"Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you."
— Laozi

"For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain."
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"we're all golden sunflowers inside."
— Allen Ginsberg

"He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have."
— Socrates

"We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without."
— Immanuel Kant

"It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can enjoy every moment of movement, as long as where we are is as good as where we'd like to be. That's not to say that you need to be satisfied forever with where you are today. But you need to honor what you've accomplished, rather than thinking of what's left to be done (p. 159)."
— John Bingham (No Need for Speed: A Beginner's Guide to the Joy of Running)

"Mama told me to make a special point to remember the best times of my life. There are so many hard things to live through, and latching on to the good things will give you strength to endure, she says. So I must remember this day. It is beautiful and this seems like the best time to live and the best place (p. 327)"
— Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 : A Novel)

"You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled."
— Charles Spurgeon

"I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment on my life."
— David Ignatow

"(about William Blake)

As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."

And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."

...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. "
— Brenda Ueland (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit)

"Within what is allotted to us, we can have spiritual contentment."
— Neal A. Maxwell (The Collected Works of Neal A. Maxwell)

"To accept what you are is to be content, and contentment is the greatest wealth. To work with patience is to gather power. To surrender to the Eternal flow is to be completely present."
— Vimalia McClure

"Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented."
— Christian Bovee

"All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind."
— John Lubbock

"Lord, make me now
As happy as the field.
With flowers enriched..."
— Eileen Soper

"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 when one is contented, there is no more to be desired; and when there is no more to be desired, there is an end of it."
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)

"A dying man needs to die as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist."
— Stewart Alsop

"One honest John Tompkins, a hedger & ditcher,
Although he was poor, did not want to be richer;
For all such vain wishes in him were prevented
By a fortunate habit of being contented."
— Jane Taylor

"Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition."
— Jeremiah Burroughs

"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 (The Sad Truth About Happiness)

"She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty years. At the end of it she was still singing."
— George Orwell (1984)

"Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others--the minted round of metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's contentment."
— George Gissing