Quotes about joy
page 15

“Youth's the season made for joys,
Love is then our duty.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Act II, sc. iv, air 22
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

“I hope that when he smiles at me
He does not guess my joy and pain,
For if he did, he is too kind
To ever look my way again.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Young Love"
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)

Pain, Smile, Hope, Way

“Nothing fills us with deep and lasting joy the way that doing a good turn for someone else does. Saving somebody's life, human or animal, is that “good turn” in spades.”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Introduction
The Good Karma Diet (2015)

Life, Way, Animals

“A strong church is made up of well-ordered families, where intelligent, Christian parents bring up their children in the fear of the Lord, where the home of the week has its counterpart in the home of the Sabbath, where the hopes and joys of the living, and the blessed memories of the dead bind to the Lord and His church, where young men and maidens are glad when it is said to them, " Let us go unto the house of the Lord," where the tranquillity, and purity, and holy peace, the light and the love, form to the opening minds of the children a type and prophecy of the eternal Sabbath and the heaven above.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 144.

Love, Men, Children, Fear

“Then said a Second — "Ne'er a peevish Boy
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy,
And He that with his hand the Vessel made
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy."”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Boy

“If you think the Govt or its affiliates have the power kill people, then yes, then yes, I should fear for my life. However - I don't give it a lot of thought because there is great joy in fighting. It's also not in the interest of the power structure to potentially turn someone into a martyr. It's more likely they will use the legal system to issue injunctions (like they did with David Daleiden). Or ban me on Facebook, Youtube or Twitter. (like they tried to do this week). I'm also a Christian. So I believe it's important to fight for things greater than one's personal physical welfare.”

James O'Keefe (1984) American conservative filmmaker

Life, People, Fear, Thinking

“Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming o'er the joys of night.
Sleep, sleep: in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.”

William Blake A Cradle Song

A Cradle Song, st. 1
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Beauty, Dreams, Sleep, Night

“To be full of joy when looking at an oeuvre is not a little thing.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 571 - Hans Arp's quote, made in 1962 in Galerie Denise René - this remark is also the last line in the art book Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs, Hans Arp, Gallimard, Paris 1966

“Prayer is a universal phenomenon in the soul-life of man. It is the soul's reaction to the terrors and joys, the uncertainties and dreams of life.”

Joseph H. Hertz (1872–1946) British rabbi

Introduction (p. x)
The Authorised Daily Prayer Book

Life, Dreams, Soul, Universe

“This world is all a fleeting show,
For man's illusion given;
The smiles of joy, the tears of woe,
Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,—
There's nothing true but Heaven.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

This World is all a fleeting Show.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

World, Smile, Tear

“Here saw I verily that if He shewed now us His Blissful Cheer, there is no pain in earth or in other place that should aggrieve us; but all things should be to us joy and bliss.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 21

Pain

“Many humans look at nature from an aesthetic perspective and think in terms of biodiversity and the health of ecosystems, but forget that the animals that inhabit these ecosystems are individuals and have their own needs. Disease, starvation, predation, ostracism, and sexual frustration are endemic in so-called healthy ecosystems. The great taboo in the animal rights movement is that most suffering is due to natural causes. Any proposal for remedying this situation is bound to sound utopian, but my dream is that one day the sun will rise on Earth and all sentient creatures will greet the new day with joy.”

Nick Bostrom (1973) Swedish philosopher

Albert, a fictional dog in Golden https://nickbostrom.com/fable/retriever.html (2004)

Health, Disease, Dreams, Nature

“Joy can come alive like that, when random pieces of history and rhythm, pause and expectation, melody and lyric, suddenly rearrange themselves into a pattern that leaps up, back against the wall, and catches your heart.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

"Forty Years" Slow Trains Vol.7, Issue 3 (2008)
2000-09

History, Heart

“Living by principles is not living your own life. It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are. If you are trying to live by ideals, you are constantly plagued by a sense of unreality. Somewhere you think there must be some joy; it can't be all "must," "ought to," "have to." And when the crunch comes, you have to recognize the truth: you weren't there. Then the house of cards collapses.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Addiction to Perfection (1982), p. 61

Life, Truth, Thinking, Sense

“The time-state of attainment eliminates so accurately the time-state of aspiration, that the actual seems the inevitable, and, all conscious intellectual effort to reconstitute the invisible and unthinkable as a reality being fruitless, we are incapable of appreciating our joy by comparing it with our sorrow.”

