What is Contentment?
According to Wikipedia, contentment is an emotional state of satisfaction, maybe drawn from being at ease in one’s situation, body, and mind. It is a milder and more tentative form of happiness.
Basically, it means you are in a state of having accepted your situation. You are happy with what you have at the moment and aren’t pursuing your ambitions or goals anymore. Maybe you’ve achieved all your goals or some of your goals and decided that that’s enough for you to be happy.
Or maybe you’re sick of the rat race and have thrown in the towel and said “no more”. From now on, you’re focusing on your family and community and not the material gains.
The more needs in Maslow’s hierarchy are achieved, the more easily one might achieve contentment.
Without further ado, here are the best quotes on contentment that I’ve curated for you. The people behind these powerful quotes can paint a far better picture, in a sentence or two, of what being content means than I could in a whole post. Enjoy and share with others!
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Contentment Quotes 1-10
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
― Dale Carnegie
“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”
― Pearl S. Buck
Quotes on Contentment
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough”
― Oprah Winfrey
“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
― Lao Tzu
“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough”
― Walt Whitman
“Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”
― Leo Tolstoy
“At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
Contentment Quotes 11-20
“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
― Socrates
“I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches; and he to whom that is given need ask no more.”
― Henry Fielding
Quotes on Contentment
“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”
― Martha Washington
“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
― Immanuel Kant
“We need much less than we think we need.”
― Maya Angelou
“Just tell yourself, Duckie, you’re real quite lucky.”
― Dr. Seuss
“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.”
― Lao Tzu
“We’re all golden sunflowers inside.”
― Allen Ginsberg
“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.”
― May Sarton
Contentment Quotes 21-30
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.”
― Charles M. Schulz
“All I know is that I’ve wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I’d get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don’t want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow’s sky. That’s what I want now, and I think it’s what you should want too. But it will be too late soon. We’ll become too set to change. If we don’t take our chance now, another may never come for either of us.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
― Socrates
Contentment Quotes
“If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.”
― Noel Langley
“I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”
― Pablo Picasso
“[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.”
― Lev Grossman
“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
― John Stuart Mill
“The greatest wealth is to live content with little.”
― Plato
“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
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.”
― Ann Brashares
Contentment Quotes 31-40
“Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.”
― Lao Tzu
“Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.”
― John Chrysostom
“A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Contentment Quotes
“If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.”
― Socrates
“If you’re waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you’ll never make it.”
― Criss Jami
“Search for contentment in each person you meet.”
― Steve Maraboli
“No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself”
― Plato
“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 optimism.”
― Jennifer Crusie
“You will never get everything in life but you will get enough.”
― Sanhita Baruah
“Happy are those who evolve from within.”
― Amit Abraham
Contentment Quotes 41-50
“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”
― Socrates
“Hope combined with action is the only thing that will bring you contentment.”
― Shannon L. Alder
“It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.”
― Germany Kent
Contentment Quotes
“Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have.”
― Sanchita Pandey
“He who is greedy is always in want”
― Horace
“A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.”
― Joseph Addison
“Like everything else, we know the futility of money only when we have more than enough of it.”
― R. N. Prasher
“Contentment can only happen as we increase desire, let it run itself out toward its fulfillment, and carry us along with it.”
― John Eldredge
“Fortify yourself with contentment for this is an impregnable fortress.”
― Epictetus
“Happiness is wanting what you have.”
― Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Contentment Quotes 51-60
“If you’re not content with the small things, then you won’t be content with the big things.”
― Anthony Liccione
“Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.”
― Alain de Botton
“…there are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.”
― José Saramago
Contentment Quotes
“Contentment is the only real wealth”
― Albert Nobel
“If one bite fills you, you don’t need two.”
― Marty Rubin
“Contentment is not achieved by having stuff. It is achieved by enjoying the stuff you have.”
― Alan Cohen
“For many people it is almost a sin to be happy and content in this world because they believe that contentment hampers growth.”
― Awdhesh Singh
“Be at peace with where you’ve been and where you are. That’s how you win the battlefield of the mind.”
― Andrena Sawyer
“A true, continuous, celebration of Life is the ability to always be happy and content no matter what is happening in your life, no matter what you have or don’t have. Simply, Happiness is a decision. You are happy the moment you are content with what you have when you accept what is. You are happy when you serve another, when you are making our world a better place.”
― AVIS Viswanathan
“One of ecstasy’s main ingredients is finding happiness in the tedious.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones
Contentment Quotes 61-70
“The opposite of seeking is not finding, but being.”
― Marty Rubin
“The more contented we are with our own problems the less intrusive we will be of other people’s cup of tea.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu
“Be like the flower, content with its nature.”
― Seth D.
Contentment Quotes
“You can never have enough. “Enough” is not a defined quantity. It is elusive and fleeting in nature. Enough is more of a personal definition.”
― Apoki Charles
“Happiness is an unrealistic goal, I’m aiming for contentment.”
― Janice Ruth Gracias
“Contentment and inner peace is a vibrational alignment with the Universe and the ultimate key to unlocking our consciousness.”
― Dr. Tony Beizaee
“Most people are like all stomachs: they cannot remain satisfied for a long time.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“All good things must come to an end. That’s why they’re called good things — otherwise they’re just… ordinary.”
― Joyce Rachelle
“I will die, yes, that is true, but first I will live to my heart’s content.”
― Avina Celeste
“I’m not a thief because no one has anything I want.”
― Marty Rubin
Contentment Quotes 71-80
“True affluence is not needing anything.”
― Gary Snyder
“Man will worry of things he is not sure about.”
― Fahad Basheer
“It is right to be satisfied with what you have, never with what you are.”
― Amit Kalantri
Contentment Quotes
“Pursuit of contentment is not the pursuit of an elusive tomorrow; it is the celebration of today. In that, it is the pursuit to end all pursuits.”
― Majid Kazmi
“True peace cannot be found in a ‘place’. Rather, it is found in a person who can be with you in any ‘place’.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
“No one’s life ever goes as they planned. That truth alone should bring a sense of relief to everyone.”
― Andrena Sawyer
“It doesn’t matter whether you do small or big Job; what matters is job contentment.”
― Mohith Agadi
“Whether you are in an eight-hundred-square-foot home or living in a dream house on a lake, contentment is found on the way.”
― Joanna Gaines
“As a child, I cried because I had no toy until I met a child who had no bread.”
― Amit Kalantri
“It is so relaxing to want nothing.”
― Marty Rubin