#contentment

"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."

"With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing."

"You have to open up to the world and learn optimism...Contentment with the past, happiness with the present, and hope for the future. Learned optimisim."

"Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness."

"And besides . . . I don’t want to leave you. Er, you guys.”He smiled, and it lit up his whole face. “Well, ‘we’ are certainly happy to hear that. Oh, and I’m also happy to watch our darling little love child dragon while you’re in St. Louis.”I grinned back."

"Imagination doesn't always make you long for what you cannot have, but rather thrive in what you do not have."

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon."

"Inventory:"Four be the things I am wiser to know:Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.Four be the things I'd been better without:Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.Three be the things I shall never attain:Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.Three be the things I shall have till I die:Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye."

"Animals do it largely for the REPRODUCTION, but so-called Social Animals (People) do it regularly thinking that it will give them SATISFACTION."

"Lord, make me nowAs happy as the field.With flowers enriched..."

"I think instead [of happiness] we should be working for contentment... an inner sense of fulfillment that's relatively independent of external circumstances."

"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

"[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever."

"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances."

"Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived."

"You don't have to be part of a couple to be happy, you know."