#content

Life is perphas after all simply this thing and then the next. We are all of us improvising. We find a careful balance only to discover that gravity or stasis or love or dismay or illness or some other force suddenly tows us in an unexpected direction. We wake up to find that we have changed abruptly in a way that is perculiar and inexplicable. We are constanly adjusting, making it up, feeling our way forward, figuring out how to be and where to go next. We work it out, how to be happy, but sooner or later comes a change-sometimes something small, sometimes everything at once- and we have to start over again, feeling our way back to a provisional state of contentment. ↗

— Anne Giardini

#life #start-over #change

Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. ↗

— Alexander Pope

#dream #home #land #not-my-life #dreams

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 Moore

#prayer #family

A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel. ↗

— Jose Marti

#around #being #child #content #does

Simplicity is a bliss that makes one comprehend. ↗

— Criss Jami

#clever #comprehend #comprehension #content #contentment

The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough. ↗

— Aleksandar Hemon

#desire #life #life

He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living. ↗

— Elena Ferrante

#life #life

The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment. ↗

— Henry Miller

#contentment #life #peace #life

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#blessings #contentment #happiness #pray #soul

If all I had was all that money could buy, I'd be bankrupt!" EL ↗

— Evinda Lepins

#contentment #money #money