Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled...and I just wanted to keep being filled.

When will you know you have enough, and what will you do then?

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.

I was looking for something to make me happy, and once I realised what I actually had, then I found success.

The word contentment comes from the word content, which is what we hold inside - love, value, a feeling of a life that has meaning or purpose, a cause greater than yourself that you're a part of. These are the things that bring true happiness. As a culture, I think we need to redefine what it means to be happy.

A happy life is impos­si­ble; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.

When do any of us ever do enough?

Be happy that after living so many lives, I finally found something to die for

So the unwanting soul sees what's hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants.

I'm quite content: although what I'm doing is far from being as I should like, I am complemented often enough all the same.

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

I don't ever feel like I've had a moment where I am like, "There it is; perfect and holy in all ways."

Perfection is one thing and enjoyment another; these two having different ends, engage men differently.

Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.

Somehow I reached excess without ever noticing when I was passing through satisfaction.

No matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.

It's good to be just plain happy, it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.

We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do; therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.

The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.

Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it is what I have steadfastly believed.

I'm in a happy place. I'm very at peace with who I am and what I'm doing and the people around me, so I think I'm probably most ambitious at where I am.

Happiness is total and complete satisfaction with yourself

After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but is often true.

Gradually as you become curator of your own contentment, you will learn to embrace the gentle yearnings of your heart.