This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
True contentment depends not on what we have - a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
Contentment | Enough | Little | World |
The seat of perfect contentment is in the head; for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but the world was too little for Alexander.
Contentment | Enough | Little | World |
The mind is a river; upon its water thoughts float through in a constant procession every conscious moment. It is a narrow river, however, and you stand on a bridge over it and can stop and turn back any thought that comes along, and they can come only single file, one at a time. The art of contentment is to let no thought pass that is going to disturb you.
The art of contentment is to let no thought pass that is going to disturb you.
Art | Contentment | Thought | Art | Thought |
The rarest feeling that ever lights a human face is the contentment of a loving soul.
Contentment | Soul |
Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.
Enlightenment | Freedom | Luxury | Prosperity | Security |
Freedom and the consciousness of it as a faculty of following the moral law with unyielding resolution is independence of inclinations, at least as motives determining (though not as affecting) our desire, and so far as I am conscious of this freedom in following my moral maxims, it is the only source of an unaltered contentment which is necessarily connected with it and rests on no special feeling.
Consciousness | Contentment | Desire | Freedom | Law | Maxims | Moral law | Motives | Resolution | Following |
We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them.
The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.
Contentment | Desire | Knowing |
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
True contentment is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it.
Contentment | Power |
Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors. They taste no real or substantial pleasure; but, resembling so many brutes, with eyes always fixed on the earth, and intent upon their loaden tables, they pamper themselves in luxury and excess.
Day | Earth | Excess | Life | Life | Luxury | Pleasure | Taste | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
Contentment | Luxury | Poverty | Wealth |