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Contentment Quotes

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Contentment Quotes

“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.”

PhilosophyHumanitySocietyHuman NatureLonelinessIndependenceRejectionIsolationContentmentCompanionshipHopelessnessMonotonyHermitsMisanthropySeclusionDiscontentmentHermitReclusion
Book:The Monk
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“There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain. When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my mouldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads. For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.”

PainPleasureSorrowContentmentMediocritySteppenwolfHerman Hesse
Book:Steppenwolf
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“There are still blue skies and rainbows and days bathed in sunlight. There are colorful shade trees filled with sweet bird songs. And there are wishing stars in the heavens as well as angels in God's service. So lift up your eyes. Refuse to be unhappy.”

HappinessJoyPleasureAttitudeGratitudeHappyEnjoymentRichelle GoodrichContentmentRichelle E GoodrichCheerRichelleAngelsBlessingsAttitude QuotesJoyful LivingAttitude Toward LifeRainbows
Book:Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year
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“While dissatisfaction implies either rejection or frustrated pursuit of satisfaction, unsatisfaction is something more like acceptance combined with anticipation. It is acknowledgement of desire without the demand that it be satisfied--a kind of openness that doesn't ask for closure. It is desire that can live with deferral, an embrace of the God-shaped vacuum in us and a commitment to stop trying to make it full, a healthy hunger that is content to wait for the feast.”

DesireGratitudeContentmentAnticipationDissatisfactionDelayed Gratification
Book:Blessed Are the Unsatisfied: Finding Spiritual Freedom in an Imperfect World
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“It rasped her, though, to have stirring about her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which, especially since her illness had power to make her feel scraped, hurt in her spine; gave her physical pain, and made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved and making her home a delightful rock, quiver, and bend as if indeed there were a monster grubbing at the roots, as if the whole panoply of content were nothing but self love! this hatred!”

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Book:Mrs. Dalloway
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“But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume. Though someone may tell us: “Yes, you’ve entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime is filled with you . . . " — what does it matter? they can’t contain us, we vanish inside them and around them. (Denn wir, wo wir fühlen, verflüchtigen; ach wir atmen uns aus und dahin; von Holzglut zu Holzglut geben wir schwachern Geruch. Da sagt uns wohl einer: ja, du gehst mir ins Blut, dieses Zimmer, der Frühling füllt sich mit dir . . . Was hilfts, er kann uns nicht halten, wir schwinden inihm und um ihn.)”

LovePoetryTimePassionEmotionEmptinessContentmentFeelingTransienceRilke
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“So, along with clear seeing, there’s another important element, and that’s kindness. It seems that, without clarity and honesty, we don’t progress. We just stay stuck in the same vicious cycle. But honesty without kindness makes us feel grim and mean, and pretty soon we start looking like we’ve been sucking on lemons. We become so caught up in introspection that we lose any contentment or gratitude we might have had. The sense of being irritated by ourselves and our lives and other people’s idiosyncrasies becomes overwhelming. That’s why there’s so much emphasis on kindness.”

KindnessHonestyGratitudeClarityContentmentIntrospectionIrritationBuddhist Teachings
Book:When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
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“Happiness is a momentary illusion created by momentary neurochemical impulses. Contentment on the other hand, is not a momentary impulse, it is a broader and much more complicated cognitive apparatus, that puts things in perspective in a unique manner, without making you overwhelmed with momentary emotional impulses.”

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Book:Morality Absolute
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“And I thought, all these things don't seem that much like life, when you're doing them, they're just what you do, how you fill up your days, and you think all the time something is going to crack open, and you'll find yourself, then you'll find yourself, in life. It's not even that you particularly want this to happen, this cracking open, you're comfortable enough the way things are, but you do expect it. Then you're dying, Mother is dying, and it's just the same plastic chairs and plastic plants and ordinary day outside with people getting groceries and what you're had is all there is, and going to the Library, just a thing like that, coming back up the hill on the bus with books and a bag of grapes seems now worth wanting, O God doesn't it, you'd break your heart wanting back there.”

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Book:Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You
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