day no. 15,442: a damnable contentment

"For all the real virtue in contentment evaporates, when the contentment is only satisfaction and the satisfaction is only self-satisfaction." -- G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

If the highest standards you have are your own, you will likely find yourself satisfied by your own standards. That state of contentment, Chesterton here points out, is not a virtue, but a vice. The kind of contentment that can be easily obtained by simply satisfying your own standards and reaching the highest to which you aspire is a contentment erected by ignorance and resting on arrogance and pride comes before the fall.

Proverbs 16:18

Pride goeth before destruction,

and an haughty spirit before a fall.