Quotes About Fulfillment

If we could all come to see our consumer products as tools that help us to live our real lives—rather than as substitutes and surrogates for that life—we would need many fewer products to be happy.

I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.

Sometimes I wonder if people don't want freedom as much as they want meaning.

Maybe it doesn't matter that life never blossomed into something larger than itself.

Don't live in a way that makes you feel dead.

Between propriety and joy choose joy.

I think Seneca is right: life feels longer the more you engage with it.... I should be loving sculpture! But I have not gone deeply into sculpture. Instead, having been utterly insensitive to sculpture, I fill the time that might have been usefully devoted to sculpture with things like drinking and staring into space.

Leah watches Natalie stride over to her beautiful kitchen with her beautiful child. Everything behind those French doors is full and meaningful. The gestures, the glances, the conversations that can't be heard. How do you get to be so full? And so full of only meaningful things?

New York just expects so much from a girl—acts like it can't stand even the idea of a wasted talent or opportunity. . . . Rome says: enjoy me. London: survive me. New York: gimme all you got. What a thrilling proposition! The chance to be "all that you might be." Such a thrill—until it becomes a burden.

Sometimes I wonder if people don't want freedom as much as they want meaning

There is no great difference between novels and banana bread. They are both just something to do.

At least then, we have the satisfaction of a little short-term pleasure instead of a lifetime of feeling inadequate.

I can't rid myself of the need to do "something," to make "something," to feel that this new expanse of time hasn't been "wasted.

And perhaps for my mother this dream was the truth, and just by dreaming it she felt she had brought it to pass.

the surest motivation I know, the one I feel deepest within myself, and which, when all is said, done, stripped away - as it is at the moment - seems to be at the truth of the matter for a lot of people, to wit: it's something to do. [...] Why did you bake that banana bread? It was something to do. Why did you make a fort in your living room? Well, it's something to do. Why dress the dog as a cat? It's something to do, isn't it? Fills the time.

I read this line about love: Without it, life is just 'doing time' I don't think she intended by this only romantic love, or familial love or really any kind of love in particular. At least, I read it in the Platonic sense: Love with a capital L, and ideal form and essential part of the universe.

Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.

Was it wrong to hope to be happy?

Desiring lasts a long time, demands and requests go on to infinity; fulfillment is short and is meted out sparingly. But even the final satisfaction itself is only apparent; the wish fulfilled at once makes way for a new one.

you don't know what thirst is until you drink for the first time" ? Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

Laimingas tas, kur? aploja kvailiai,nes jo siela niekada jiems nepriklausys

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love." —Tom Robbins

The best richness is the richness of the soul;

Make today worth remembering.