C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Content—Contentment
The harvest song of inward peace.
Our content is our best having.
Contentment opes the source of every joy.
Contentment, parent of delight.
The noblest mind the best contentment has.
The fewer desires, the more peace.
Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.
He is well paid that is well satisfied.
Contentment is better than divinations or visions.
Contentment, as it is a short road and pleasant, has great delight and little trouble.
A contented heart is an even sea in the midst of all storms.
Contentment gives a crown where fortune hath denied it.
I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.
Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.
We only see in a lifetime a dozen faces marked with the peace of a contented spirit.
Mutual content is like a river, which must have its banks on either side.
Contentment with to-day’s lot makes candidacy for a better lot to-morrow.
The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.
O Contentment, make me rich! for without thee there is no wealth.
Show me a thoroughly contented person, and I will show you a useless one.
Naught is had, all is spent, where our desire is got without content.
Without content, we shall find it almost as difficult to please others as ourselves.
May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.
Content is to the mind like moss to a tree; it bindeth it up so as to stop its growth.
That is true plenty, not to have, but not to want riches.
It is right to be contented with what we have, but never with what we are.
He is richest who is content with the least; for content is the wealth of nature.
The rarest feeling that ever lights a human face is the contentment of a loving soul.
A man who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere.
Unless we find repose within ourselves, it is vain to seek it elsewhere.
Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.
Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire.
A mind content both crown and kingdom is.
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.
To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.
When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are.
Let him who has enough ask for nothing more.
If you are content, you have enough to live comfortably.
Be happy ye, whose fortunes are already completed.
Contentment travels rarely with fortune, but follows virtue even in misfortune.
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.
If we are at peace with God and our own conscience, what enemy among men need we fear?
There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue; the other, a vice.
To secure a contented spirit, measure your desires by your fortune, and not your fortune by your desires.
True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
I have often said that all the unhappiness of men comes from not knowing how to remain quiet in a chamber.
What is the highest secret of victory and peace? To will what God wills, and strike a league with destiny.
I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.
Poor and content is rich, and rich enough; but riches, fineless, is as poor as winter to him that ever fears he shall be poor.
Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
Take the good with the evil, for ye all are the pensioners of God, and none may choose or refuse the cup His wisdom mixeth.
That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed, in which we can say, “I have enough,” is the highest attainment of philosophy.
He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances.
Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.
Contentment is a pearl of great price and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and a happy purchase.
I am quite my own master, agreeably lodged, perfectly easy in my circumstances. I am contented with my situation, and happy because I think myself so.
My God, give me neither poverty nor riches; but whatsoever it may be Thy will to give, give me with it a heart which knows humbly to acquiesce in what is Thy will.
If two angels were sent down from heaven, one to conduct an empire, and the other to sweep a street, they would feel no inclination to change employments.
Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.
The highest point outward things can bring unto, is the contentment of the mind; with which no estate can be poor, without which all estates will be miserable.
There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.
None is poor but the mean in mind, the timorous, the weak, and unbelieving; none is wealthy but the affluent in soul, who is satisfied and floweth over.
Happy the heart to whom God has given enough strength and courage to suffer for Him, to find happiness in simplicity and the happiness of others.
One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has lain down to die. The grass is already growing over him.
“What you demand is here, or at Ulubræ.” You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man; a contented mind confers it on all.
We can console ourselves for not having great talents as we console ourselves for not having great places. We can be above both in our hearts.
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.
I do not think that the road to contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all good, all delight that the world holds, and be content without it.
It is not by change of circumstances, but by fitting our spirits to the circumstances in which God has placed us, that we can be reconciled to life and duty.
Contentment furnishes constant joy. Much covetousness, constant grief. To the contented, even poverty is joy. To the discontented, even wealth is a vexation.
We shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand,—the habit of mind which theologians call, and rightly, faith in God.
I would do what I pleased; and, doing what I pleased, I should have my will; and, having my will, I should be contented; and, content, there is no more to be desired; and when there is no more to desire, there is an end of it.