Samuel Beckett book Proust

Proust (1957), p. 4

Reality, Effort, Time

“The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book II, Ch. 20
Attributed

“The paradox of life is: Joy prepares one for more sadness and the other way around also.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Joy: Share it! p. 36.
Joy: Share it! (2017)

Life, Sadness, Way

“The mystery is that the world is at it is -- a mystery that is the source of all joy and all sorrow, of all hope and fear, and the source of development both creative and degenerative. The contingency of all into which time enters is the source of pathos, comedy, and tragedy.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

World, Fear, Hope, Time

“When we think of the crowded tenements, with hard asphalt pavements and never a blade of grass or a tree; of the ghettos and colonies in cities; of the unsightly industrial towns; of the labor shacks along our great construction works; of the derailed box cars; of the immigrant section across the railroad track; of the small towns without parks or playgrounds or music or books; and then turn to the villages from which most of the immigrants come friendly in their associations and restful in their relationship to the wider life outside the longing of the immigrant to return is understood. Even the crowded cities of their native countries have places where one may rest the spirit and satisfy the hunger for beauty, by the expenditure of a carfare or the effort of a short walk. The grim beauty of our cities, their vitality, their ambition and determination, and that crude joy of living through which many currents of our life flow, will not always keep the immigrants from returning even to the poverty of some of their native towns.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, Hunger, Books, Beauty

“I am really committed to my faith journey and I am committed to my family. My husband and I have been married for almost 30 years and we homeschool our kids. We have a different working-out-of the-box family, but we do make it work, obviously with God’s grace and we are very grateful for that.” Are there any drawbacks from not living in New York or L. A.? “Sometimes it can be a little bit lonely because we are the only family that we know that is in the entertainment industry, homeschools and is faith-based [while trying] to maintain some sort of ‘regular life’ so to speak in the midst of the crazy stuff. It is a little bit different I think. Sometimes we feel like we are the Lone Rangers, but this is where God has us and this is his calling for right now, for this season. We do it with joy and with integrity”

Jodi Benson (1961) American voice actress, actress and singer

Interview with a Mermaid http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/peanutsandpopcorn/2013/09/interview-with-a-mermaid.html (2014)

Life, God, Family, Faith

“As compassion deepens, we find ourselves developing a nobility of the heart. Increasingly, and often to our surprise, we respond to difficult situations with calmness, clarity and directness. A quiet fearlessness or confidence is present as we no longer fear that we will compromise our own integrity. We find, too, a joy, a joy which arises from the knowledge that our every act is meaningful and helpful to the world.”

Ken McLeod (1948) Canadian lama

Awakening Compassion http://www.unfetteredmind.org/awakening-compassion. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org. (Topic: Practice)

World, Fear, Confidence, Knowledge

“The artistic triumph of American Jewry lay, he thought, not in the novels of the 1950s but in the movies of the 1930s, those gargantuan, crass contraptions whereby Jewish brains projected Gentile stars upon a Gentile nation and out of their own immigrant joy gave a formless land dreams and even a kind of conscience.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Bech, A Book (1970)

Dreams, Star

“To the bird watcher, the suburbanite who derives joy from birds in his garden, the hunter, the fisherman or the explorer of wild regions, anything that destroys the wildlife of an area for even a single year has deprived him of pleasure to which he has a legitimate right. This is a valid point of view.”

Rachel Carson book Silent Spring

Source: Silent Spring (1962), p. 52 (Section 7, Needless Havoc)

Pleasure, Bird

“While a guy at home is sweating over his income tax and Victory garden, a dogface somewhere is getting great joy out of wiggling his little finger. He does it just to see it move and to prove to himself that he is still alive and able to move it.”

Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) American editorial cartoonist

Up Front (1945)

Guy, Home, Victory

“How pure the joy, when first my hands unfold
The small, rare volume, black with tarnished gold!”

