Quotes about joy
page 2

“Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

Source: Sodom Had No Bible (1971)

“What win I if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?”

William Shakespeare book The Rape of Lucrece

Source: The Rape of Lucrece

Dreams

“Do what you do for the sheer joy of it,
Do what you choose, not what someone else chooses for you.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for
you and dote upon the exchange.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Happiness, Silence

“We lose a great deal, I think, when we lose this sense and feeling for the sun. When all has been said, the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on natures's sustaining and poetic spirit.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Sense

“No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.”

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Austrian composer

People, Feeling, Imagination, Understanding

“Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward. A full life will be full of pain.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Life, Pain

“You and I come custom-equipped in much the same way. They don't call babies bundles of joy for nothing.”

Nick Carter (1980) singer from the United States

Source: Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It

Way, Baby

“In today's rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just Being.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Thinking, Forgetting

“Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

For the people who know the Bible and Tradition and the complete history of humanity, Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God and that is why the Northern peoples, eaten up with sadness, come and visit the Latin countries.
Source: Though often attributed to Chardin, it is found in Letters to His Fiancée (1937), by Léon Bloy, p. 57.

God

“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Life, Happiness

“There's light and joy, but there's also darkness all around and we can be lost in it.”

David Almond book Kit's Wilderness

Source: Kit's Wilderness

Light

“Comparison is the death of joy.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Death

“Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Variant: Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

Pain, Hurtful, Positive

“The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Books, Nature

“Veganism is not a "sacrifice." It is a joy.”

Gary L. Francione (1954) American legal scholar

“Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered.
Dr. Joseph Murphy”

Joseph Murphy (1898–1981) American writer

Feeling, Reality

“Peace and joy are not things you attain at the end of life. They are the basis of your life.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Life, Peace

“When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.”

Jean Shinoda Bolen (1936) American psychiatrist

Life, Soul, Deep

“And then there is the universal role of adult. When you play that role, you take yourself and life very seriously. Spontaneity, lightheartedness, and joy are not part of that role.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Life, Universe, Parting

“The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

http://books.google.com/books?id=Nl-vaAdJD3MC&q=%22The+mother+of+excess+is+not+joy+but+joylessness%22&pg=PA230#v=onepage
Die mutter der Ausschweifung ist nicht die Freude, sondern die Freudlosigkeit.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bzUAAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Die+mutter+der+Ausschweifung+ist+nicht+die+Freude+sondern+die+Freudlosigkeit%22&pg=RA1-PA48#v=onepage
II.77
Human, All Too Human (1878)

“Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought - these are the artist's highest joy.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Feeling

“From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Education

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love, God, People, World

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”

Iris Murdoch book A Fairly Honourable Defeat

A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); 2001, p. 170.

People, Flowers, Thinking, Time

“The studying, the books, exams, arguments, theories. The jokes and pints, laughter, kisses and songs. Life was like running, ninety percent sweat and toil, ten per cent joy.”

Siobhan Dowd book Bog Child

Source: Bog Child

Life, Books, Kiss, Laughter

“If there is suffering, then it's best to accept it, because it won't go away just because you pretend it's not there. If there is joy, then it's best to accept that too, even though you're afraid it might end one day.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Suffering

“Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Sadness, Tear

“when we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

“There is darkness in light, there is pain in joy, and there are thorns on the rose.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Pain, Light

“The joys of love… last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: The Joys of Love

Love, Life

“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Way, Thinking, Suffering, Time

“Do it for joy and you can do it forever”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Life, Success

“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“I drink to the general joy o’ the whole table." Macbeth”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

Drink

“The good life doesn't knock on the door.
Joy is a job.”

Lionel Shriver (1957) American writer

Life

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

As quoted in Becoming a Great School (2013) by Cooper, Gustafson and Salah, p. ix
Disputed

“Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Love, Pain, Behavior

“Silence is the perfectest herault of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Happiness, Silence

“If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Heart, Moving On

“These sudden joys have sudden endings. They burn up in victory like fire and gunpowder.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Victory

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.”

Lewis Carroll Jabberwocky

Source: Jabberwocky

Boy

“Time means a lot to me because you see I am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Time

“Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

Feeling, Sea

“Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Peace, Wealth

“Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Pleasure

“The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now

Love, Peace

“Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Becoming Human

Parting, Personality

“From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Life, Happiness, Soul, Sense

“I like joy; I want to be joyous. I want to smile and I want to make people laugh. And that`s all I want. I like being happy. I want to make others happy.”

