Lasting Satisfaction Quotes

Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.

Happiness is this place that, once you arrive there, you have nothing else to do. You get bored. Passion is this up and down; it's like a rollercoaster, you know, and much more interesting to me.

Speaking as someone who's played a lot of video games, and at the end of the video game all you have is a memory, after woodworking you get this piece of furniture.

Do it for joy and you can do it forever

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.

You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud.

The satisfaction derived from the fleeting things of life is not lasting; and our wants remain unfulfilled. There is thus a general sense of dissatisfaction accompanied by all kinds of worries.

If fun puts a smile on your face, beauty and elegance put a smile in your heart and take your breath away. It's longer-lasting and more satisfying than fun.

I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

I think the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of reality because illusion never leaves us ultimately happy.

Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men but from doing something worthwhile.

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate.

Here's what I think I'm having trouble with: this is what happiness is. When I was a kid, I thought I'd just get happier and happier as I got older, and have more things to be happy about. I based this theory on observation of select adults. The problem with my results is that I couldn't tell the difference then between happy and fake-happy. Now I know you pretend to be just frigging ecstatic over everything, maybe because you're so glad it's not worse.

Pleasures of the mind have this advantage,--they never cloy nor wear themselves out, but increase by employment.

No matter how many possessions we acquire, they will not provide us with any lasting happiness and freedom. On the contrary, it is often our pursuit of material possessions that causes our problems. If we want ultimate happiness and freedom from suffering, we must engage in the supreme practices of training the mind. There is no other way.

Humans metabolize their purchases very quickly, even if it seemed worth it for any number of reasons when you first bought it. After some time passes, people will go back to feeling the baseline feelings they had previously felt about themselves, no matter how shiny the object, the hair, or the experience.

Contentment and happiness didn't exist in my life for more than a few moments at a time, and they were really only illusionary. There was always something hidden. Lying in wait to spring up and ruin everything.

Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of "fun," constantly cries for more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more exciting, with a bigger "high." A person in this state becomes almost entirely narcissistic, interpreting all of life in terms of the pleasure it provides to the self here and now.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmán, as if pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.

Remember, that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which, perchance, will never last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all.

The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.