146 Contentment Quotes

In a world where we're constantly chasing after the next big thing, finding contentment can often feel elusive. Yet, contentment is less about what we have and more about appreciating the present moment. If you're seeking a dose of inspiration to cultivate inner peace and happiness, look no further. We've curated a collection of the top 146 contentment quotes to help you embrace a life of gratitude and tranquility. Dive in and discover wisdom from thinkers, writers, and leaders who have mastered the art of being content.

1. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” - Mark Twain

2. “For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

3. “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.” - Lao Tzu

4. “Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem” - Kahlil Gibran

5. “That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.” - Khaled Hosseini

6. “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.” - John Stuart Mill

7. “I should be contentto look at a mountainfor what it isand not as a comment on my life.” - David Ignatow

8. “It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.” - Dale Carnegie

9. “We need much less than we think we need.” - Maya Angelou

10. “Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.” - Pearl S. Buck

11. “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.” - Martha Washington

12. “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” - Socrates

13. “We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.” - Immanuel Kant

14. “A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.” - Leo Tolstoy

15. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” - Epictetus

16. “It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can enjoy every moment of movement, as long as where we are is as good as where we'd like to be. That's not to say that you need to be satisfied forever with where you are today. But you need to honor what you've accomplished, rather than thinking of what's left to be done (p. 159).” - John Bingham

17. “Just tell yourself, Duckie, you're real quite lucky.” - Dr. Seuss

18. “A book of verses underneath the boughA flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thouBeside me singing in the wildernessAnd wilderness is paradise now.” - Omar Khayyám

19. “I have learned that to be with those I like is enough” - Walt Whitman

20. “If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.” - Richard Matheson

21. “Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

22. “We're all golden sunflowers inside.” - Allen Ginsberg

23. “The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough.” - Aleksandar Hemon

24. “He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” - Socrates

25. “All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.” - John Lubbock

26. “[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.” - Lev Grossman

27. “Inventory:"Four be the things I am wiser to know:Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.Four be the things I'd been better without:Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.Three be the things I shall never attain:Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.Three be the things I shall have till I die:Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.” - Dorothy Parker

28. “I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.” - Charles Dickens

29. “Search for contentment in each person you meet.” - Steve Maraboli

30. “Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home.” - J. Maarten Troost

31. “One honest John Tompkins, a hedger & ditcher, Although he was poor, did not want to be richer;For all such vain wishes in him were preventedBy a fortunate habit of being contented.” - Jane Taylor

32. “No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself” - Plato

33. “I think the secret to a hoppy life is a selective memory. Remember what you are most grateful for and quickly forget what your not.” - Richard Paul Evans

34. “Ari smiled. The sun was shining, the weather was great, he was eating ice cream, and all his dreams were about to come true.” - James Patterson

35. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.” - Charles M. Schulz

36. “Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.” - John Chrysostom

37. “Lord, make me nowAs happy as the field.With flowers enriched...” - Eileen Soper

38. “A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist. ” - Stewart Alsop

39. “(about William Blake)As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. ” - Brenda Ueland

40. “I have observed this in my experience of slavery,--that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.” - Frederick Douglass

41. “You have to open up to the world and learn optimism...Contentment with the past, happiness with the present, and hope for the future. Learned optimisim.” - Jennifer Crusie

42. “If at eighty you're not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin' and keepin' power. If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on your way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss - under your breath, of course - "Fuck you, Jack! you don't own me." If you can whistle up your ass, if you can be turned on by a fetching bottom or a lovely pair of teats, if you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from going sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked.” - Henry Miller

43. “I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.” - Pablo Picasso

44. “Contentment has learned how to find out what she needs to know. Last year she went on a major housecleaning spree. First she stood on her head until all the extra facts fell out. Then she discarded about half her house. Now she knows where every thing comes from—who dyed the yarn dark green and who wove the rug and who built the loom, who made the willow chair, who planted the apricot trees. She made the turquoise mugs herself with clay she found in the hills beyond her house. When Contentment is sad, she takes a mud bath or goes to the mountains until her lungs are clear. When she walks through an unfamiliar neighborhood, she always makes friends with the local cats.” - J. Ruth Gendler

45. “Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.” - Jeremiah Burroughs

46. “You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.” - Charles Spurgeon

47. “I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches; and he to whom that is given need ask no more.” - Henry Fielding

48. “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.” - Ann Brashares

49. “A lonely impulse of delight” - W.B. Yeats

50. “At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

51. “She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty years. At the end of it she was still singing.” - George Orwell

52. “He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at that very moment of existence, at the heart of torrential downpour, she was exquisitely real, and she, too, seemed content to go on sitting there forever.” - Anna Godbersen

53. “Contentment can only happen as we increase desire, let it run itself out towar its fulfilment, and carry us along with it.” - John Eldredge

