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.

The matter of sedition is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment....The causes and motives of sedition are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever in offending people joineth them in a common cause.' The cue of every leader, of course, is to divide his enemies and to unite his friends. 'Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions...that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust, among themselves, is not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united.' A better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth: 'Money is like muck, not good unless it be spread.' But this does not mean socialism, or even democracy; Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; 'the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people;' and 'Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?' What Bacon wants is first a yeomanry of owning farmers; then an aristocracy for administration; and above all a philosopher-king. 'It is almost without instance that any government was unprosperous under learned governors.' He mentions Seneca, Antonius Pius and Aurelius; it was his hope that to their names posterity would add his own.

Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he's stupid. That you bet he doesn't know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in you've noticed he rarely reads. He will give you a hurt, hungry-to-learn look, with his James Cagney eyes. He will try to kiss you. Turn your head. Feel suffocated. (from How)

To reach the pinnacle of success, you have to cross the treacherous valleys of failures and discontent.

The negative way of thinking based on constant complaints, strains, and objections of discontent steals our energy

The splendid discontent of God with Chaos, made the world; and from the discontent of man the world's best progress springs.

What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.

To the discontented man no chair is easy.

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation. Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, and with the deeds that he is doing.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

Wealth ... and poverty: the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

It is a flaw In happiness, to see beyond our bourn,- It forces us in summer skies to mourn, It spoils the singing of the nightingale.

When you are in Rome you long to be in the country, and when you are in the country you praise the distant town to the skies.

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

What a miserable thing life is: you're living in clover, only the clover isn't good enough.

He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another.