Happy And Contented Quotes (page 2)
-
-
-
Clearly,” I said, “we should choose not to have good sense, if that good sense contributes to our misery.”
Everyone agreed with me, and yet I found no one who wanted to accept the bargain of becoming ignorant in order to become content. From this I concluded that though we greatly value happiness, we place even greater value on reason.
But yet, upon reflection, it seems that to prefer reason to happiness is to be quite insane.
Voltaire
To discover the rules of society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence, who could understand the passions of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our nature but knew it to the full, whose happiness was independent of ours, but who would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, who would be content to wait in the fullness of time for a distant glory, and to labour in one age to enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
She bounded before me, and returned to my side, and was off again like a young greyhound; and, at first, I found plenty of entertaiment in listening to the larks singing far and near; and enjoying the sweet, warm sunshine; and watching her, my pet, and my delight, with her golden ringlets flying loose behind, and her bright cheek, as soft and pure in its bloom, as a wild rose, and her eyes radiant with cloudless pleasure. She was a happy creautre, and an angel in those those days. It is a...
Emily Bronte
The thought that, insignificant as she was, she yet might do some good, made her very careful of her acts and words, and so anxious to keep head contented and face happy, that she forgot her clothes, and made others do the same. She did not know it, but that good old fashion of simplicity made the plain gowns pretty, and the grace of unconsciousness beautified their little wearer with the charm that makes girlhood sweetest to those who truly love and reverence it.
Louisa May Alcott
THE ROBINO Robin, sing! for the secret of eternity is in song. I wish I were as you, free from prisons and chains. I wish I were as you; a soul flying over the valleys, Sipping the light as wine is sipped from ethereal cups. I wish I were asyou, innocent, contented and happy. Ignoring the future and forgetting the past. I wish I were as you in beauty, grace and elegance. With the wind spreading my wings for adornment by the dew. I wish I were as you in beauty, a thought floating above the...
Khalil Gibran
Let my heiress have full rights, Live in my house, sing songs that I composed. Yet how slowly my strength ebbs, How the tortured breast craves air. The love of my friends, my enemies' rancor. And the yellow roses in my bushy garden, And a lover's burning tendernessall this. I bestow upon you, messenger of dawn. Also the glory for which I was born, For which my star, like some whirlwind, soared. And now falls. Look, its falling. Prophesies your power, love and inspiration. Preserving my...
Anna Akhmatova
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, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed 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...
Lance Armstrong
in general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankind - that as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwroght elements of content - and that, even now, in the present darkness and madness of all thought on the great question of social condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, my be happy
Edgar Allan Poe
We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
An absence of mistrust is not enough; there must be a weariness of mistrusting, and, as it were, courage must be impatient with the hazards of life. You are unconsciously bored by living without loving, and convinced in spite of yourself by the examples of others. You have overcome all life's fears, and are no longer content with the gloomy happiness which pride affords: you have conceived an ideal without knowing it.
Stendhal
I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more...
Sylvia Plath
Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.
Pat Conroy
How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.
W. H. Auden