54. “Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.” - Walt Whitman

55. “So in our own poor hides and from our miserable comrades we learn the nature of satiety. Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

56. “Our mission as humans is not only to discover our fullest selves in the technium, and to find full contentment, but to expand the possibilities for others. Greater technology will selfishly unleash our talents, but it will also unselfishly unleash others: our children, and all children to come.” - Kevin Kelly

57. “‎I'm in a win-win playoff. " Response of a Christian dying of cancer at thirty on the prospect of miraculous healing.” - Billy Graham

58. “She had nothing to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful visit;—perfect, in being much too short.” - Jane Austen

59. “Americans were convinced in their own minds that they were very miserable, and those who think so are so. There is nothing so easy as to persuade people that they are badly governed. Take happy and comfortable people and talk to them with the art of the evil one, and they can soon be made discontented with their government, their rulers, with everything around them, and even with themselves.” - Thomas Hutchinson

60. “A cat knows how to be comfortable, how to get the people around it to serve it. In a tranquil domestic situation, the cat is a veritable manipulative genius. It seeks the soft, it seeks the warm, it prefers the quiet and it loves to be full. It displays, when it gets its own way in these matters, a degree of contentment we would all like to emulate.” - Roger A. Caras

61. “It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were.” - Nicholas Sparks

62. “He brewed his tea in a blue china pot, poured it into a chipped white cup with forget-me-nots on the handle, and dropped in a dollop of honey and cream. He sat by the window, cup in hand, watching the first snow fall. "I am," he sighed deeply, "contented as a clam. I am a most happy man.” - Ethel Pochocki

63. “We never pray against our government or call down curses on them. Instead, we have learned that God is in control both of our own lives and the government we live under. God has used China's government for His own purposes, molding and shaping His children as He sees fit. Instead of focusing our prayers against any political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be pleasing to God.” - Brother Yun

64. “In a person's lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment, there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart.” - Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

65. “I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.” - Alan Bennett

66. “Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.” - Matthew Gregory Lewis

67. “The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations.” - Criss Jami

68. “With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing.” - Criss Jami

69. “Ultimate prosperity is one's value within. It takes a man of depth, morality, and charm to be envied yet without a sign of wealth or romance. A passion to prove such inner worth is his permission to achieve whatever he desires.” - Criss Jami

70. “There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.” - St. Augustine of Hippo

71. “There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.” - Haruki Murakami

72. “[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present.” - Elizabeth I

73. “We get too comfortable with this orphanage universe, though. We sit in our pews, or behind our pulpits, knowing that our children watch "Christian" cartoons instead of slash films. We vote for the right candidates and know all the right "worldview" talking points. And we're content with the world we know, just adjusted a little for our identity as Christians. That's precisely why so many of us are so atrophied in our prayers, why our prayers rarely reach the level of "groanings too deep for words" (Rom 8:26). We are too numbed to be as frustrated as the Spirit is with the way things are.” - Russell D. Moore

74. “This book is not the memoir of a contented man. It's not the poignant reflections of a white-haired guru who has finally figured out the secret to contentment. It's more like sweaty, bloody, hastily scribbled notes from a battlefield. I'm still struggling to escape the sinister fingers on this conspiracy. I'm still waging war against the discontentment that rages in my life. I can see contentment in the distance, like a hazy oasis, but I have to pick my way through a minefield to get there. I'm not the contented man God wants me to be, but I'm fighting to get there. I'm writing this book the hope that you'll join me in the fight.” - Stephen Altrogge

75. “For the first time, she did want more. She did not know what she wanted, knew that it was dangerous and that she should rest content with what she had, but she knew an emptiness deep inside her, which began to ache.” - Iain Pears

76. “Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.” - Alain De Botton

77. “The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” - Plato

78. “he who is greedy is always in want” - Horace

79. “The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. 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

80. “You’re all so obsessed with other worlds, you’re so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you’ve never bothered to figure out what’s going on here!” - Lev Grossman

81. “Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.” - Lao Tzu

82. “Live near to God, and so all things will appear to you little In comparison to eternal realities.--” - Robert Murray McCheyne

83. “...I should always find, the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on one hand, or by hard labor, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life...” - Daniel Defoe

84. “We just wanna be the happy bums that we are. That's all.” - Mike Patton

85. “Happiness is in contentment, gratitude, and love. It is a lifestyle, not a location.” - Ogwo David Emenike

86. “Deep, contended joy comes from a place of complete security and confidence [in God] - even in the midst of trial.” - Swindoll Charles R.