John Ferriar (1761–1815) British writer and physician

Illustrations of Sterne, Bibliomania, line 137, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Ethics (New York:1915), § 72, pp. 193-194
The Principles of Ethics (1897), Part I: The Data of Ethics

Happiness, Health

“It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Heart

“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and the glory of the climb.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

In "Painting as a Pastime", the Strand Magazine (December 1921/January 1922), cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 568 ISBN 1586486381
Early career years (1898–1929)

“From me you fly! Ah! let me crave,
By these poor tears, that hand you gave—
Since, parting with my woman's pride,
My madness leaves me nought beside—
By that our wedlock, by the rite
Which, but begun, could yet unite,
If e'er my kindness held you bound,
If e'er in me your joy you found,
Look on this falling house, and still,
If prayer can touch you, change your will.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book IV, p. 123

Tear, Change, Parting, Housing

“And in this word that Jesus said: Wilt thou see her? methought it was the most pleasing word that He might have given me of her, with that ghostly Shewing that He gave me of her. For our Lord shewed me nothing in special but our Lady Saint Mary; and her He shewed three times. The first was as she was with Child; the second was as she was in her sorrows under the Cross; the third is as she is now in pleasing, worship, and joy.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Eleventh Revelation, Chapter 25

Time

“What is most needed today is a fundamental theological thinking, one centered upon the Godhead itself, and centered upon that which is most challenging or most offensive in the Godhead, one which has truly been veiled in the modern world, except by our most revolutionary thinkers and visionaries. If we allow Blake and Nietzsche to be paradigmatic of those revolutionaries, nowhere else does such a centering upon God or the Godhead occur, although a full parallel to this occurs in Spinoza and Hegel; but the language of Hegel and Spinoza is not actually offensive, or not in its immediate impact, whereas the language of Nietzsche and Blake is the most purely offensive language which has ever been inscribed. Above all this is true of the theological language of Blake and Nietzsche, but here a theological language is a truly universal language, one occurring in every domain, and occurring as that absolute No which is the origin of every repression and every darkness, and a darkness which is finally the darkness of God, or the darkness of that Godhead which is beyond “God.” Only Nietzsche and Blake know a wholly fallen Godhead, a Godhead which is an absolutely alien Nihil, but the full reversal of that Nihil is apocalypse itself, an apocalypse which is an absolute joy, and Blake and Nietzsche are those very writers who have most evoked that joy.”

Thomas J. J. Altizer (1927–2018) American radical theologian

Godhead and the Nothing (2003), Preface

God, World, Thinking, Universe

“Real success in business is to be found in achievements comparable rather with those of the artist or the scientist, of the inventor or statesman. And the joys sought in the profession of business must be like their joys and not the mere vulgar satisfaction which is experienced in the acquisition of money, in the exercise of power or in the frivolous pleasure of mere winning.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

"Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
Extra-judicial writings

Money, Pleasure, Exercises, Business

“My mother and I have this really strangely close relationship. No other relationship can come close to it. It's frightening. Even when I'm in a relationship with a man, I compare it to my relationship with my mother. She is a friend, but she is still a mother, and everything a mother needs to be, she is. She is really observing and caring and doesn't want anything but giving because it's her joy. Even when I can't bear anybody, not even myself, she 's like the sun coming up to me. She dedicated all her life to me. Sometimes I feel that she gave her life to me and now it's my job to maybe take her somewhere. But what is it she doesn't know? She knows things I couldn't begin to know. Yet she is so fresh with ideas which I already take for granted. She sometimes wakes me up and says, 'Don't you see?”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

and she makes me see and feel things again. Nobody, not my father, not anybody, has done that for me, except movies.
As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

Life, Feeling, Idea, Sun

“The Sovereign of the universe was not alone in His work of beneficence. He had an associate—a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” John 1:1, 2. Christ, the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6. His “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Micah 5:2. And the Son of God declares concerning Himself: “The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting. … When He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.””

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Proverbs 8:22-30. Patriarchs and Prophets 34.1 https://egwwritings.org/?ref=en_PP.34.1&para=84.75

God, Happiness, Peace, Way

“It is not in the resolution of problems that you will find happiness. If you want to find that happiness, if you want to find that joy, then find that one thing that is within inside of you. That is you, that is your reality, that is your core that can bring you that joy. This disparity has existed and existed and existed, yet people keep saying, 'No, these people don't know what they're talking about.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Auckland, New Zealand, September 10, 2000
2000s

Happiness, People, Problem, Reality

“Of patience there is this to be said. To be patient is to suffer. By their fruits men know one another, but by their sufferings they are what they are. And suffering is not merely the endurance of physical or mental anguish, but of joy also. A rabbit caught in a trap may be supposed to suffer physical anguish : but it suffers nothing else. The man crucified may be supposed to suffer physical & mental anguish, but he suffers also intense happiness and joy. The industrialist workman is often simply as a rabbit in a trap; the artist is often as a man nailed to a cross. In patience souls are possessed. No lower view of the matter will suffice.”

