This page lists my all-time favorite contentment quotes to live a life of enough.
You can find links to more intentional living quotes at the bottom of this page.
When you’re ready to dive deeper, here’s some recommended reading on contentment:
25+ Contentment Quotes to Live a Life of Enough
“Sufficiency is a place of wholeness and completeness and deep understanding of who we are. And it’s almost impossible to get to enough-ness or sufficiencies in a world that exalts what I call the ‘myth of scarcity’—which is a mind-set, an unconscious, unexamined set of assumptions of “not enough” … It’s not just there is not enough, it’s not enough. We’re not enough. I’m not enough. And that deficit relationship with ourselves is the source of so much of our suffering.” — Lynne Twist
“I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.” — Tom Waits
“The opposite of more is enough.” — William Paul Young
“He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.” — Epicurus
“You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.” — Vernon Howard
“Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.” — Doris Mortman
“Those with less become content.” — Lao Tzu
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” — William Blake
“I am complete, as are you, even in an empty room. The stuff, then, only augments that which is already whole.” — Joshua Fields Millburn
“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” — Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell Version)
“You alone are enough.” — Maya Angelou
“enoughism: (noun) It is the theory that there is a point where consumers possess everything they need, and buying more would actually make them worse off. It emphasizes less spending and more buying restraint.” — John Naish
“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough … On one level, we all know this stuff already … The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.” — David Foster Wallace
“He who knows he has enough is rich.” — Lao Tzu
“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.” — G.K. Chesterton
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” — Seneca
“To make a living isn’t to make a killing. To make a living is to make enough.” — Wendell Berry
“If a man can reduce his needs to zero, he is truly free: there is nothing that can be taken from him; nothing can hurt him.” — John Boyd
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“You don’t become awakened by adding more content to your mind. In fact, those that have awakened say that they actually know less. What comes with awakening is the ability to embrace ‘not knowing.'” — Eckhart Tolle
“Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He has nothing, thus has nothing to lose. What he desires is non-desire; what he learns is to unlearn.” — Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell Version)
“Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?” — Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell version)
“If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don’t give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.” — Epicurus
“Desiring less is even more valuable than owning less.” — Joshua Becker
“To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence.” — Matt Haig
“Stoics would sleep in the dog basket once a month and drink the dog’s water. For a few days, you live like a dog. And you realize that it’s possible and it’s fine. And that removes fear. Often what stops us from realizing our ambitions is fear. If we make ourselves totally at home with failure and utter disgrace we will feel a curious lightness and sense of possibility because we won’t be held back by the constant thought, ‘What happens if…?’ We will have fully explored the question.”— Alain de Botton
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