Quotes about Contentment

    What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.
    The hour when you say, 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself.'
    The hour when you say, 'What matters my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion his food? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'
    The hour when you say, 'What matters my virtue? As yet it has not made me rage. How weary I am of my good and my evil! All that is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'

Patience expands your capacity to love and feel peace.

There are four gate-keepers at the entrace to the Realm of Freedom [moksha].

We could become quite satisfied with ourselves because we are sitting in meditation and are endeavoring to practice the spiritual path. Such satisfaction with ourselves is not the same as contentment. Contentment is necessary, self-satisfaction is detrimental. To be content has to include knowing we are in the right place at the right time to facilitate our own growth. But to be self-satisfied means that we no longer realize the need for growth. All these aspects are important parts of our commitment and make us into one whole being with a one-pointed direction.

As you learn to leave alone the activity of unconsciously trying to be the mindbody that you think that you are - the mindbody that this "you" is currently flowing through - and you learn to move as this one that you truly are - this "you" of you; the very heart of existence - steadily, consciously and momentarily, the continuity of the ever deepening of this innermost as it keeps on entering its manifestation, through this mindbody that you find yourself flowing through, allows you to simply bubble in the sheer joy, pleasure, peace, delightfulness and stillness that this "you" of you is.

Ambition is the last refuge of failure.

Commercial interests with their advertising industry do not want people to develop contentment and less greed.  Military interests in economic, political, ethnic or nationalist guises, do not want people to develop more tolerance, nonviolence and compassion.  And ruling groups in general, in whatever sort of hierarchy do not want the ruled to become too insightful, too independent, too creative on their own, as the danger is that they will become insubordinate, rebellious, and unproductive in their alloted tasks.

Moderate aspirations lead to a contended life. I don't have to buy the airplane and I can't drive the tank!!

The heart is always the place to go. Go home into your heart, where there is warmth, appreciation, gratitude and contentment

Love is not a thing. It is not something you do. Love is a way of being, a merging of body, mind and spirit. A state of total acceptance and freedom. Without limits, reservations or qualifications. It is a sense of wonder and oneness with all that exists in a universe that is self-sustaining, and a God who loves us.

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.

"I have come to realize that I am Irreplaceably Disposable"

The psychic task a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

But man has other needs as well: emotional needs. These, too, are few, but every bit as important as his physical requirements, yet not so simple. If they aren't met, they can be as devastating as physical hunger, as uncomfortable as a lack of shelter, as incapacitating as thirst. The frustration, isolation and anxiety brought about by unmet emotional needs can, like physical privation, produce death or a degree of living death - neurosis and psychosis.

Fame or integrity: which is more important? Money or happiness: which is more valuable? Success or failure: which is more destructive? If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It's a great enhancer. It might last a minute, or a month, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a greater space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believe that I grew, and further defined my capacities--not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way.

The German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. . . . So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation.

My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not deck'd with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen: my crown is call'd content; A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

All is well ended if this suit be won. That you express content; which we will pay, With strife to please you, day exceeding day.

Poor and content is rich and rich enough.

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm.

Sir, I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear,owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

Hast any philosophy in thee shepherd? .• • • • . . . He that wants money, means and content, is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep, and a great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding or comes of a very dull kindred.

The Art of Happiness There was never a time when so much official effort was being expended to produce happiness, and probably never a time when so little attention was paid by the individual to creating and personal qualities that make for it. What one misses most today is the evidence of widespread personal determination to develop a character that will, in itself, given any reasonable odds, make for happiness. Our whole emphasis is on the reform of living conditions, of increased wages, of controls on the economic structure-the government approach-and so little on man improving himself. The ingredients of happiness are so simple that they can be counted on one hand. Happiness comes from within, and rests most securely on simple goodness and clear conscience. Religion may not be essential to it, but no one ins known to have gained it without a philosophy resting on ethical principles. Selfishness is its enemy; to make another happy is to be happy one's self. It is quiet, seldom found for long in crowds, most easily won in moments of solitude and reflection. It cannot be bought; indeed, money has very little to do with it. No one is happy unless he is reasonably well satisfied with himself, so that the quest for tranquility must of necessity begin with self-examination. We shall not often be content with what we discover in this scrutiny. There is much to do, and so little done. Upon this searching self-analysis, however, depends the discovery of those qualities that make each man unique, and whose development alone can bring satisfaction. Of all those who have tried, down the ages, to outline a program for happiness, few have succeeded so well as William Henry Channing, chaplain of the House of Representatives in the middle of the last century: "To live content with small means; so seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy . . . to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to the stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common." It will be noted that no government can do this for you; you must do it for yourself.

The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman [Walpole] has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.

Respectable men and women content with the good and easy living are missing some of the most important things in life. Unless you give yourself to some great cause you haven't even begun to live.

There are times when a man should be content with what he has, but never with what he is.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.