Quotes about Contentment
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live.
— Henry David Thoreau
I am grateful for what I am and have. My Thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing to definite - only a sense of existence
— Henry David Thoreau
This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.
— Henry David Thoreau
Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown!
— Henry David Thoreau
I was describing the other day my success in solitary and distant woodland walking outside the town. I do not go there to get my dinner, but to get that sustenance which dinners only preserve me to enjoy, without which dinners are a vain repetition.
— Henry David Thoreau
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.
— Henry David Thoreau
I'd rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion
— Henry David Thoreau
None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin.
— Henry David Thoreau
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse.
— Henry David Thoreau
Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls … yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. Habakkuk 3:17—18
— Henry Blackaby
Joy is in learning to say yes to what is and to surrender into flow with what is, even when it's what you don't want.
— Pete Holmes
You never know God is all you need until God is all you have.
— Rick Warren