Quotes About Fulfillment

In other searchings it might be the object of the quest that brought satisfaction, or it might be something incidental that one got on the way; but in religion, desire was fulfilment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded.

That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world.

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

Wie niet helemaal bereikt wat hij bereiken wil, raakt niet los van de vraag, of hij niet beter elke moeite iets te bereiken zou kunnen opgeven, in plaats van te doen of iets anders bereiken hem kan troosten voor het feit dat hij niet bereikt heeft, wat hij oorspronkelijk wou.

Door mijn voetstappen te tellen (...), is het me toch gelukt zonder kompas weer thuis te komen. is dat geen succes? Is dit niet het succes waarop mijn hele leven mij heeft voorbereid?

Wat zij mij gaf, was voldoende. Misschien waren het korstjes brood, eigenlijk voor de meeuwen bestemd; ik was er gelukkig mee, of kon doen alsof.

I have never been bored an hour in my life. I get up every morning wondering what new strange glamorous thing is going to happen and it happens at fairly regular intervals.

Does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?

Joy is that delight which is perceived from the conjunction, and communion of the chief good.

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.

Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won't be able to fulfill.

the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.

Throughout the millennia and across cultures, those who have thought carefully about desire have drawn the conclusion that spending our days working to get whatever it is we find ourselves wanting is unlikely to bring us either happiness or tranquility.

The problem is that "bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters," and because they cannot control their desires, they can never find contentment.4

one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.

Most of us are "living the dream" living, that is, the dream we once had for ourselves.

Someone with a coherent philosophy of life will know what in life is worth attaining, and because this person has spent time trying to attain the thing in life he believed to be worth attaining, he has probably attained it, to the extent that it was possible for him to do so. Consequently, when it comes time for him to die, he will not feel cheated. To the contrary, he will, in the words of Musonius, "be set free from the fear of death."2 Consider,

A much better, albeit less obvious way to gain satisfaction is not by working to satisfy our desires but by working to master them. In particular, we need to take steps to slow down the desire-formation process within us. Rather than working to fulfill whatever desires we find in our head, we need to work at preventing certain desires from forming and eliminating many of the desires that have formed. And rather than wanting new things, we need to work at wanting the things we already have. This

Around the world and throughout the millennia, those who have thought carefully about the workings of desire have recognized this—that the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

How, after all, can we convince ourselves to want the things we already have? THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question.

There was also agreement that one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.

In my research on desire, I discovered nearly unanimous agreement among thoughtful people that we are unlikely to have a good and meaningful life unless we can overcome our insatiability. There was also agreement that one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have.