Nick Harkaway Quotes

Happy thou art not; for what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get; and what thou hast, forgettest.

Those who constantly want something will never feel happy.

People are never satisfied. If they have a little, they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction.

I suppose I was always very greedy. I was never happy with what we had, and I was always looking for new opportunities.

Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.

The human being is constantly torn from calm and peace of simple existence by two things; wanting what you don't have, or disliking what you have.

When we have got it, we want something else.

The miserable think that what they have is never enough. Like the Little Mermaid, who owned no more than twenty thingamabobs, they say, "But who cares, no big deal, I want MORE." (How could you be miserable with twenty thingamabobs?)

We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.

We live in a material world. I'm not saying that beautiful things don't enhance our lives. But, in our culture, we're never happy.

It seems like a lot of people seek their peace in things. And most of us are not even satisfied with the things we have... we always want more.

We always want more. Whether it is better clothes, a bigger house, faster cars, or the latest gadgets, satisfaction in these days of consumerism is difficult to find.

I ain't ever satisfied.

Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. And the phone rang and Tyler answered. "If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't." May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.

The more we have, the more we want. And for this reason, we never have it all.

Be contented with whatsoever is; never ask for more. The moment you ask for more you have asked for hell. The moment you ask for more you have asked for misery. The desire for more creates misery.

Its really most remarkable how the human race is so seldom satisfied with what its got. Give a man the world and he's pining for the moon.

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting.

The highly ambitious person, in spite of all his successes, always remains dissatisfied, in the same way as a greedy baby is never satisfied.

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.

Fishermen, no matter what supreme good fortune befalls them, cannot ever be absolutely satisfied. It is a fundamental weakness of intellect.

No one is ever satisfied where he is.

The American conception of advertising is to arouse desires and stimulate wants, to make people dissatisfied with the old and out-of-date and by constant iteration to send them out to work harder to get the latest model - whether that model be an icebox or a rug or a new home.

...Your trouble, William, is that you have no ambition. You don't see that there is in life only ever one goal.' 'And what is that?' More', George said simply. 'Just more of anything. More of everything.

Covetous ambition, thinking all too little which presently it hath, supposeth itself to stand in need of that which it hath not.