#contentment

So we strive for perfection in the areas in which we can control, and that isn't necessarily what provides contentment and joy for ourselves and, more importantly, for our children. ↗

— Sarah Jessica Parker

#children #contentment #control #importantly #joy

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

#escapism #happiness #paradise #travel #wanderlust

Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world. ↗

— James K. Polk

#beloved #beloved country #borders #contentment #country

I was especially perceptive to all things beautiful that morning—raspberries in blue china bowls were enough to make the heart sing. ↗

— Irene Hunt

#contentment #happiness #little-things #beauty

Happiness, contentment, the health and growth of the soul, depend, as men have proved over and over again, upon some simple issue, some single turning of the soul. ↗

— George A. Smith

#again #contentment #depend #growth #happiness

Alas! if the principles of contentment are not within us, the height of station and worldly grandeur will as soon add a cubit to a man's stature as to his happiness. ↗

— Laurence Sterne

#alas #contentment #grandeur #happiness #height

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

#cring #fables #greed #poverty #sorrow

Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her. ↗

— Lao Tzu

#contentment #perception #self-acceptance #self-assurance #self-confidence

A book of verses underneath the bough A flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thou Beside me singing in the wilderness And wilderness is paradise now. ↗

— Omar Khayyám

#love #paradise #poetry #love

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.

#love