Contentment Quotes

The tailor bird builds her nest in deep woods, she uses no more than one branch.The mole drinks off the river, it can only fill one belly. Chuang Tzu

~ Sung Yee Poon

In the Envoy Corps, you take what is offered, Virginia Vidaura said, somewhere in the corridors of my memory. And that must sometimes be enough.

~ Richard K. Morgan

We call bad one who rejects the fruit he is given for the fruit he is expecting or the fruit he was given last time.

~ C.s. Lewis

My goal in life is to be content. By that I don't mean fine or basically satisfied. I don't mean settling. I mean, for last of better terms, feeling like I'm in the right life.

~ Meghan Daum

Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.

~ Charles Dickens

The author says this socially respectable option NOT to parent has actually made parenthood more stressful. The knowledge that parents have chosen that role allows for unrealistic buildup of expectations and unavoidable second-guessing.

~ Jennifer Senior

She isn't the kind of girl that makes you wonder why she doesn't have someone, you just know that the kind of guy who is good enough for her is rare, and she projects the kind of strength that says she is perfectly happy to wait till he shows up.

~ Stacey Ballis

The two women sat by the fire, tilting their glasses and drinking in small peaceful sips. The lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the contented drinkers, and threw their large, close-at-hand shadows upon the wall. When Mrs Leak smoothed her apron the shadow solemnified the gesture as though she were moulding an universe. Laura's nose and chin were defined as sharply as the peaks peaks on a holly leaf.

~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

People on the spiritual path are people of unquenchable discontent. It is being propagated that spirituality means contentment. Contentment means you have contented yourself with what you have. A spiritual person means he is unwilling to settle for anything less than the Ultimate.

~ Sadhguru

Once you have the gift of life, you are blessed.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Christian, how did you enjoy comfort before? Was the creature anything to you but a conduit, a pipe, that conveyed God's goodness to you? 'The pipe is cut off,' says God, 'come to me, the fountain, and drink immediately.' Though the beams are taken away, yet the sun remains the same in the firmament as ever it was.

~ Jeremiah Burroughs

Most beautiful of all was the tarnished gold of the elms, with a little brown in it, a little bronze, a little blue, even-- a blue like amethyst, which made them melt into the azure haze with a kind of happiness, a harmony of mood that filled the air with content.

~ Willa Cather

The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

You know someone's okay if they can ignore things they can't do anything about and move on.

~ Jo Nesbø

Do not think, Oh, that I were delivered from all these afflictions and troubles here in this world! If you were, then you would have more ease yourself, but this is a way of honoring God, and manifesting the excellence of grace here, when you are in this conflict of temptation, which God shall not have from you in Heaven.

~ Jeremiah Burroughs

Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like bandit - will behave like one; always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won't. You have to admit that you can't catch it. At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Well, aren't you just saying it's better to be neurotic, sensitive, and miserable than unimaginative, adjusted and content? Is it really better?

~ Malcolm Bradbury

Everyone dies. The don't all have the chance to see what they wanted most. At least I've seen the Above. At least I've known True.

~ Ally Condie

I didn't feel like I was missing anything. Nor did I feel ambitious any more. It all seemed stupid wanting to be better than the others in the same ring, shallow, pointless.

~ Jackie Kay

When the symphony of life fills your heart, the chorus of contentment joins in.

~ Tom Althouse

Contentment is the only one substitute for happiness.

~ Kishore Bansal

Simple things, simple pleasures, cutting and splitting wood, a love of the country they wanted to see more of, memories of softball fields and a girl named Amanda. There are such women as Theresa Sam Fitzgerald who love their men. Are content with their lives together.

~ James Brady

Start from here, now is all you have, there will never be a better place or time and by tomorrow you would have lost more time.

~ Malti Bhojwani

Happiness consists of living in the dailyness of life and not knowing how happy you are.

~ E.l. Doctorow

Happiness is achieving your goals. Contentment is not having any.

~ Chloe Thurlow

A breeze blew softly, slightly rippling the water as it carried the heady scents of late Carolina springtime through the air. Honeysuckle. Jasmine. Ripe, pungent river mud. Ah, the world felt right.

~ Caitlin Rush

Money brings courage with it but lock contentment behind.

~ Kishore Bansal

In a clock, stop but one wheel and you stop every wheel, because they are dependent upon one another. So when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing? God may have some work to do twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or this week.

~ Jeremiah Burroughs

I couldn't ignore the fact that it felt good. So. Very. Good. To be held, in bed, in the arms of a tall, strong, handsome man.

~ Kristen Ashley

Maybe I don't know yet how to be happy and play well at the same time.

~ Andre Agassi

Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives – the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight.

~ E.b. White

I felt a taste of that other kind of contentment that doesn't come from acquiring information or getting praise or building a resume, the kind that is just there, like a hidden pearl.

~ Jaimal Yogis

When we turn life’s little pleasures into remedies for life’s troubles, we are setting up idols in our hearts, which actually push God aside.

~ Lydia Brownback

My modus operandi is that I'll be content with anything, as long as I know that it's the best that's possible.

~ Russell Brand

I feel like how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

~ John Green

As impossible as this may seem (in infertility), try to reach outside of yourself and realize all of the things that you are able to do for now because you do not have children. There are seasons in life, and for now yours is an unfettered one. Allow God to use you in the present. The best way to help alleviate your pain is to try to help others alleviate their pain.

~ Sara Dormon

Contentment should not be confused with smugness… Contentment is being happy despite of the successes and failures.

~ Girdhar Joshi

Where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.

~ Jane Austen

Don’t Seek Happiness - Happiness is like an orgasm: if you think about it too much, it goes away. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy, and you might find you get some as a side effect. We didn’t evolve to be constantly content. Contented Australopithecus Afarensis got eaten before passing on their genes.

~ Tim Minchin

...are you happy?I am content.What is the difference?Between happiness and contentment? Ah, there you have me. It is not easy to put into words. Contentment is a state of mind and body when the two work in harmony, and there is no friction. The mind is at peace, and the body also. The two are sufficient to themselves. Happiness is elusive--coming perhaps once in a life-time--and approaching ecstasy.Not a continuous thing, like contentment?No, not a continuous thing. But there are, after all, degrees of happiness.

~ Daphne Du Maurier