Gratitude & Contentment

Not enough evidence God! Not enough evidence!

Bertrand Russell The Conquest of Happiness

If I could have known Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum l), I could have died contented.

Cicero De Officiis & Tusculan Disputations

So the Church too, like Mary, enjoys perpetual virginity and uncorrupted fecundity.

Augustine of Hippo Confessions

I make no doubt... that these rules are simple, artless, and natural.

Blaise Pascal Pensées

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius Meditations

He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.

Seneca Moral Letters to Lucilius

Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to an humble and grateful mind.

Epictetus Discourses & Enchiridion

Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.

Socrates Apology (via Plato)

My love, Alcibiades, which I hardly like to confess, would long ago have passed away, as I flatter myself, if I saw you loving your good things, or thinking that you ought to pass life in the enjoyment of them.

Plato The Republic & Dialogues

Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. When the Master was told of this, he commented, "Twice is quite enough.

Confucius The Analects (Lunyu)

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

Laozi Tao Te Ching

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.

Zhuangzi Zhuangzi

If a person's mind is pure, then he will see the wonderful blessings that adorn this land.

Gautama Buddha Dhammapada & Sutta Pitaka

If you are wholly perplexed and in straits,have patience, for patience is the key to joy.

Rumi Masnavi & Divan-e Shams

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler.

Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra & Beyond Good and Evil

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.

Søren Kierkegaard Either/Or & Journals

Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.

Michel de Montaigne Essais

L'homme doit être content, dit-on; mais de quoi?

Voltaire Candide & Philosophical Dictionary

He knew she was there by the joy and fear that overwhelmed his heart.

Leo Tolstoy War and Peace & A Calendar of Wisdom

Haunted by a detached perspective, Shakespeare, at the close of his career within the Sandman universe, confesses to exploiting his own life's joys and tragedies for the sake of his art.

William Shakespeare First Folio & Sonnets

I'm not young enough to know everything.

Oscar Wilde De Profundis & Essays

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

Mark Twain Notebooks & Autobiography

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First and Second Series

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

Henry David Thoreau Walden

I have no other wish in this world but to find light and joy and peace through Hinduism.

Mahatma Gandhi The Story of My Experiments with Truth

We tried in our simple way to lead our life in a manner that may make a difference to those of others.

Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom