Discontent Quotes - Page 6

• It is not the nature of man, as I see it, ever to be quite satisfied with what he has in life.... Contentment tends to breed laxity, but a healthy discontent keeps us alert to the changing needs of our time.

  Frances Perkins

  Men, Healthy, Needs

  Frances Perkins, Joseph Paul St. Sure (1965). “Two views of American labor”

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• There are people we meet in life who miss being important to us by inches, days, or heartbeats. Another place or time or a different emotional frame of mind and we would willingly fall into their arms; gladly take up their challenge or invitation. But as it is, we encounter them when we are discontent or content and they are not. Whatever they are, we are not and vice versa. Two trains going in different directions that pass for a few powerful moments at full speed, blasting noise and wind but then they are gone. Whatever serious chemistry might have been possible if, isn’t.

  Jonathan Carroll

  Powerful, Fall, Emotional

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• I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife's badly cooked dinners and untidy ways.

  Isabella Beeton

  Dinner, Way, Source

  1861 The Book of Household Management, preface.

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• There is no greater disaster than discontent.

  Laozi

  Taoism, Disaster, Greater

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• There is a breeze blowing. I see it in the deep discontent that is being voiced with the threadbare state of the evangelical world, with its empty worship, its market-driven superficiality, and its trivial thought. It is a breeze blowing toward better, deeper, more honest things. I suspect that it is the Holy Spirit who is blowing, that this is his breeze, and that these leaves that are shaking are the signs of better things to come within an evangelical faith that is thus being reformed. Let us all pray that it is so!

  David F. Wells

  World, Honest, Spirit

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• Boredom or discontent is useful to me when I acknowledge it and see clearly my assumption that there's something else I would rather be doing. In this way boredom can act as an invitation to freedom by opening me to new options and thoughts. For example, if I can't change the activity, can I look at it more honestly?

  Hugh Prather

  Boredom, Looks, Way

  Hugh Prather (2009). “Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person”, p.34, Bantam

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• All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Feet, May, Human Nature

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• Discontent with this world gives such a painful longing to quit it that, if the heart finds comfort, it is solely from the thought that God wishes it to remain here in banishment.

  Teresa of Avila

  Heart, Giving, Wish

  St. Teresa of Avila (1921). “The Interior Castle, or the Mansions”, p.30, Library of Alexandria

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• Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Growth, May, Pleasure

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867). “The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow. Complete Edition”, p.273

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• Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives - agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.

  Saul Alinsky

  Passion, Men, Bridges

  "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals" by Saul Alinsky, (pp. xxi-xxii), 1971.

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• If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives.

  Carl Rogers

  War, Mean, Despair

  Carl Rogers (1995). “A Way of Being”, p.223, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Upon the profound discontent of the young in every country do I set my faith. I beg you, the young, to be discontented. I pray that you may rebel against what is wrong, not with feeble negative complaining but with strong positive assertion of what is right for all humanity.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Country, Strong, Profound

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• The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Games, Wish, Add

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1212, Delphi Classics

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• It is clear that there are reasons for discontent in Iran - economic and political reasons. We have told the Iranian leadership repeatedly that the country's economic recovery can ultimately only succeed through greater international economic cooperation. And the precondition for that is not only that Iran refrain from developing nuclear weapons, but also that Iran's role in the region become far more peaceful. We have offered to finally hold true negotiations and talks on that issue.

  Sigmar Gabriel

  Recovery, Political, Peaceful

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• No, his mind is not for rent
  To any God or government
  Always hopeful yet discontent
  He knows changes aren't permanent
  But change is.

  Neil Peart

  Government, Hopeful, Independence

  "Tom Sawyer". Song by Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee Weinrib, Neil Peart, Paul Philip Woods, 1981.

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• By our pontifical assertions, our superior impatience, and our casual brushing aside of their curiosity, we do not encourage their inquiry, for we are rather apprehensive of what may be asked of us; we do not foster their discontent, for we ourselves have ceased to question.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Life, Truth

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• Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

  Neil Gaiman

  Other Worlds, People, Fruit

  "Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming". www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2013.

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• The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Pain, Doubt, Growth

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• There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.

  Eric Hoffer

  Art, Discovery, Creative

  Eric Hoffer (1969). “Working and Thinking on the Waterfront: A Journal, June 1958-May 1959”

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• Unity of man has always been impossible in a world of fear and discontent where every man fears every other man as an enemy.

  Walter Russell

  Fear, Men, Unity

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• The communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrown of overweening cupidity and selfishness which assiduously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wide disorder the citadel of misrule.

  Grover Cleveland

  Integrity, Justice, Political

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• No civilization can exist part free and part slave.
  
  ..We have never had any other kind of civilization. It has always been that way. There has always been a division of man. There has always been the conqueror and conquered-the master and slave-the ruler and the ruled-the oppressor and the oppressed. There has never been content nor unity. There has been only discontent and disunity.

  Walter Russell

  Men, Civilization, Historical

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• The organizers first job is to create the issues or problems, and organizations must be based on many issues. The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.

  Saul Alinsky

  Jobs, Expression, Organization

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• The discontent with the existing order of things pervaded the atmosphere, wherever the conditions were favorable, long before Columbus, seeking the back door of Asia, found himself knocking at the front door of America.

  James Russell Lowell

  Doors, Order, America

  William Makepeace Thackeray, John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Walter Bagehot (1910). “Essays, English and American: With Introductions and Notes”

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• In order to win, we pay with energy and effort and discipline. If we lose, we pay in disappointment, discontent, and lack of fulfillment.

  Maya Angelou

  Disappointment, Winning, Order

  Maya Angelou (2011). “Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now”, p.34, Bantam

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