It is but one side of a Christian to endeavor to do what pleases God; you must as well endeavor to be pleased with what God does, and so you will come to be a complete Christian when you can do both, and that is the first thing in the excellence of this grace of contentment.

There is a compound of grace in contentment: there is faith, and there is humility, and love, and there is patience, and there is wisdom, and there is hope; almost all graces are compounded. [...] In one action that you do you may exercise one grace especially, but in contentment you exercise a great many graces at once.

And the truth is, I know nothing more effective for quieting a Christian soul and getting contentment than this, setting your heart to work in the duties of the immediate circumstances that you are now in, and taking heed of your thoughts about other conditions as a mere temptation.

But godliness with contentment is great gain' (v.6)—there is the glory and excellence of it; as if to suggest that godliness were not gain except contentment be with it.

Heliodorus, tells me that there are many parts of the Scriptures which you seek and cannot find. But even if you have them all, affection is sure to assert its rights and to seek for itself more than it already has.

Contentment with what we have — whether it is possessions, or station in life, or mental or physical abilities — is worth far, far more than all the things we don't have.

But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose.

We ate well and cheaply and we drank well and cheaply and we slept well and warm together and loved each other.

I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you have been with a woman that you really love, when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for that long, sudden-ended always; making time stand still, sometimes so very still that afterwards you wait to hear it move,and it is slow in starting.

In those days you did not really need anything, not even the rabbit's foot, but it was good to feel it in your pocket.

I will not trust in riches but in him who richly provides.

People with greed lodged in their heart fear that God either can't or won't take care of them. More to the point, they're afraid that God won't take care of them in the fashion or style in which they want to be cared for. And the gap between what they suspect God might be willing to do and what they want becomes a major source of anxiety. So greedy people shoulder the burden to acquire and maintain everything they need to provide the sense of security they desire.