Quotes About Fulfillment

Every work is great when it is in exact measure. A work that exceeds its proper limits is the least of all. We have said repeatedly that your work, your proper work, is unique; another man's work is equally so, do not interchange with him. You alone can do well what is laid upon you; you would do badly what your neighbor will do well. God is satisfied in all.

Uno se hace lector para completar lo inacabado. Para completarse

I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.

One must never let one's little pleasures interfere with the really important affairs of life.

To become a mother, I feared, was to relinquish your status as the protagonist of your own life. Your questions were answered, your freedom was gone, your path would calcify in front of you. And yet it still pulled at me. Being a professional explorer would become largely impossible if I had a child, but having a kid seemed in many ways like the wildest possible trip.

I wanted what she [her mother] had wanted, what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safely and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all.

Sex that accomplishes this kind of transfiguration is a drug. It is not an easy thing to deny yourself once you know exactly where to get it.

But I understood, now, her dilemma. I wanted what she had wanted, what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all.

I asked if she'd ever wanted children. She told me, "Everybody doesn't get everything." It sounded depressing to me at the time, a statement of defeat. Now admitting it seems like the obvious and essential work of growing up. Everybody doesn't get everything: as natural and unavoidable as mortality.

One's country is wherever one does well. Où l'on est bien, là est la patrie.

Le bonheur est à ceux qui se suffisent à eux-mêmes.

Lo scopo del lavoro è quello di guadagnarsi il tempo libero.

Das Ziel des Weisen ist nicht Glück zu erlangen, sondern Unglück zu vermeiden.

Happiness is a state of activity.

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement....

Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.

Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.

There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.

Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself

He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life.

Happiness then, is found to be something perfect and self sufficient, being the end to which our actions are directed.

Nature does nothing in vain. Therefore, it is imperative for persons to act in accordance with their nature and develop their latent talents, in order to be content and complete.

Now it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.