Eric Gill (1882–1940) British artist

An Essay on Typography (1931) (Godine, 1993, ISBN 0-87923-950-6, p. 84

Men, Happiness, Soul, Suffering

“I rejoiced so greatly when I heard of your answer in the case of some who seemed to be filled with extravagant ambition
for the office of legate, and to hope for it with impudence, even more than I can say. And not only I but all who love your name rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Moreover, when I read your letter written in the cause of the Church of Rodez,
then was my mouth filled with laughter and my tongue with joy. Such things as these are worthy of your Apostleship, they honour the highest See, they are just what is becoming to the Bishop of the world. Whence, also, I bow my knees to the Author of your unique Primacy…
In truth, you have been raised to this chair for the fall and rising again of many.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

Bernard to Pope Eugene III, letter 240:1, A.D. 1146, concerning the election of a certain unworthy bishop at the Church of Rodez (see letter 328). In The Life and works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, John Mabillon, Samuel J. Eales, Volume 2, p. 705

Love, Truth, World, Hope

“The clouds, and not the stars, to them
The omen and the sign be given—
The clouds, the vapours of our soil,
Not stars, whose element is heaven.
The deepening shade, the flitting light,
Mark what each coming month will know—
The passing joy, the constant care,
Of life's sad pilgrimage below.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835

Life, Sadness, Star, Light

“On the 15th of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing… enjoying the jungle's great joys…
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.”

Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who!

Horton Hears a Who! (1954)

“The GNP by itself is no mark of our national achievement. For it includes smokestacks that pollute, drugs that destroy, and ambulances which clear our highways of human wreckage. It includes a mugger's knife, a rioter's bomb, and Oswald's rifle, but if the GNP tells us all this, there is much that it does not tell us. It says nothing about the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

from a speech given circa 1970 to citizens in Cincinnati Ohio. This American Life http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/04/258.html, Ep. 258, 01/30/04, Leaving the Fold; Act One. PLEASE NOTE that this quote borrows very heavily, in substance and form, from a 1968 speech by Robert F. Kennedy http://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/faculty/Michael.Brandl/Main%20Page%20Items/Kennedy%20on%20GNP.htm.

Health, Education, Family

“Joys, which we do not know, we do not wish.”

Aaron Hill (writer) (1685–1750) British writer

Zara, Act I, Sc. 1.
Zara (1735)

“I’m me. I am a human being. Many things have been said about me. Many of these things have come from people’s own emotions, good or bad. I’m proud to be a human being. I am very happy that I have this life. I am also happy that I can feel joy and pain like everyone else. I’m happy being me. Some people would love to put labels on me, but I am just me.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Undated
Source: Conversation with Prem Rawat The Prem Rawat Foundation

Love, Life, Pain, Happiness

“One of the many joys of the millennial kingdom and the eternal state will be the endless discussion, genuine fellowship with one another.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 166

“I don’t know the why of anything, even when I pretend most diligently I do. The truth is the last time I had any idea why or what I was supposed to do I was lying in a shell hole, looking up at the sky. My mind was filled with a Bach keyboard sonata, which was one of the last I’d learned, I forget which one now. I absolutely knew I was about to die and I was completely happy and at peace, in a way I never was before or since, not even with you, in our best moments. It was so easy, you see, a kind of absolute joy and peace, because I knew it was all done and I was all square with life. Nothing left to do but let things take their course. And when I didn’t die, I didn’t know what to do. So I thought, I’ll take my revolver, go out and blow a hole through my head. Only I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew, I just knew you couldn’t do it that way. You couldn’t make it happen, not if you wanted to find peace. So, I thought, then, a sniper can do it for me. But no matter how I tried to let them no sniper ever found me. And all the other times I went out and lay in shell holes in No Man’s Land it wasn’t the same, and I knew I wouldn’t die this time, and of course I never did. I had this mad feeling I’d become some sort of Wandering Jew. And everything for so long afterwards was about dragging this living corpse of myself around, giving it things to do, because here it was, alive. And nothing made any sense and I didn’t even hope it would. I followed paths that were there to be followed, I did what others said to do.”