87. “I only seem negative to the fortunate. That's because I show the less fortunate that they aren't less fortunate after all.” - Criss Jami

88. “Whatever worldly thing we may covet - zealously striving to obtain and then retain - never seems to bring an end to our desires. Covetousness, envy, jealousy, and greed always escalate into a vicious spiral, as we seek greater and greater gratification but find less and less contentment. . . . Striving to acquire the things of the world not only does not bring lasting happiness and peace, but it drives us to seek more. When "all we've ever wanted" is grounded in the temporal trappings of this world, it is never enough!” - Brent Top

89. “I have come to feel that the essence of life is not what it so often seems to be - working to have, working to get, working to possess. It's about becoming. It's about what's happening inside us.” - Mary Ellen Edmunds

90. “Wanting less is probably a better blessing than having more.” - Mary Ellen Edmunds

91. “If God gave you contentment then you would never pursue your life purpose. It is your restlessness that pushes you to take action, change your life and seek more of what you could possibly be.” - Shannon Alder

92. “If you're not content with the small things, then you won't be content with the big things.” - Anthony Liccione

93. “I have never loved Fortune, even when she seemed most to love me. I never considered her treasures mine, neither her money, nor her office nor her influence. Her theft of these things, therefore. has taken away nothing of my own. Mother, my roof is the stars. My house is human goodness. My body is clothed. My stomach is full. And the thirstier part of me, my soul, drinks gladly from the pool of my books.So much for me. I am just fine.” - Walter Wangerin, Jr

94. “Some things are hard to imagine. Can you conceive of excessive contentment, for example? Or an over pleasant evening? Too much happiness?” - Alan Moore

95. “If we cannot be contented with our current lives and possessions, then we are feeding an appetite that no amount of money will ever satiate.” - Breanna Sampson

96. “The midsummer sun shines but dim, The fields strive in vain to look gay; But when I am happy in Him December's as pleasant as May.” - John Newton

97. “Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after.” - Henry David Thoreau

98. “London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.” - Dorothy Parker

99. “I think it's a real gift to be able to say that what's in your life is enough. It seems most of us re always wanting more.” - Elizabeth Berg

100. “If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don't you won't get any.” - Jerome K. Jerome

101. “To seek contentment is to release the novelty that lies within monotony” - Ilyas Kassam

102. “[M]ost people go through life a wee bit disappointed in themselves. I think we all keep a memory of a moment when we missed someone or something, when we could have gone down another path, a happier or better or just a different path. Just because they're in the past doesn't mean you can't treasure the possibilities ... maybe we put down a marker for another time. And now's the time. Now we can do whatever we want to do.” - James Robertson

103. “Whenever he was in company he wanted to get away, and whenever he was alone he wanted company.” - J.K. Rowling

104. “Give a bull grass, sweet water and a willing heifer and he is happy. But a man is never content. If no gadflies of worry exist he will invent them.” - Alison Fell

105. “The tourists always seem to want something. On Thisby, it's less about wanting, and more about being." I wonder after I say it if he'll think I sound like have no drive or ambition.” - Maggie Stiefvater

106. “Was it possible to do both, to contribute to the world while merely observing it? To be content in the moment, but plan for the future? Could you follow your heart without losing all common sense?” - Holly Robinson

107. “The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.” - P.D. James

108. “My personal opinion is that the neutral position on the mood spectrum—what I called emotional sea level—is nothappiness but rather contentment and the calm acceptance that is the goal of many kinds of spiritual practice.” - Andrew Weil

109. “Being content with what you have already is an art form that leads to a peace that can’t be replaced by anything else.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

110. “Timing clicking together, finally, pieces falling into place.” - Sarah Dessen

111. “Enjoy losing weight. Enjoy eating healthy, delicious food. Do not wait until you reach your destination to feel good. Take as much happiness and joy as you can from your weight loss journey.” - Harry Papas

112. “Gracious Providence, to whom I owe all my powers, why didst thou not withhold some of those blessings I possess, and substitute in their place a feeling of self-confidence and contentment?” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

113. “Contentment comes from wanting what we need, not needing what we want.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

114. “..there are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.” - José Saramago

115. “Happy are those who evolve from within.” - Amit Abraham

116. “The world is already yours - why try to conquer it?” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

117. “Part of the trick of being happy is a refusal to allow oneself to become too nostalgic for the heady triumphs of one's youth.” - Larry McMurtry

118. “And besides . . . I don’t want to leave you. Er, you guys.”He smiled, and it lit up his whole face. “Well, ‘we’ are certainly happy to hear that. Oh, and I’m also happy to watch our darling little love child dragon while you’re in St. Louis.”I grinned back.” - Richelle Mead

119. “Sage.” He laughed. “I’m into anything, so long as you’re with me.” - Richelle Mead

120. “...ambition or contentment? This simple question led me back to a more balanced view of life and put me in touch with the Me I used to know...” - John Geddes

121. “Be not wishing and pining but thankfully content.  For it is a short bridge between wanting and regret."- from "Dimpellumpzki” - Richelle E. Goodrich

