After endless depression, nights without sleep, realization that the life he had entered was calamitous, without hope, he slowly became lucid, even calm. He was able to read and think. The days dawned quietly. I am through it, he thought. Like the survivor of a wreck, he took stock of himself. He touched his limbs, his face, he began the essential process of forgetting what had passed. He was in a period of contentment with daily life, of peace. He looked about himself gratefully. It was still not completely real to him, it was a kind of scenery he watched like someone on a train, some of it vivid, going by, some of it bare.
Light Years
James Salter
Category: CONTENTMENT
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Or in surveying cities and spots of interest? All your bustle is useless. Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.
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You wander hither and yon, to rid yourself of the burden that rests upon you, though it becomes more troublesome by reason of your very restlessness.
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Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, your faults will follow you whithersoever you travel.
—Seneca, XXVIII. On Travel as a Cure for Discontent, Letters from a Stoic -
To any impartial observer it appears that the human individual cannot be happy, and is in no way conceived for happiness, and his only possible destiny is to spread unhappiness around him by making other people’s existence as intolerable as his own—his first victims generally being his parents.
The Possibility of an Island
Michel Houellebecq -
For what is denying oneself? He who truly denies himself does not ask, “Am I happy?” or, “Shall I be satisfied?” All such questions fall away form you if you truly deny yourself, for by so doing you have also given up your will for either earthly or heavenly happiness.
This obstinate will to personal happiness is the cause of unrest and division in your soul. Give it up and work against it: the rest will be give you without effort.
Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth
Tito Colliander -
The greed of Self-Love, say holy counselors, will often spawn Envy. As one who is discontented looks around and sees people blessed with better lives, fewer problems, greater gifts, more secure families and friendships, envy can occur. Much discontent produces envy even of the unborn, because they are free of pain, as the Preacher showed when he said, Rather than the living, I envy the dead; better than both of these is one who has not been born to have to see evil (Ecc. 4:2,3). Another said about his life: Cursed be the day when I was born. Cursed be the man who brought the news, because he did not kill me, so that my mother might have been my grave…. Instead, I came out of the womb to see labor and sorrow (Jer. 20:14-18). For anyone gripped by dissatisfaction and pain, and hatred of the way life has gone, here’s a prayer that can lift a soul up from that discontent, if one faithfully stays with it.
Lord Jesus Christ, forgive me and deliver me from hating life.
—Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity
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“He was looking for joy and found the Cross. What remedy is there for his sadness? He must rediscover the spirit of poverty. A rich person is someone who expects everything. A poor person is someone for whom everything is a gift. Nothing is owed us, not even our existence. ‘What do you have that you have not received?’ Friendship, happiness, joy are not owed us.”
—Jean-Yves Leloup, Being Still -
“Unless you first live a good life with people, you will not be able to live a good life alone either.”
—Abba Lucius
SO GOOD QUOTES 