155 Contentment Quotes

Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer.

Those who thank God much are the truly wealthy. So our inner happiness depends not on what we experience but on the degree of our gratitude to God, whatever the experience.

As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and in your hands, wherever you go... It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.

Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd; He that hath none must make them, or be wretched.

Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.

Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.

We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn't have steak? Who had steak?

All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.

How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little.

It is so much easier to covet what one hasn't than to revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn't.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?

I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.

I am a freeman and jolly as a beggar.

Nobody ever left the presidency with less regret, less disappointment, fewer heart burnings, or any general content with the result of his term (in his own heart, I mean) than I do. Full of difficulty and trouble at first, I now find myself on smooth waters and under bright skies.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer.

Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many things I have no need of!'

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

My belief is that to have no wants is divine.

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.

Your street, rich street or poor Used to always be sure, on your street There's a place in your heart you know from the start Can't be complete outside of the street Keep moving on through the joy and the pain Sometimes you got to look back To the street again Would you prefer all those castles in Spain? Or the view of your street from your window pane?

Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children's approach to life. They're people who don't give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought - sometimes it isn't much, either.

All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

A sweet content Passing all wisdom or its fairest flower.

Contented wi' little and cantie wi' mair.

For a' that, and a' that An' twice as muckle 's a' that, I've lost but ane, I've twa behin', I've wife eneugh for a' that.

I never enjoyed any business or mode of life as much as I do this. I really feel badly when I think of several of my intimate friends who are compelled to stay at home. These marches and campaigns in the hills of western Virginia will always be among the pleasantest things I can remember. I know we are in frequent perils, that we may never return and all that, but the feeling that I am where I ought to be is a full compensation for all that is sinister, leaving me free to enjoy as if on a pleasure tour.

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? O sweet content! Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex'd? O punishment!

I've got someone who loves me tonight. I've got over a thousand dollars in the bank, and I'm all right.

I look at the side of your face as the sunlight comes Streaming through the window in the autumn sunshine And all the time going to Coney Island I'm thinking, Wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time.

Le paradis terrestre est ou je suis.

L'homme doit etre content, dit-on; mais de quoi?

Be content -- Expansions, diffusions -- content to be The unspotted imbecile revery, The heraldic center of the world Of blue, blue sleek with a hundred chins, The amorist Adjective aflame...

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

Always contented with his life, and with his dinner, and his wife.

amen said a beetle who had preceded him into the interior that is the way i feel myself is it not wonderful when one arrives at the place where he can give up his ambitions and resignedly nay even with gladness recognize that it is a far far better thing to be merged harmoniously in the cosmic all and this confortable situation in his midst so affected the marauding robin that he perched upon a blooming twig and sang until the blossoms shook with ecstacy he sang i have a good digestion and there is a god after all which i was wicked enough to doubt yesterday when it rained

Maybe if I could bear my life as it is for one day, for one hour, for one minute, I could forget my wish to be something else

He wouldn't mind a bit if it kept going like this pretty much for the rest of his life

And suddenly tha ghetto didn't seem so tough/And though we had it rough, we always had enough

If I had known what it would be like to have it all... I might have been willing to settle for less.

Thus King Dolor's reign passed, year after year, long and prosperous. Whether he was happy - 'as happy as a king' - is a question no human being can decide. But I think he was, because he had the power of making everybody about him happy, and did it too; also because he was his godmother's godson, and could shut himself up with her whenever he liked, in that quiet little room in view of the Beautiful Mountains, which nobody else ever saw or cared to see. They were too far off, and the city lay so low. But there they were, all the time. No change ever came to them; and I think, at any day throughout his long reign, the King would sooner have lost his crown than have lost sight of the Beautiful Mountains. ~ Ch 10

Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.

Why thus longing, thus forever sighing For the far-off, unattained, and dim, While the beautiful all round thee lying Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?

Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.

'What I want is what I've not got, but what I need is all around me'

Looking around at the faces of his colleagues in the Senior Common Room he felt reassured: not a Lineament of Gratified Desire to be seen.

I am rejoiced at my fate. I had rather be in my present situation than to be elected to a seat in congress for life. I am in great hopes of making a fortune for myself and family. I hope you will do the best you can and I will do the same. Do not be uneasy about me for I am with my friends.

I'm now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

All I am certain of right now is that I don't want to go anywhere, and that's not bad for someone who always used to run.

Being pleased with what they give you is proper of slaves. Asking for more is proper of children. Conquering more is proper of fools.

Common man, no matter how hard life is to him, at least has the fortune of not thinking it.

Being a retired major looks like an ideal thing to me. What a pity you couldn't eternally have been just a retired major.

Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, and I'm going to be happy in it.

Yet could I these two days have spent, While still the autumn sweetly shone, Ah, me! I might have died content When I had looked on Carcassonne.

You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.

I think his fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord did not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other longitudes or latitudes, but was rather a playful expression of his conviction of the indifferency of all places, and that the best place for each is where he stands. He expressed it once in this wise: - 'I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world.'

I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches; and he to whom that is given need ask no more.

Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.

Do you think your Mother and I should have liv'd comfortably so long together, if ever we had been married?

I don't have to close my eyes to see [my dream life] because I live with it every day - with my kids, my girl, and my life. It's as perfect as it could possibly be. (2004)

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long.

His best companions, innocence and health; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

His was a life which lacked, perhaps, the sublimer emotions which raised Man to the level of the gods, but it was undeniably an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled, but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated. His name, when he died, would not live for ever in England's annals; he was spared the pain of worrying about this by the fact that he had no desire to live for ever in England's annals. He was possibly as nearly contented a human being can be in this century of alarms and excursions.

I'm saying, 'This I believe: I believe there is no God.' Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Happy is he who does not desire a thing.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.