Basil Rathbone (1892–1967) British actor

Letter https://thegreatbaz.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/fuller-text-of-letter-quoted-in-a-life-divided/

Life, Happiness, Truth, Peace

“Work for them was joy itself and the deep root of their being. And the reason of their being. There was an incredible honor in work, the most beautiful of all the honors. … We have known this devotion to l’ouvrage bien faite, to the good job, carried and maintained to its most exacting claims. … Today, what remains of all this? How has … the only people that loved to work … been transformed into one which in the workyard takes the greatest pains not to lift a hand?”

Charles Péguy (1873–1914) French poet, essayist, and editor

Dans ce bel honneur de métier convergeaient tous le plus beaux, tous le plus nobles sentiments. Une dignité. Une fierté. Ne jamais rien demander à personne, disaient-ils. … Un ouvrier de ce temps-là ne savait pas ce que c’est que quémander. C’est la bourgeoisie qui quémande. C’est la bourgeoisie qui, les faisant bourgeois, leur a appris a quémander.
Source: Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943), p. 81

Love, Pain, People, Beauty

“Flood your mind with love. Look into the eyes of the other and embrace the person with whom you have quarreled. Words are not necessary. Both will have their eyes flooded, and the joy of tears will wash away all quarrels.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Love, Tear, Personality

“And that brings me to the other big lesson that I want to share with you today. It’s a lesson about how to get through those struggles, and that is, instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed. Now, I know that many of you have already dealt with some serious losses in your lives. Maybe someone in your family lost a job or struggled with drugs or alcohol or an illness. Maybe you’ve lost someone you love […]. […] So, yes, maybe you’ve been tested a lot more and a lot earlier in life than many other young people. Maybe you have more scars than they do. Maybe you have days when you feel more tired than someone your age should ever really feel. But, graduates, tonight, I want you to understand that every scar that you have is a reminder not just that you got hurt, but that you survived. And as painful as they are, those holes we all have in our hearts are what truly connect us to each other. They are the spaces we can make for other people’s sorrow and pain, as well as their joy and their love so that eventually, instead of feeling empty, our hearts feel even bigger and fuller. So it’s okay to feel the sadness and the grief that comes with those losses. But instead of letting those feelings defeat you, let them motivate you. Let them serve as fuel for your journey.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep graduates (2015)

Love, Life, Pain, People

“Stay true to yourself. Let your voice ring out, and don't let anybody fiddle with it. Never turn down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. And meditate. It's very important to experience that Self, that pure consciousness. It's really helped me. I think it would help any filmmaker. So start diving within, enlivening that bliss consciousness. Grow in happiness and intuition. Experience the joy of doing. And you'll glow in this peaceful way. Your friends will be very, very happy with you. Everyone will want to sit next to you. And people will give you money!”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

Advice, p. 159
Catching the Big Fish (2006)

Money, Happiness, People, Peace

“Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter II, Consolation For Not having Enough Money, p. 65.

“Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life. But forgetting is a fraught process, one that is prone to transcription errors and personality flaws. Delete the wrong pattern, and you can end up becoming someone else. Memories exhibit dependencies, and their management is one of the highest medical art forms.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 2, “Experiment” (p. 22)

Life, Art, Error, Motivation

“Ought the world to be peopled by the children of hatred or disgust, the children of lust and loathing, or by the welcome babes of mutual love? Is it possible that an infinitely wise and compassionate God insists that a helpless woman shall remain the wife of a cruel wretch? Can this add to the joy of Paradise, or tend to keep one harp in tune?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Is Divorce Wrong? (1889)

Love, God, Children, People

“Racism is evil -- and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America. As a candidate I promised to restore law and order to our country and our federal law enforcement agencies are following through on that pledge. We will spare no resource in fighting so that every American child can grow up free from violence and fear. We will defend and protect the sacred rights of all Americans and we will work together so that every citizen in this blessed land is free to follow their dreams, in their hearts, and to express the love and joy in our souls.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Subsequent statement regarding the violence at a far-right Charlottesville, VA rally held on August 11-12, 2017; Trump calls KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists 'repugnant' http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/politics/trump-condemns-charlottesville-attackers/index.html (14 August 2017) 2010s, 2017, August

Love, Hate, Fear, Law

“Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores. Other times I have joys, when unexpectedly coming upon an outrageous story that may not be altogether a lie, or upon a macabre little thing that may make some reviewer of my more or less good works mad. But always there is present a feeling of unexplained relations of events that I note, and it is this far-away, haunting, or often taunting, awareness, or suspicion, that keeps me piling on.”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

Ch. 4 http://www.resologist.net/talent04.htm Wild Talents (1932)

Lie, Feeling, Time, Madness

“Laughter is a strange response. I mean, what is it? It's a spasm of some kind! Is that always joy? It's very often discomfort. It's some sort of explosive reaction. It's very complex.”

