When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.

Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.

You must have a level of discontent to feel the urge to want to grow.

Millions upon millions will attain your ceremony, but don’t think all of them are in a ceremonius mood.

I think at the heart of so much restlessness of the day is a spiritual vacuum. There is a yearning for meaningful lives, a yearning for values we can commonly embrace. I hear an almost...

You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.

It is my business as a Sunday school teacher to instill a divine discontent for the ordinary. Only the best possible is good enough for God. Can you say, ‘God, I have done all that...

We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take the idea of dying, unable to sit still.

In the meantime the strike is over, with a remarkably low loss of life. All is quiet, they report, all is quiet.In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In...

It’s certainly representative of the discontent that’s out there. The retirees are frustrated, but I don’t think it represents a major threat yet.

Next time we will look at this from a much more basic point of view and one antedating all zoology, which, glimpsed only a little after my twentieth year, made write in those days that...

There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead.

There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of...

…no matter how much Theo achieves and acquires and out-dazzles everyone else, she never seems content. She’s taught you that people who shine more lavishly that everyone else seem to be penalized by discontent, as...

As his (C. S. Lewis’s) good friend Owen Barfield once remarked, Lewis radiated a sense that the spiritual world is home, that we are always coming back to a place we have never yet reached.

the poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt.” “There again,” said Syme irritably, “what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say...

I had not one inkling from Joe, ever, of discontent with the way we operate, … He and I operate very well together. ‘ We were totally on board as far as strategy.

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...

Joliffe, watching him over the rim of his own bowl, felt for his discontent. In his own life there were other things he could have been besides a player—several other things he had been besides...

We are going to have a winter of discontent.

You’re not discontent for wanting to be in a relationship, you’re just human.

Our young don’t play outside anymore; they’ve lost their innocence too early in their lives. We walk around the house ignoring one another, we see each other as separate, we abuse the earth; we kill...

Why would she want to come back here and live?’ I wondered. ‘Doesn’t seem like she’d want to.”Why do you say that?”She seems different, that’s all.”I don’t know,’ Bud said. ‘You might be confusing different...

My discontent has accumulated over the past months, searching for a leak in the dam I’ve constructed to separate my true feelings from the situation closing in around me.

I’d begun to grow weary of my constant daydreaming because, as I retreated more often into fantasy, it had become a reminder of my growing discontent with real life. And my thoughts, after very little...

It was as if she had thought him into existence again, as if her mind were a flask into which had been poured a measure of longing, a measure of discontent, a measure of fatigue,...

Let me be content with myself to the degree that my capacity to serve others is present, yet discontent with myself to the degree that I may still like to grow in better service for...

There are two kinds of discontented in this world, the discontented that works and the discontented that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants and the second loses what it has. There is...

People are complaining of having rags and not riches, but I find it a blessing just to have rags, to wipe away the dirt and dust that may come in the course of life.

…before there can be change there must be discontent.

A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience...

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s...

The ones that always, always want something better, will never find better.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

What if my greatest disappointments, or the aching of this life, is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy?