Quotes about Contentment

My chief care should not be to find pleasure or success, health or life or money or rest or even things like virtue and wisdom—still less their opposites, pain, failure, sickness, death. But in all that happens, my one desire and my one joy should be to know: "Here is the thing that God has willed for me. In this His love is found, and in accepting this I can give back His love to Him and give myself with it to Him. For in giving myself I shall find Him and He is life everlasting.

One came out of the church with a kind of comfortable and satisfied feeling that something had been done that needed to be done, and that was all I knew about it.

When solitude was a problem, I had no solitude. When it ceased to be a problem I found I already possessed it, and could have possessed it all along.

The poorest man in a religious community is not necessarily the one who has the fewest objects assigned to him for his use. Poverty is not merely a matter of not having things. It is an attitude which leads us to renounce some of the advantages which come from the use of things.

We have found Him, He has found us. We are in Him, He is in us. There is nothing further to look for except for the deepening of this life we already possess. Be content.

The tighter you squeeze the less you have.

Peace — that was the other name for home.

In choosing a bare bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power.

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of the long day makes that day happier.

From him I have learned that prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine. To be more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been.

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier. [Allein schon das Wissen, dass einen am Ende eines langen Tages ein gutes Buch erwartet, macht diesen Tag zu einem glücklicheren.]

When we are set free from the bondage of pleasing others, when we are free from currying others'approval-then no one will be able to make us miserable or dissatisfied. And then, if we know we have pleased God, contentment will be our consolation.