Madeline Kahn (1942–1999) American actress

1989 interview. Reported in William H. Honan, The New York Times (December 4, 1999) "Madeline Kahn: Funny Actress in 'Blazing Saddles'", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. A-11
Attributed

Laughter

“You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick… You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in. The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Poetic Manifesto

God, Tear

“The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident.”

Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) New Zealand writer

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 597

Love, Life, Beauty, Passion

“Your street, rich street or poor
Used to always be sure, on your street
There's a place in your heart you know from the start
Can't be complete outside of the street
Keep moving on through the joy and the pain
Sometimes you got to look back
To the street again
Would you prefer all those castles in Spain?
Or the view of your street from your window pane?”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

The Street Only Knew Your Name
Song lyrics, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983)

Pain, Heart

“And may the gods accomplish your desire:
a home, a husband, and harmonious
converse with him – the best thing in the world
being a strong house held in serenity
where man and wife agree. Woe to their enemies,
joy to their friends! But all this they know best.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

VI. 180–185 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald); Odysseus to Nausicaa.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

God, World, Home, Strong

“It is when we unbosom ourselves to Him, and confide to Him all our cares and sorrows and temptations, that He walks with us, and abides with us, and opens to us the Scriptures concerning Himself — His dignity, His suitableness, His loveliness. His truth, His tenderness, His faithfulness, revealing Himself in us; causing our hearts to burn within us — to burn with love, gratitude, devotion, courage, joy — to burn with a celestial fire, which consumes all selfishness and sin, and glows, a pure, perennial flame, upon pure, living altars.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 97.

Love, Truth, Faith, Confidence

“Men and women go to the theatre only to hear of love, and to take part in the pains or in the joys that it has caused. All the other interests of humanity remain at the door.”

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist

Les hommes et les femmes ne se réunissent au théâtre que pour entendre parler de l'amour, et pour prendre part aux douleurs et aux joies qu'il cause. Tous les autres intérêts de l'humanité restent à la porte.
Preface to La Femme de Claude (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1873) p. xxxiii; translation from Henri Pène du Bois (trans. and ed.) French Maxims of the Stage (New York: Brentano's, 1894) p. 49.

Love, Women, Men, Pain

“O surely this morning all sorrow is hidden,
All battle is hushed for this even at least;
And no one this noontide may hunger, unbidden
To the flowers and the singing and the joy of your feast
Where silent ye sit midst the world's tale increased.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow

Hunger, World, Flowers, Singing

“I love the joy of mountains
Wandering free with no concerns
Every day I find food for this old body
There's leisure for thinking, nothing to do
Often I carry an ancient book
Sometimes I climb a rock pavilion
To look down a thousand foot precipice
Overhead are swirling clouds
A cold moon chilly cold
My body feels like a flying crane”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Love, Books, Food, Feeling

“There’s a joy without canker or cark,
There’s a pleasure eternally new,
’T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark
Of china that’s ancient and blue.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Ballades in Blue China (1880)

Pleasure

“When Time who steals our years away
Shall steal our pleasures too,
The mem'ry of the past will stay,
And half our joys renew.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Song, from Juvenile Poems.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Pleasure, Time, Past

“Seriously! Acting in films is not my cup of tea. The joy I find in being a pucca musician is unparalleled.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

About acting in films http://web.archive.org/web/20161005115944/https://twitter.com/shreyaghoshal/status/114406431003914240

Tea

“Not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of God's word by the loss of earthly joys — sickness destroying the flavor of them all — did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ, and to know that I love Him — this is all.”

Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) American musician, hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 568.

Love, God, Study, Learning

“Love is the axis and breath of my life. The art I produce is a byproduct, an excrescence of love, the song I sing, the joy which must explode, the overabundance — that is all!”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Oct. 21, 1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Love, Life, Art, Singing

“Pleasure's fun. It's great, but you can't keep it going forever; just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone, and maybe then again, it will come back, and you'll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about your pleasure: it's about you. It's a selfish, self-centered emotion, that is created by a self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to somebody else, or something else. And it's a kind of thing that is, in its subtlety and lowness, much more powerful than pleasure. You get hung up on pleasure; you're doomed. If you pursue joy; you will find everlasting happiness.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Academy of Achievement Address, published by Corporate Valley (12 August 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54xWQPq0fuk 2010s

Happiness, Pleasure, Motivation, Selfishness

“Seize all the joy you can that robs no other. Sleep in peace, play in jolly earnest, wag well and mean it, and finally, be happy always. The more I see of dogs the less I think of men. Whoever beats dogs loves not man.”

