Discontent Quotes - Page 7

• I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses.

  Bill Moyers

  Strength, Might, Pay

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• A person of power embraces challenges in complete gratitude. No matter the situation life may bring, discontent is never justified, rather all is experienced as an opportunity and a privilege to venture and grow.

  James Arthur Ray

  Gratitude, Opportunity, Challenges

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• Sorrow and frustration have their power. The world is moved by people with great discontents. Happiness is a drug. It can make men blind and deaf and insensible to reality. There are times when only sorrow can give to sorrow.

  Winifred Holtby

  Happiness, Frustration, Reality

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Pavements at Anderby: tales of "South riding" and other regions by Winifred Holtby”

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• Discontent is the wheel that moves people forward.

  Lu Xun

  Moving, People, Wheels

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• The music scene in the '70s was like the United Kingdom in the '70s - we had a lot of unemployment, we had inflation, we had a lot of strikes going on, on a national scale, and a lot of discontent. That was reflected in the music.

  Annie Lennox

  Unemployment, Kingdoms, Scene

  "The Look: Annie Lennox". Interview with Harry Brant, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 23, 2014.

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• A crown! what is it?
  It is to bear the miseries of a people!
  To hear their murmurs, feel their discontents,
  And sink beneath a load of splendid care!

  Hannah More

  Kings, People, Bears

  Hannah More (1840). “Miscellaneous Works: Tragedies. Miscellaneous poems. Hymns and ballads. Sacred Dramas. Coelebs. Practical piety. Moriana”, p.351

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• Seeming contentment is real discontent, combined with indolence or self-indulgence, which, while taking no legitimate means of raising itself, delights in bringing others down to its own level.

  John Stuart Mill

  Real, Mean, Self

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “Considerations on Representative Government”, p.86, John Stuart Mill

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• Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontent with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses.

  John Ruskin

  Real, Men, Thrones

  John Ruskin (1912). “The fall”

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• There are two brands of discontent: the brand that merely fosters greed and snarling and back-biting, and the brand that inspires greater and greater effort to reach the desired goal. Which is your brand?

  B. C. Forbes

  Two, Goal, Effort

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• The malcontent is neither well, full nor fasting; and though he abounds with complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he condemns while it was, once passed, he magnifies and strives to recall it out of the jaw of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he careth not for, because be cares so much for that which is not.

  Joseph Hall

  Taken, Eye, Fasting

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• Love is maintain'd by wealth: when all is spent,
  Adversity then breeds the discontent.

  Robert Herrick

  Adversity, Love Is, Wealth

  Robert Herrick (1856). “Hesperides Or The Works Both Humane and Divine of Robert Herrick”, p.37

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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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• If we want to be women of contentment, we must choose to accept our portion, our assigned roles from God. We must make the choice to dwell on the positive aspects of our role in life. If we don't we'll be discontent, always wanting something different from what we've been given.

  Linda Dillow

  Choices, Contentment, Different

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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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• What we will be seeking... for the rest of our lives will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say relatives. They no longer exist. The lack of them is not only the main cause, but probably the only cause of our shapeless discontent in the midst of such prosperity.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  People, Community, Causes

  "Thoughts of a Free Thinker". Kurt Vonnegut's commencement address at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (May 26, 1974), as quoted in Kurt Vonnegut "Palm Sunday", 1981.

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• People hired by government know who is their benefactor. People who lose their jobs or fail to get them because of the government program do not know that that is the source of their problem. The good effects are visible. The bad effects are invisible. The good effects generate votes. The bad effects generate discontent, which is as likely to be directed at private business as at the government.

  Milton Friedman

  Jobs, Government, People

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• To save the mind from preying inwardly upon itself, it must be encouraged to some outward pursuit. There is no other way to elude apathy, or escape discontent; none other to guard the temper from that quarrel with itself, which ultimately ends in quarreling with all mankind.

  Fanny Burney

  Mind, Way, Elude

  Fanny Burney (1972). “Camilla: or, A picture of youth”

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• happiness makes us older, less romantic, less in need of dreams. Discontent, not happiness, is the food of youth and poetry.

  Nan Fairbrother

  Dream, Needs, Youth

  Nan Fairbrother (1954). “An English Year”

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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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• No one has ever explained why it is that parents and guardians consider dull people such safe matrimonial investments for their young charges. Even granting the unsound assumption that dull people are more apt to be content with their own matrimonial fetters, they are certainly more apt to be the cause of discontent in others.

  Alice Duer Miller

  People, Parent, Causes

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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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• The oppressed without hope are mysteriously quiet. When the conception of change is beyond the limits of the possible, there are no words to articulate discontent so it is sometimes held not to exist. This mistaken belief arises because we can only grasp silence in the moment in which it is breaking.

  Sheila Rowbotham

  Silence, Limits, Belief

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• The number is less than that of 2004, but major fatal accidents have aroused considerable public discontent.

  Li Yizhong

  Numbers, Accidents, Majors

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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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• Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. Change may be announced by a small ache, so that you think you're catching cold. Or you may feel a faint disgust for something you loved yesterday. It may even take the form of a hunger that peanuts won't satisfy. Isn't overeating said to be one of the strongest symptoms of discontent. And isn't discontent the lever of change?

  John Steinbeck

  Men, Thinking, Yesterday

  John Steinbeck (2007). “Travels with Charley and Later Novels, 1947-1962”

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