A man can refrain from wanting what he has not, and cheerfully make the best of a bird in the hand.
Long only for what you have.
The tulip is, among flowers, what the peacock is among birds. A tulip lacks scent, a peacock has an unpleasant voice. The one takes pride in its garb, the other in its tail.
Slight not what is near though aiming at what is far.
Greediness of getting more, deprives ... the enjoyment of what it had got.
While you fear missing a meal, you aren't fully aware of the meals you do eat.
To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have.
If there's no bread, cakes are very good.
Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
Not what we have, but what we use, not what we see, but what we choose-these are the things that mar or bless human happiness.
The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.
We always have enough to be happy if we are enjoying what we do have- and not worrying about what we don't have.
Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.
The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another, and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Mankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.
All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.
It ain't so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich.
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.