Arsène Houssaye (1814–1896) French writer

Source: James O'Donnell Bennett (1908) When Good Fellows Get Together, p. 109

Love, Men, Happiness, Peace

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Life, Women, God

“This is it
no more fun
the death of all joy
has come.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969), The New Creatures

Death

“Joy emerges from my little, timid life/ of everydayness and temerity.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Joy: Share it! p. 42.
Joy: Share it! (2017)

Life

“Such are the joys of national leadership!”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Principles and Priorities : Programme for Government (September 5, 2007)

“Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The Ploughboy is whooping—anon—anon!
There's joy in the mountains:
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Written in March, st. 2 (1801).

Life, Mountain

“I've made use of the beautiful weather to sketch and paint outside. I had been staying away from color for such a long time that it had become something quite foreign to me. Working in color was always a great joy to me. And now it is a great joy again. Still, I have to battle with it, wrestle with it, with all my strength. And one must be victorious. But if it weren't for the fight, all the beauty of it wouldn't exist at all, would it? I'm writing this mostly for Mother who, I believe, thinks my whole life is one constant act of egoistic ecstasy. But devotion to art also involves something unselfish.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her parents, from Worpswede, 10 September 1899; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 199
1899

Life, Beauty, Art, Color

“Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world‘s employ:
His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.”

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) English poet

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross (1895)

Art, Soul

“Hence vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred!”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 1

“Nature is bottom up. It's compelling and complex, and it fills me with joy and it's inconsistent with the top down view.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, 3, Sarah Whitman, Age-old feud: In the beginning, Tampa Bay Times, Florida, February 7, 2014]

Nature

“There 's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanzas for Music (March 1815), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

World

“The main thing is not to lose your identity and to continue working … You have a quartet. That is such joy! You can forget everything else in the world. I'm playing a lot of chamber music these days. Tomorrow we were going to give the first performance of two trios, but because of the mourning, all concerts have been canceled.”

David Oistrakh (1908–1974) Soviet violinist

The Night Stalin Died http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/05/magazine/the-night-stalin-died.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias:r&pagewanted=2, New York Times (March 5, 1989).

World, Music, Forgetting

“The thing that I have learned is that vulnerability is at the center of fear and shame, but it is also at the center of joy and gratitude and love and belonging…If we continue to wake up every day and put our game faces on and think that invulnerability is the way to be … then we pay the price, because I don't know that we would ever fully experience joy and love and belonging.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

University of Houston, Pride Stories http://www.uh.edu/pride-stories/Brene-Brown/Brene-Brown-Story%20/index.php

Love, Fear, Way, Game

“Suppose Sisyphus to have been acquitted his need of forever toiling up his hill in Hell, would he have made the last journey in joy? Or would mere fatigue have extinguished all other emotion, as a torch extinguished in a sconce?”

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) novelist

Vergil in Averno (1987)

Hell

“The review was more a satisfaction to me than a joy. Joy, overpoweringly beautiful moments, comes to an artist without other noticing. The same is true for moments of sadness. That's why it is true that artists live mostly in solitude... Otto [Modersohn] and I shall be coming home [ Worpswede ] again in the spring. That man is touching in his love. We are going to try to buy the Brünjes place in order to make our lives together freer and more open... If the dear Lord will allow me once again to create something beautiful, then I shall be happy and satisfied; if only I have a place where I can work in peace. I will be grateful for the portion of love I've received. If one can remain healthy and not die too young..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter from Paris, 18 November 1906, to her sister Milly; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 206
1906 + 1907

Love, Happiness, Sadness, Peace

“If I had done nothing else in India I have written my name here, and the letters are a living joy.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Letter to Mrs Curzon (4 April 1905) on his restoration of the Taj Mahal, quoted in David Gilmour, ‘ Curzon, George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32680’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011, accessed 1 Feb 2014.

