Contented Quotes
More Contented Quotes
The inventor...looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.
alexander graham bell— As appears on plaque in the entrance to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada
It is good to be a cynic it is better to be a contented cat and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.
h. p. lovecraft— "Nietzscheism and Realism" from The Rainbow, Vol. I, No. 1 (October 1921); reprinted in "To Quebec and the Stars", and also in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 71
Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals.
— 1903 'The Islanders'.
The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty.
washington irving— The Creole Village published in The Knickerbocker magazine (November 1836). This is origin of the expression almighty dollar. See Edward Bulwer-Lytton for "the pursuit of the almighty dollar". Compare: "Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold, And almost every vice,—almighty gold", Ben Jonson, Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland.
Always contented with his life, and with his dinner, and his wife.
aleksandr pushkin— Eugene Onegin, Ch. 1, st. 12 (1823)
When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until their lengthening wings break into fire At either curve' d point,?what bitter wrong, Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented?
— 1850 Poems,'Sonnets from the Portuguese', sonnet 22.
When you learn to make everybody happy, you will possess the golden secret of how to milk the contented voters. But do it in such a way that they won’t think you want them to vote for you just because you need the money.They need the money, and besides, they can think up other reasons if they try.
gracie allen— Ch. 6 : How not to offend anybody
Many ... begin to make converts from motives of charity, but continue to do so from motives of pride. … Charity is contented with exhortation and example, but pride is not to be so easily satisfied. ... Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.
Charles Caleb Colton— Lacon, vol. 1 (1820), #17
Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right, without them.
Charles Caleb Colton— vol. 1 (1820), #48
Freedom has a thousand charms to show,That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
william cowper— Line 260.
The Lord's visitations of distinguished favor are always to the diligent. That great men may not be ashamed of honest vocations, the greatest that have ever lived have been contented, happy, and honored while in the pursuit of humble trades.
elias lyman magoo— P. 346. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Could we bring ourselves to feel what the first spectators of an Egyptian statue, or a Romanesque crucifixion, felt, we would make haste to remove them from the Louvre. True, we are trying more and more to gauge the feelings of those first spectators, but without forgetting our own, and we can be contented all the more easily with the mere knowledge of the former, without experiencing them, because all we wish to do is put this knowledge to the work of art.
andré malraux— Part I, Chapter III
The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets literature decay than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.
ezra pound— p. 33 (ABC of Reading (1934))
He was a tall man with an astonishing and somehow elegant curvature of the spine, formed by an enlarged lower abdomen, which he carried in a stately and contented way, as if it contained money and securities.
john cheever— Description of a Yankee rectorThe Wapshot Scandal (1964)
An understandable hunger for … potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, … immune to the methods of factory farming.
Alain de Botton— pp. 126-127 (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009))
We have busied ourselves and contented ourselves long enough with speaking and writing; now at last we demand that the word become flesh, the spirit matter; we are as sick of political as we are of philosophical idealism; we are determined to become political materialists.
— Lecture I, Occasion and Context
Carlyle ! Carlyle only raises questions he cannot answer, and seems best contented if he can make the rest of us as discontented as himself; and all the others, all, that is, who have any power at all, fight beside religion, either as if it were not worth saving, or as if it had nothing to do with them.
james anthony froude— Letter V (The Nemesis of Faith (1849))
To dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. The subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine.
thomas hardy— Bk. I, ch. 7.
Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance dis contented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.
john ruskin— Lecture V, section 88.
Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.
lewis thomas— "On Probability and Possibility"
Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home Can be contented to applaud myself, * * * with joy To see how plump my bags are and my barns.
Ben Jonson— Ben Jonson, Every Man Out of His Humour, Act I, scene 1.
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy.
anatole france— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (vol. 1 of The Works of Anatole France), trans. Lafcadio Hearn, part 2, chapter 4, June 6, 1860, p. 198 (1924).
Under the yaller pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, An' hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west-wind purr contented.
james russell lowell— James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers, Second Series, No. 10.
No, Freedom has a thousand charms to show That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
william cowper— William Cowper, Table Talk, line 260.
An everlasting tranquillity is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity on earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.
— Zimmerman, p. 301
Heaven is for thee too high To know what passes there; be lowly wise: Think only what concerns thee and thy being. Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there Live, in what state, condition, or degree, contented that thus far hath been revealed Not of earth only but of highest heav'n.
john milton— 1665 Raphael to Adam. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.172-8.
contented wi' little and cantie wi' mair.
Robert Burns— Contented wi' Little, st. 1
Thank God for poverty That makes and keeps us free, And lets us go our unobtrusive way, Glad of the sun and rain, Upright, serene, humane, contented with the fortune of a day.
bliss carman— The Word at Saint Kavin's
contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair.
Robert Burns— Robert Burns, Contented wi' Little.