Content is the best opulence, because it is the pleasantest, and the surest. The richest man is he who does not want that which is wanting to him; the poorest is the miser, who wants that which he has.
The chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex us, and in prudently cultivating our undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones, alas! are let on long leases.
Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality.
It conduces much to our content if we pass by those things which happen to our trouble, and consider that which is pleasing and prosperous; that by the representation of the better the worse may be blotted out.
If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is the temperate zone.
Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher’s stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire for them.
A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world; and if in the present life his happiness arises from the subduing of his desires, it will arise in the nest from the gratification of them.
Seeming contentment is real discontent, combined with indolence or self-indulgence, which, while taking no legitimate means of raising itself, delights in bringing others down to its own level.
With the civilized man contentment is a myth. From the cradle to the grave he is forever longing and striving after something better, an indefinable something, some new object yet unattained.
He that troubles not himself with anxious thoughts for more than is necessary, lives little less than the life of angels, whilst by a mind content with little, he imitates their want of nothing.
That man lives happy and in command of himself, who from day to day can say I have lived. Whether clouds obscure, or the sun illumines the following day, that which is past is beyond recall.
The point of aim for our vigilance to hold in view is to dwell upon the brightest parts in every prospect, to call off the thoughts when running upon disagreeable objects, and strive to be pleased with the present circumstances surrounding us.
A sense of contentment makes us kindly and benevolent to others; we are not chafed and galled by cares which are tyrannical because original. We are fulfilling our proper destiny, and those around us feel the sunshine of our own hearts.
We cannot be young twice; we cannot turn upon our steps, and go back to gather the garlands we gathered ten years ago. And, therefore, with a gaze over on the cross upon the distant hills, and a remembrance always of the shadow land that lies beyond, let us endeavor to be contented with small things, and to make ourselves happy in the pleasantness of simple pleasures.
I say to thee be thou satisfied. It is recorded of the hares that with a general consent they went to drown themselves out of a feeling of their misery; but when they saw a company of frogs more fearful than they were, they began to take courage and comfort again. Confer thine estate with others.
For no chance is evil to him who is content, and to a man nothing is miserable unless it is unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his slave unless he hath first enslaved himself to life and death. No pleasure or pain, to hope or fear; command these passions, and you are freer than the Parthian kings.
If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man, how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious.
Contentment is not satisfaction. It is the grateful, faithful, fruitful use of what we have, little or much. It is to take the cup of Providence, and call upon the name of the Lord. What the cup contains is its contents. To get all there is in the cup is the act and art of contentment. Not to drink because one has but half a cup, or because one does not like its flavor, or because some one else has silver to one’s own glass, is to lose the contents; and that is the penalty, if not the meaning of discontent. No one is discontented who employs and enjoys to the utmost what he has. It is high philosophy to say, we can have just what we like, if we like what we have; but this much at least can be done, and this is contentment, to have the most and best in life, by making the most and best of what we have.
To be contented,—what, indeed, is it? Is it not to be satisfied,—to hope for nothing, to aspire to nothing, to strive for nothing,—in short to rest in inglorious ease, doing nothing for your country, for your own or others’ material, intellectual, or moral improvement, satisfied with the condition in which you or they are placed? Such a state of feeling may do very well where nature has fixed an inseparable and ascertained barrier,—a “thus far shalt thou go and no farther,”—to our wishes, or where we are troubled by ills past remedy. In such cases it is the highest philosophy not to fret or grumble, when, by all our worrying and self-teasing, we cannot help ourselves a jot or tittle, but only aggravate and intensify an affliction that is incurable. To soothe the mind down into patience is then the only resource left us, and happy is he who has schooled himself thus to meet all reverses and disappointments. But in the ordinary circumstances of life this boasted virtue of contentment, so far from being laudable, would be an evil of the first magnitude. It would be, in fact, nothing less than a trigging of the wheels of all enterprise,—a cry of “Stand still!” to the progress of the whole social world.