““Joy is not based on circumstances. You can experience a deep, abiding joy no matter what you have to be happy or unhappy about in your world. Joyful people radiate something deeper, something based in their heart and will. Others sense this joy and feel uplifted. I realized that’s what the phrase Scatter Joy is all about—reflecting that deep and abiding joy to the world. “”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&lpg=pg=PP1&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 61. On Choosing to be Joyful

Happiness, People, World, Feeling

“Humility is a marvelous partner to joy. I hope you will discover the joy of serving others.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Hope

“If the WormCam had shown nothing else, he thought, it was this, with pitiless clarity: that the lives of most humans had been miserable and short, deprived of freedom and joy and comfort, their brief moments in the light reduced to sentences to be endured.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Light of Other Days

Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 26

Freedom, Light

“One of my brothers was nearly of my own age; and he it was whom I most loved, though I was very fond of them all, and they of me. He and I used to read Lives of Saints together. When I read of martyrdom undergone by the Saints for the love of God, it struck me that the vision of God was very cheaply purchased; and I had a great desire to die a martyr's death, — not out of any love of Him of which I was conscious, but that I might most quickly attain to the fruition of those great joys of which I read that they were reserved in Heaven; and I used to discuss with my brother how we could become martyrs. We settled to go together to the country of the Moors, begging our way for the love of God, that we might be there beheaded; and our Lord, I believe, had given us courage enough, even at so tender an age, if we could have found the means to proceed; but our greatest difficulty seemed to be our father and mother.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Source: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (c.1565), Ch. I "Childhood and early Impressions" ¶ 4

Love, Death, God, Age

“Sadness when there should be Joy, hatred when there should be love show compassion because we can be more because we both have scars and pain that no one will ever understand but us so be with me not against me and bring us where we were happy and free.”

Hermann Hesse book Peter Camenzind

Peter Camenzind (1904)

Love, Pain, Happiness, Sadness

“O! to abide ever in Christ— to know His fellowship, to keep our hearts resting upon His infinite love, and there to grow from spiritual infancy to the full stature in holiness and love and joy and peace. May this be your experience every day and hour, strong in Him, fruitful in Him, happy in Him, until with the crumbling of the tabernacle of clay, the fellowship is perfect in the house not made with hands, where we shall see Him as He is.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 609.

Love, Happiness, Peace, Strong

“He remembers impulses bridled, the joy
he sacrificed. Every chance he lost
now mocks his senseless caution.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

An Old Man
Collected Poems (1992)

Chance

“For all mankind that shall be saved by the sweet Incarnation and blissful Passion of Christ, all is the Manhood of Christ: for He is the Head and we be His members. To which members the day and the time is unknown when every passing woe and sorrow shall have an end, and the everlasting joy and bliss shall be fulfilled; which day and time for to see, all the Company of Heaven longeth. And all that shall be under heaven that shall come thither, their way is by longing and desire.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51

Way, Passion, Time, Christ

“You can't imagine the joy I feel when I hear that something I've said or done or written has helped others to regain their sense of dignity, to motivate them to develop their unique potential, to encourage them to reach out to others in love.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

Love, Feeling, Imagination, Motivation

“I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter I: The Earth; 1. The Starting Point (p. 11)

Men, Hunger, History, Star

“And you're not happy but you're funny and I'm tripping over my joy. I just keep on gettin up again.”

Jenny Lewis (1976) American actor, singer-songwriter

"The Absence of God"
Song lyrics, More Adventurous (2004)

Happiness

“Life is a chain of small sorrows that lead to a great joy.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 35
The Other Wife (2003)

Life

“But when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy;
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

Remembrance (1846)

Dreams, Learning, Despair

“There is no sorrow like a love denied
Nor any joy like love that has its will.”

Richard Hovey (1864–1900) American writer

Act i. Sc. 3.
The Marriage of Guenevere (1891)

Love

“His style is perfect joy, and it is only when one has come across a fairer and kindlier handling of one of his victims that one is resentful of his tittering.”

Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) British writer

George Lyttelton, letter to Rupert Hart-Davis, October 23, 1957, in The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters Vols. 1 & 2 (1985) p. 374. ISBN 0719542464.
Criticism

Perfection

“A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. In a story, spear carriers never suddenly assert themselves by throwing their spears aside and saying, “I resign. I don’t want to be used.“ They are there to be used, either for atmosphere or as minor obstacles in the path of the hero. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. I was finding then, that wet, chilly, unhappy night, that I took no joy in seeing other people used and discarded.””

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 18 (p. 222).

People, World, Night

Quotes about joy page 15

Quotes about joy
page 15