Discontented Quotes
More Discontented Quotes
The scholars who understand it hesitate to speak out boldly for fear people will not understand. The people, who understand it quite easily, also fear to speak out while they wait for the scholars to speak out first. The difference between our present situation and that of the story is that it is not the emperor but the people who are periodically made to go naked and hungry and insecure and discontented - a ready prey to less timid organizers of discontent for the destruction of the civilization.
abba lerner— (1951, pg.16) [3]
Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze, A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner: now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will.
william wordsworth— Bk. I, l. 1.
They that are discontented under monarchy call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy call it oligarchy; so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes that want of government is any new kind of government.
thomas hobbes— 1651Leviathan, pt.2, ch.19.
To be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamedwiththenobleshame, istheverygermand first upgrowth of all virtue.
Charles Kingsley— 1874 Health and Education.
Every time that I fill a high office, I make one hundred men discontented and one ungrateful.
— c.1669 After the disgrace of the Duke of Lauzun. Quoted in Voltaire Le Sie' cle de Louis XI V (1751), ch.26.
Is not man born with a love of change — an Englishman to be discontented — an Anglo-Indian to grumble?
sir richard francis burton— Goa, and The Blue Mountains; or, Six Months of Sick Leave (1851)
'Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,O, let me lead an academic life;To know much, and to think for nothing, knowNothing to have, yet think we have enow.
joseph hall— Discontent of Men with Their Condition.
Prayers born out of murmuring are always dangerous. When, therefore, we are in a discontented mood, let'us take care what we cry for, lest God give it to us, and thereby punish us.
william mackergo taylor— P. 465. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.
georg brandes— p. 41 (An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889))
The right honourable gentleman is the first of the new party who has retired into his political cave of Adullam and he has called about him everyone that was in distress and everyone that was discontented.
john bright— On Robert Lowe in a speech (March 1866)
I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.
charlotte brontë— Jane (Ch. 12)
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))
For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.
Charles Kingsley— Health and Education, The Science of Health (1874).
Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him?
george orwell— "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad", Tribune (12 April 1946)
"But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?" "Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of fold as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is."
philip pullman— Lyra and the seaman Jerry, in Ch. 10 : The Consul and the Bear
In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune, because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself.
alexis de tocqueville— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835–40.
It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy.
— Thomas Babington Macaulay, letter to Henry Stephens Randall (May 23, 1857); reported in Thomas Pinney, ed., The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay (1981), vol. 6, p. 95.
Prayers born out of murmuring are always dangerous. When, therefore, we are in a discontented mood, let'us take care what we cry for, lest God give it to us, and thereby punish us.
— William Mackergo Taylor, p. 465. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
I know a discontented gentleman, Whose humble means match not his haughty mind.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act IV, scene 2, line 36.
Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.
— Georg Brandes, “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,” Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 41.
Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him?
— George Orwell, in "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad", The Tribune (12 April 1946)
