#content

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

#joy #motherhood #singing #beauty

We need much less than we think we need. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#need

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

#death #sleep #death

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. ↗

— Socrates

#contentment #gluttony #greed #greed

Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness. ↗

— Pearl S. Buck

#joy

For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain. ↗

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#contentment #raining #rain

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

#contentment #discontentment #hermit #hermits #hopelessness

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

#realization

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents. ↗

— Ezra Pound

#contents #deep #least #lived #man

To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible. ↗

— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

#materialism #contentment