tocado si no lo aceptas

Er suchte nicht das leichte Leben, sonderen das schöne. Er gierte nicht nach Geld, er spielte damit.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant, I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.

The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.

The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.

What I do maintain is that success can only be one ingredient in happiness, and is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

I do not myself think there is any superior rationality in being unhappy. The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.

Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

With the wise man, what he has does not cease to be enjoyable because some one else has something else. Envy, in fact, is one form of vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations

Men have physical needs, and they have emotions. While physical needs are unsatisfied, they take first place; but when they are satisfied, emotions unconnected with them become important in deciding whether a man is to be happy or unhappy.

Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.

a certain amount of boredom is...essential to a happy life

He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

The lunatic who thinks he is a crowned head may be, in a sense, happy, but his happiness is not of a kind that any sane person would envy.

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible.

only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.