Doris Day (1922–2019) American actress, singer, and animal rights activist

Happiness, People, Smile

“To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

“Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind possessing and caressing m”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Life, Sense, For women

“Tis safter to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

“The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Life, Heart

“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

People, Thinking, Sleep, Suffering

“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“Always expecting this and expecting that. May I recommend serenity to you? A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Learn to be one with the joy of the moment.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 4

Life, Disappointment, Learning

“The root of joy is gratefulness… It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”

David Steindl-Rast (1926) American theologian

Gratitude

“[In what way would you have us bury you? ] In any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not walk away from you. …I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who have been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body… And though I have spoken many words in the endeavor to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed—these words of mine, with which I comforted you and myself, have had, I perceive, no effect upon Crito. …you should be my surety to him that I shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned or buried.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Death, Way, Suffering, Dead

“In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us:
they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, and as gently as children
outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need
such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often
the source of our spirit's growth — : could we exist without them?”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

Schließlich brauchen sie uns nicht mehr, die Früheentrückten,
man entwöhnt sich des Irdischen sanft, wie man den Brüsten
milde der Mutter entwächst. Aber wir, die so große
Geheimnisse brauchen, denen aus Trauer so oft
seliger Fortschritt entspringt –: könnten wir sein ohne sie?
First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Duino Elegies (1922)

Children

“World,—this man is not a slave with thee! None of thy promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of Heaven: to thee it may be momentous, to him it is indifferent, whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or forty feet higher at the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on Earth. The joys of Earth that are precious, they depend not on thee and thy promotions. Food and raiment, and, round a social hearth, souls who love him, whom he loves: these are already his. He wants none of thy rewards;”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Love, World, Food, Soul

“That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Men, Secret, Law, Way

“Festivals that common men celebrate, are hunger and thirst to them, intoxicated in Allah's love they fast Eid and joy they never celebrate”

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai book Shah Jo Risalo

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Shah Jo Risalo
Shah Jo Risalo

Love, Men, Hunger

“The man who dares to live his life with death before his eyes, the man who receives life back bit by bit and lives as though it did not belong to him by right but has been bestowed on him as a gift, the man who has such freedom and peace of mind that he has overcome death in his thoughts — such man believes in eternal life because it is already his, it is a present experience, and he already benefits from its peace and joy. He cannot describe this experience in words. He may not be able to conform his view with the traditional picture of it. But one thing he knows for certain: Something within us does not pass away, something goes on living and working wherever the kingdom of the spirit is present. It is already working and living within us, because in our hearts we have been able to reach life by overcoming death.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Reverence for Life (1969)

Life, Death, Peace, Freedom

“I dare not think of the sun-drenched beaches and the stormy skies, and of the joy of painting them in the sea breezes.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote in a letter, from Paris 14 June 1869, to family-friend Ferdinand Martin; as cited by Colin B. Bailey in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publisher, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 7
Boudin felt himself detained in the big city Paris and longed fort the beach
1850s - 1870s

Thinking, Sun, Painting, Sea

“The joy, the tension, the exhilaration and the happiness those Sundays brought into our lives served as a cushion, I am sure, for the sterner life which was ahead for all of us.”

Learie Constantine (1901–1971) West Indian cricketer, lawyer, politician and diplomat

The Changing Face of Cricket (1969)

Life, Happiness

“I feel there is sensuality … eroticism in the primary things that move, like animals and insects. Being able to inspire the movement to still images … gives me the joy of the creator that breathes life into things that do not have life. The movement must be sufficiently round and sweet … so express its eroticism. In creating cartoons I always think of an ideal, but … half the finish to doubt the rightness of what I'm doing. So I put all my expectations always work next. * * […] I often say jokingly that comics are my true wife and that the cartoons are my lover. The fact that I am fully dedicated to animation, my lover … is because it allows me to express in a sublime … the interesting metamorphosis of a changing body. For me, the greatest fun, no doubt, lies in the draw and give movement to change processes. Always look in my cartons this metamorphosis.”

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

From Interview to the author , in Osamu Tezuka, Jumping ; quoted in AA.VV., Osamu Tezuka: A Manga Biography , vol. 4, translated by Marta Fogato, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2001, p. 178. ISBN 8888063188

Life, Feeling, Lovers, Thinking

“I charm in vain; for never again,
All keenly as my glance I bend,
Will Memory, goddess coy,
Embody for my joy
Departed days, nor let me gaze
On thee, my fairy friend!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

"To my Child-friend" in The Game Of Logic (1886)

