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"I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along."
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"Most people desire comfort and pleasure."
Author Name
Personal Development
"True contentment... is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Contentment is what should be our focus rather than expecting miracles."
Author Name
Personal Development
"True contentment comes with empathy."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Savour a slow-paced contented life."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Being satisfied with the little we have; academically, spiritually, financially, ecumenically or otherwise will prevent a lot of problems from coming to us, and our dependence in our abilities and talents will go as far as bringing us satisfaction in life."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I have learned that to be with those I like is enough."
Author Name
Personal Development
"On Epicurus; He says: "Contended poverty is an honourable estate." Indeed, if it is contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The wealth we receive from God will never cause us to weep."
Author Name
Personal Development
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"I was struck - not for the first time in my years of travel - by how isolating contemporary American society can seem by comparison. Where I came from, we have shriveled down the notion of what constitutes 'a family unit' to such a tiny scale that it would probably be unrecognizable as a family to anybody in one of these big, loose, enveloping Hmong clans. You almost need an electron microscope to study the modern Western family these days."
Society
"Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness. At least then you will know that you have tried and that--whatever the outcome--you have traveled a noble path."
Passion
"I know I'm not a self-indulgent idiot; I also know I'm not the second coming of Deepak Chopra. If I had believed either of those, or both, as some people do when they get famous, that's when the mental illness arrives."
Psychology
"Which is - you know, like check it out, I'm pretty young, I'm only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it's exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book, right?"
Success
"We need courage to take ourselves seriously, to look closely and without flinching, to regard the things that frighten us in life and art with wonder."
Courage
"But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pictures of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone?"
Faith
"The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?"
Philosophy
"All too often, those of us who choose to remain childless are accused of being somehow unwomanly or unnatural or selfish, but history teaches us that there have always been women who went through life without having babies."
Society
"So this was the Ashram's final joke on me? Once I had learned to accept my loud, chatty, social nature and fully embrace my inner Key Hostess - only then could I become The Quiet Girl in the Back of the Temple, after all?"
Spiritual
"But he [Depression] just gives me that dark smile, settles into my favorite chair, puts his feet on my table and lights a cigar, filling the place with his awful smoke. Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He's going to make me sleep with him again tonight, I just know it."
Mental Health
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