122. “Let the water flow beneath the bridge; let men be men, that is to say, weak, vain, inconstant, unjust, false, and presumptuous; let the world be the world still; you cannot prevent it. Let every one follow his own inclination and habits; you cannot recast them, and the best course is, to let them be as they are and bear with them. Do not think it strange when you witness unreasonableness and injustice; rest in peace in the bosom of God; He sees it all more clearly than you do, and yet permits it. Be content to do quietly and gently what it becomes you to do, and let everything else be to you as though it were not.” - Francois Fenelon

123. “Happy the man, whose wish and careA few paternal acres bound,Content to breathe his native airIn his own ground.” - Alexander Pope

124. “What I see especially among the Navajos and the Zunis and the Hopis is a culture of people who have been smart enough to learn a lesson that we're awfully slow to get... They know that being rich doesn't have any damn thing to do with how much money you've got. It's got to do with are you happy and are you content.” - Rachel Dickinson

125. “Whenever the sadness got too much, I would hire a rickshaw and go to the Upper Bazaar. Those little rickshaw trips to the market and back, shopping for lipsticks and imitation Gucci bags and wind-chimes and what not, are some of my happiest memories today. You know, one day, during one of those trips, I sold all my well-thumbed copies of ‘Inside Outside’ to the Tibetan guy who ran the old book store on Netaji Road for seventy rupees, six Tintins and a disarming smile. And all of a sudden, that moment, standing at the corner of Netaji road, I found out who I was.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')” - Kunal Sen

126. “My dad’s contentment is all that matters to me. When he’s laughing, I’m laughing. When he’s happy, I’m happy. I would give up my soul for him. To me, nothing else but his happiness matters.” - Rebecah McManus

127. “Success is meaningless without fulfilment - both begin within” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

128. “People will ask you the question 'how is life treating you?' But my question is 'how are you treating life?' On that your happiness rests” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

129. “We all have a suspicion and hope that we've just been part of something special, something that may eventually change our lives. That no one else knows this makes it seem like we are living with a secret that we would like to share, but can't, sort of like having a superpower that's not come online or being president elect. For the moment, our lives proceed as usual, but within a month, we think, everything will change. It's a frustrating, if exciting, disconnect.” - Rob Lowe

130. “The happier person is one, that acknowledges and accepts life won't get any better than this.” - Anthony Liccione

131. “I was so nearly happy. There remained only a tiny something, something unexplained and inexplicable that buzzed in my ear when the lights were out, like a malarial mosquito.” - Jennie Rooney

132. “I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the waters. I love also absolute, profound silence, and, in short, I love everything that is around me, no matter where I am.” - George Sand

133. “Sometimes in life there's no problem and sometimes in there is no solution. In this space - between these apparent poles - life flows.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

134. “Perhaps it's because I appreciate all I have so much that I don't worry about what I haven't got.” - Leo Tolstoy

135. “We all want everything to be okay. We don’t even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.” - David Levithan

136. “The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed.” - P.G. Wodehouse

137. “It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.” - Victor Hugo

138. “Imagination doesn't always make you long for what you cannot have, but rather thrive in what you do not have.” - Criss Jami

139. “Just resign yourself to the fact that you're going to be miserable so you can finally be happy. (It's a sound theory if you think about it hard enough.)” - Richelle E. Goodrich

140. “Why is it people will complain, when they have an open door, where they can walk out to and gaze the stars; rather than having a closed door to lock them in?” - Anthony Liccione

141. “There are enough resources in the world for everyone.” - Bryant McGill

142. “Progress and healing involves seeing every person as not so different from ourselves.” - Bryant McGill

143. “Better to be happy with the cod fish in your plate now, than to linger for the taste of a tuna that is still swimming in the sea.” - Dennis E. Adonis

144. “Real poverty is when hunger pangs force from my mind all thoughts but those of food. Real poverty is when the children are not dressed warmly enough for winter. Real poverty is when the housing we can afford is not adequate to the needs of our families. On the other hand, real poverty is - equally - when I have eaten so much that I am uncomfortable, and again, my thoughts center on food. Or when I have so many clothes that I have to spend a lot of mental energy making choices among them or finding ways to store them. Or when, regardless of my living conditions, I am discontent and brooding about how to have more. Real poverty is when material things are uppermost and pressing - whether because we have too few or too many of them. It is poverty, because the human mind and spirit are made for higher things, worthier pursuits.” - Maxine Hancock

145. “The one who finds contentment is truly rich.” - Dillon Burroughs

146. “Instead of living our lives fighting discontentment, striving to gain contentment from things that were never meant to bring contentment… What if we gave it all up for a grand adventure, for a worthy cause, for the Father? Why do we keep searching to find a hole to shove our hearts into when they were meant to be poured out and fill the entire world?” - Katie Kiesler