Memory

“I know what I'm about to say now is controversial, but I have to say it. This nation cannot continue turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the taking of some 4,000 unborn children's lives every day. That's one every 21 seconds. One every 21 seconds. We cannot pretend that America is preserving her first and highest ideal, the belief that each life is sacred, when we've permitted the deaths of 15 million helpless innocents since the Roe versus Wade decision. 15 million children who will never laugh, never sing, never know the joy of human love, will never strive to heal the sick, feed the poor, or make peace among nations. Abortion has denied them the first and most basic of human rights. We are all infinitely poorer for their loss. There's another grim truth we should face up to: Medical science doctors confirm that when the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing. This nation fought a terrible war so that black Americans would be guaranteed their God-given rights. Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some could decide whether others should be free or slaves. Well, today another question begs to be asked: How can we survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fit to live and should be done away with? I believe no challenge is more important to the character of America than restoring the right to life to all human beings. Without that right, no other rights have meaning. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God."”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

I will continue to support every effort to restore that protection including the Hyde-Jepsen respect life bill. I've asked for your all-out commitment, for the mighty power of your prayers, so that together we can convince our fellow countrymen that America should, can, and will preserve God's greatest gift. Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (30 January 1984) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=40394 · YouTube - Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Elph9CfsKs 1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Love, Life, Death, God

“To live this life, my friends, you have to have a genuine passion. Nothing artificial. To live this life, to love this life, you have to have a genuine passion. People think Kabir was so wonderful because he was uneducated and yet he said all these wonderful things. Do you think it would have been different had Kabir gone to Yale and Oxford? If so, you missed the point. The point isn't whether he was educated or not, because, in the truest sense, he was very educated. More educated than most people. The point is that passion. Maybe you won't be able to write like Kabir, but you can feel the same passion. Passion is the point. That love is the point. That feeling is the point. That is achievable by everyone sitting in this hall, and in the city of London, and on this planet Earth. That passion. That love. That awakening. That joy.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

London, United Kingdom, Jun 13, 1998
1990s

Love, Life, People, Education

“There are three forces on the side of life which require no exceptional mental endowment, which are not very rare at present, and might be very common under better social institutions. They are love, the instinct of constructiveness, and the joy of life. All three are checked and enfeebled at present by the conditions under which men live—not only the less outwardly fortunate, but also the majority of the well-to-do. Our institutions rest upon injustice and authority: it is only by closing our hearts against sympathy and our minds against truth that we can endure the oppressions and unfairnesses by which we profit. The conventional conception of what constitutes success leads most men to live a life in which their most vital impulses are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in listless weariness. Our economic system compels almost all men to carry out the purposes of others rather than their own, making them feel impotent in action and only able to secure a certain modicum of passive pleasure. All these things destroy the vigor of the community, the expansive affections of individuals, and the power of viewing the world generously. All these things are unnecessary and can be ended by wisdom and courage. If they were ended, the impulsive life of men would become wholly different, and the human race might travel towards a new happiness and a new vigor.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 18-19

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“Yeah I love my baby, heart and soul
Love like ours won't never grow old
She's my sweet little thang, she's my pride and joy
She's my sweet little baby, I'm her little lover boy”

Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954–1990) American guitarist, songwriter and recording artist

"Pride and Joy"
Song lyrics

Love, Soul, Boy, Lovers

“The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life…three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty — all belonging to the oldest festal joys.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Sec. 801 (Notebook W II 1. Fall 1887, KGW VIII, 2.57-8, KSA 12.393-4)
The Will to Power (1888)

Life

“Beauty is but the cloak of happiness. Where joy tarries, there also is beauty.”

Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) German psychologist and philosopher

Source: Rhythmen und Runen (1944), p. 468

Happiness, Beauty

“Star of descending night! fair is thy light in the west! thou liftest thy unshorn head from thy cloud: thy steps are stately on thy hill. What dost thou behold in the plain? The stormy winds are laid. The murmur of the torrent comes from afar. Roaring waves climb the distant rock. The flies of evening are on their feeble wings; the hum of their course is on the field. What dost thou behold, fair light? But thou dost smile and depart. The waves come with joy around thee: they bathe thy lovely hair. Farewell, thou silent beam! Let the light of Ossian's soul arise!”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The Songs of Selma"
The Poems of Ossian

Love, Smile, Soul, Star

“The joy of youth is to disobey, but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary, p. 271

Youth

“It is I who drink lonely Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns, It is I who laugh, it is I who make love And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.”

Kamala Surayya (1934–2009) Indian author

Kamala Suraiyya Das

Love, Lie, Making love, Feeling

“Sing, riding's a joy! For me I ride.”

Robert Browning Men and Women

Men and Women (1855), The last Ride together, vii.

