Quotes about Contentment

It is much better to die of hunger unhindered by grief and fear than to live affluently beset with worry, dread, suspicion and unchecked desire.

For your part, do not adopt any air of superiority. Mind your own business, keep busy with the work you are best suited for, and play well the part the Author has given you.

Do your best to rein in your desire. For if you desire something that isn't within your own control, disappointment will surely follow; meanwhile, you will be neglecting the very things that are within your control that are worthy of desire.

Content yourself with being a lover of wisdom, a seeker of the truth. Return and return again to what is essential and worthy. Do not try to seem wise to others. If you want to live a wise life, live it on your own terms and in your own eyes.

Our possessions should be suited to our bodies and lives, just as our shoes are suited to our feet. Could you run better if your shoes were larger than your feet, or gold-plated and diamond studded? Of course not. Once you let your appetite exceed what is necessary and useful, desire knows no bounds.

I am prepared to show you that you have resources and a character naturally strong and resilient; show me in return what grounds you have for being peevish and malcontent.

Getting rid of these, too, requires looking to God for help, trusting him alone, and submitting to his direction. [47] Then if you're not willing to do this — all tears and agitation — you will serve someone physically more powerful than you, and continue to look outside yourself for happiness, fated never to find it. And that is because you look for it in the wrong place, forgetting to look where it really lies.

But what says Socrates?—One man finds pleasure in improving his land, another his horses. My pleasure lies in seeing that I myself grow better day by day.

End the habit of despising things that are not within your power

If any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone. For God hath made all men to enjoy felicity and constancy of good. CXXIII

I, personally, was never kept from something I wanted, nor had forced upon me something I was opposed to. How did I manage it? I submitted my will to God. He wants me to be sick — well, then, so do I. He wants me to choose something. Then I choose it. He wants me to desire something, I desire it. He wants me to get something, I want the same; or he doesn't want me to get it, and I concur.

If you wish to have peace and contentment, release your attachment to all things outside your control. This is the path of freedom and happiness. If you want not just peace and contentment, but power and wealth too, you may forfeit the former in seeking the latter, and will lose your freedom and happiness along the way.