Quotes About Satisfaction

We long ago gave up the wish to have things that were adequate or even excellent; we have preferred instead to have things that were up-to-date.

Something better! Everybody's talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don't matter if it ain't nothing but a log pen.

Most people now are looking for a 'better place,' which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned from his time in the army and the war. He saw a lot of places, and he came home. I think he gave up the idea that there is a better place somewhere else. There is no 'better place' than this, not in this world.

Theoretically, there is always a better place for a person to live, better work to do, a better spouse to wed, better friends to have. But then this person must meet herself coming back: Theoretically, there always is a better inhabitant of this place, a better member of this community, a better worker, spouse, and friend than she is. This surely describes one of the circles of Hell, and who hasn't traveled around it a time or two?

He could never be happy; as an obsessive perfectionist, perfection would always stay tantalizingly out of reach

but she never knew what it was like to walk away from the thing she had most wanted. Years later she would say, Photography allowed me to make the world and be in the world.

I set down here Mr. Franklin's careless question, and my foolish answer, as a consolation and encouragement to all stupid people — it being, as I have remarked, a great satisfaction to our inferior fellow-creatures to find that their betters are, on occasions, no brighter than they are.

The solemn servant was far too highly trained to betray the slightest satisfaction.

Of what are you thinking?" Peary asked one of his Eskimo guides. "I do not have to think," was the answer; "I have plenty of meat." Not to think unless we have to—there is much to be said for this as the summation of wisdom.

I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire.

The simplest meaning of life, then, is joy -- the exhilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being; sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is because it has more body and less soul, and understands that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no further meaning to its arms and legs than their abounding use. Perhaps if we used our arms and legs we would be happy too;

Let ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them.

The secret of peace is not to make our achievements equal to our desires, but to lower our desires to the level of our achievements. "If what you have seems insufficient to you," said the Roman Stoic Seneca (d. 65 A.D.), "then, though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable.

Desire is infinite, fulfilment is limited

To be happy means to be self-sufficient.

we do not desire things because they give us pleasure; but they give us pleasure because we desire them;

We please others best-and best satisfy ourselves-only when we have done our own job fully and thus fulfilled our own potential.

IV   The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels. V   If the many become the same as the few, when possess'd, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man. VI   If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot. VII   The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite.

In a wife I would desire / What in whores is always found / The lineaments of gratified desire.

Maybe this is the answer - maybe this is how to find true contentment - to live your life within confined horizons. To set modest goals, achievable ambitions. Not all of us can manage it, alas.

Why should I go further than I am able? Is it not enough for you that I am perfect?

She liked the words; they satisfied her famine for phrases.

Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won't have to haunt for happiness

One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.