Singing

“As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

Happiness, Children, Youth, World

“Joy, thou spark from Heav'n immortal,
Daughter of Elysium!
Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing
Goddess, to thy shrine we come.
Thy sweet magic brings together
What stern Custom spreads afar;
All men become brothers
Where thy happy wing-beats are.”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 1
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

Men, Happiness, Daughters

“Let us, each of us, now embrace with solemn duty and awesome joy what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)

History, Effort, Freedom, Light

“Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Beauty

“Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the “way of beauty” (via pulchritudinis). Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties. Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. This has nothing to do with fostering an aesthetic relativism which would downplay the inseparable bond between truth, goodness and beauty, but rather a renewed esteem for beauty as a means of touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen Christ to radiate within it. If, as Saint Augustine says, we love only that which is beautiful, the incarnate Son, as the revelation of infinite beauty, is supremely lovable and draws us to himself with bonds of love. So a formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the faith. Each particular Church should encourage the use of the arts in evangelization, building on the treasures of the past but also drawing upon the wide variety of contemporary expressions so as to transmit the faith in a new “language of parables”. We must be bold enough to discover new signs and new symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty which are valued in different cultural settings, including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to the evangelizers, yet prove particularly attractive for others.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 167
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love, Life, Truth, Faith

“The past alone is truly real: the present is but a painful, struggling birth into the immutable being of what is no longer. Only the dead exist fully. The lives of the living are fragmentary, doubtful, and subject to change; but the lives of the dead are complete, free from the sway of Time, the all but omnipotent lord of the world. Their failures and successes, their hopes and fears, their joys and pains, have become eternal—our efforts cannot now abate one jot of them. Sorrows long buried in the grave, tragedies of which only a fading memory remains, loves immortalized by Death's hallowing touch these have a power, a magic, an untroubled calm, to which no present can attain. …On the banks of the river of Time, the sad procession of human generations is marching slowly to the grave; in the quiet country of the Past, the march is ended, the tired wanderers rest, and the weeping is hushed.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

On History (1904)
1900s

Love, Death, Pain, World

“If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies,
And they are fools who roam.
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home.”

Nathaniel Cotton (1707–1788) British writer

The Fireside, stanza 3, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Happiness, World, Fools, Home

“First a childhood, limitless and without
renunciation or goals. O unselfconscious joy.
Then suddenly terror, barriers, schools, drudgery,
and collapse into temptation and loss.Defiance. The one bent becomes the bender,
and thrusts upon others that which it suffered.
Loved, feared, rescuer, fighter, winner
and conqueror, blow by blow.And then alone in cold, light, open space,
yet still deep within the mature erected form,
a gasping for the clear air of the first one, the old one…Then God leaps out from behind his hiding place.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Erst eine Kindheit, grenzenlos und ohne
Verzicht und Ziel. O unbewußte Lust.
Auf einmal Schrecken, Schranke, Schule, Frohne
und Absturtz in Versuchung und Verlust.Trotz. Der Gebogene wird selber Bieger
und rächt an anderen, daß er erlag.
Geliebt, gefürchtet, Retter, Ringer, Sieger
und Überwinder, Schlag auf Schlag.Und dann allein im Weiten, Leichten, Kalten.
Doch tief in der errichteten Gestalt
ein Atemholen nach dem Ersten, Alten...Da stürzte Gott aus seinem Hinterhalt.
As translated by Cliff Crego
Imaginärer Lebenslauf (Imaginary Life Journey) (September 13, 1923)

Love, God, Fear, School

“There was a night when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless vacum beyond all thought and entity. Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissible sort thronged upon us; perceptions of infinity which at the time convulsed us with joy, yet which are now partly lost to my memory and partly incapable of presentation to others.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, Hypnos (1922)

Memory, Time, Night

“Every joy is gain
And gain is gain, however small.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 4.
Paracelsus (1835)

“Above all, we must forgive the unhappy souls who have elected to make the pilgrimage on foot, who skirt the shore and look uncomprehendingly upon the horror of the struggle, the joy of victory, the profound hopelessness of the vanquished.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter (March 1890), published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 1, p. 43 ISBN 0521242169

Soul, Forgiveness, Victory

“A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of sociality as a whole.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 8 (p. 247)

Success, Heart, Cooking

“When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.”

Stanisław Jerzy Lec book Unkempt Thoughts

Gdy z radości podskoczysz do góry, uważaj, by ci ktoś ziemi spod nóg nie usunął. http://books.google.com/books?id=IjpiAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA98&q=%22Gdy+z+rado%C5%9Bci+podskoczysz+do+g%C3%B3ry+uwa%C5%BCaj+by+ci+kto%C5%9B+ziemi+spod+n%C3%B3g+nie+usun%C4%85%C5%82%22&pg=PA134#v=onepage http://books.google.com/books?id=NTtiAAAAMAAJ&q;=%22When+you+jump+for+joy+beware+that+no+one+moves+the+ground+from+beneath+your+feet%22&pg;=PA150#v=onepage]Unkempt Thoughts (1957)