Quotes About Contentment

The issue is not possession of riches, according to Saint Augustine, but the desire for them.

They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving.

and did you get what you wanted from this life even so? i did.

Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute. Then looked out the window at the rain. And gave over. Put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this earth.

And did you get what you wanted from this life,...?

Io non è che sentissi la mancanza dei sogni. Tanto avevo i suoi di sogni su cui riflettere, se proprio mi serviva un'altra vita. E poi avevo una vicina che cantava o canticchiava tutto il giorno. Tutto sommato, potevo ritenermi fortunato.

One would think a writer would be happy here -- if a writer is ever happy anywhere.

I looked at my watch. Nine fifty-four. Time to go home and get your slippers on and play over a game of chess. Time for a tall cool drink and a long quiet pipe. Time to sit with your feet up and think of nothing. Time to start yawning over your magazine. Time to be a human being, a householder, a man with nothing to do but rest and suck in the night air and rebuild the brain for tomorrow.

I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it any more.

I'm rich. Who the hell wants to be happy?

He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.

I was a swell guy. I enjoyed being me.

He smiled his first smile of the day. He probably allowed himself four. [...] He was doing an awful lot of smiling that day. Using up a whole week's supply.

They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared with the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room." I didn't say anything.

There's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun, but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared with the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room.

I have such a beautiful love for myself—and the sweet part of it—no rivals.

Breeze looked at me very steadily. Then he sighed. Then he picked the glass up and tasted it and sighed again shook his head sideways with a half smile; the way a man does when you give him a drink and he needs it very badly and it is just right and the first swallow is like a peek into a cleaner, sunnier, brighter world.

When you lose everything,' Nathan had said, 'you've nothing left to lose. You've got two choices then: either kill yourself or start building a new life. When I started this new life, without my family, I decided the only sensible thing in it was to live for the small rewards: a job well done, a beautiful sunrise, the sound of children laughing at play, a good cup of wine. Makes it easy to deal with the harsher side of life.

My father used to say, "a day spent breathing is a good day

Pierrot had no particular opinion on public morals, or the future of civilization. No one had ever told him that he was intelligent. He had frequently been told, rather, that he behaved like an idiot or that he bore some resemblance to the moon. At all events, here and now, he was happy, and content, vaguely.

Hannah had a future if she could just settle down.

Questions about happiness generally assume that we know what a happy life looks like. Happiness is often described as the result of having a great many ducks lined up in a row - spouse, offspring, private property, erotic experiences - even though a millisecond of reflection will bring to mind countless people who have all those things and are still miserable.

There is a serenity in illness that takes away all the need to do and makes just being enough.