DISCONTENT

Related Subjects: Bliss, Calm, Cheerfulness, Comfort, Disappointment, Happiness, Peace, Rest, Suspicion

1. No form of society can be reasonably stable in which the majority of the people are not fairly content. People cannot be content if they feel that the foundations of their lives are wholly unstable.—JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS, The Record of America

2. We have the comforts brought by labor-saving devices and all the new inventions of one sort and another. We can cross the Atlantic by air in thirty-six hours. We can talk over the telephone to a friend 10,000 miles away. We have control of power never dreamed of by man until the past few years. Yet we have lost much of our sense of security. We have lost contentment.—JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS, The Record of America
   

3. Dissatisfaction with the world in which we live and determination to realize one that shall be better, are the prevailing characteristics of the modern spirit.—G. LOWES DICKINSON, The Greek View of Life
   

4. There are two kinds of discontent in this world: the discontent that works, and the discontent that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants, and the second loses what it has. There's no cure for the first but success; and there's no cure at all for the second.—GORDON GRAHAM
   

5. The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.—HAWTHORNE, The House of the Seven Gables
   

6. No one lives content with his condition, whether reason gave it him, or chance threw it in his way.—HORACE, Satires
   

7. How does it happen, Maecenas, that one is content with that lot in life which he has chosen, or which chance has thrown in his way, but praises those who follow a different course?—HORACE, Satires
   

8. Unhappy man! He frets at the narrow limits of the world.—JUVENAL, Satires
   

9. To be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ of the first upgrowth of all virtue.—CHARLES KINGSLEY, Health and Education
   

10. The toad beneath the harrow knows
    Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
    The butterfly upon the road
    Preaches contentment to that toad.—KIPLING, Pagett, M.P.
    

11. To sigh, yet feel no pain,
    To weep, yet scarce know why;
    To sport an hour with Beauty's chain,
    Then throw it idly by.—GEORGE MOORE, The Blue Stocking
    

12. Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.—PLATO, The Republic
    

13. They need much, whom nothing will content.—Proverb
    

14. Discontents arise from our desires oftener than from our wants.—Proverb
    

15. For one rich man that is content there are a hundred that are not.—Proverb
    

16. He that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends.—SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It
    

17. Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.—SHAKESPEARE, King Lear
    

18. I see your brows are full of discontent,
    Your hearts of sorrow and your eyes of tears.—SHAKESPEARE, Richard III
    

19. I know a discontented gentleman,
    Whose humble means match not his haughty mind.—SHAKESPEARE, Richard III
    

20. I was born to other things.—TENNYSON, In Memoriam
    

21. The thirst to know and understand,
    A large and liberal discontent;
    These are the goods in life's rich hand,
    The things that are more excellent.—WILLIAM WATSON, Things That are More Excellent
    

22. And from the discontent of man
    The world's best progress springs.—ELLA W. WILCOX, Discontent
    

23. Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.—OSCAR WILDE, A Woman of No Importance