Quotes about joy
page 5

“The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.”

Source: Nightwood

“One reason we have children I think is to learn that parts of ourselves we had given up for dead are merely dormant and that the old joys can re emerge fresh and new and in a completely different form.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Children, Thinking, Learning, Parting

“I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Love, Pain, Friendship, Hell

“The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley.
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

To a Mouse, st. 7 (1785)
Source: Collected Poems of Robert Burns

Men, Pain

“The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night
dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here.”

Seamus Heaney book Station Island

Source: Station Island

Dreams, Imagination, Light, Sun

“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.10 
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: Here we are living in a world of "identity crises," and most of us have no idea what an identity is.
Half the problem is that an identity is something which must be understood intuitively, rather than in terms of provable fact. An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.

Question, Laughter

“I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 32, Shadow in the Throes of Death
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Context: First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That this is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Love, Happiness, Hope, Loss

“Our joy does not have to be based on our circumstances.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“We have pain and hate and love and joy and war in the world because we want them.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Love, Pain, Hate, War

“Living was a dangerous past-time, and often quite painful—but there was also such joy in living, such beauty, things that one would otherwise never see, never experience, never know. The risk of pain and loss was a part of living.”

Jim Butcher Captain's Fury

Source: Captain's Fury

Pain, Beauty, Loss, Time

“There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Love

“Conversations bore me, to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

People, Soul

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Color

“Laughter is eternity if joy is real.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Laughter

“It's not that I like you least […] it's that I feared you most. The reginita taught me to like you. There was a strange joy to her that lifted my spirits. But you, Quintana of Charyn, you made me love you.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Love, Fear

“Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Peace, Change, Waiting, Heart

“I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.”

Elie Wiesel book Dawn

Source: Dawn

Love, Smile

“For you and for me the highest moment, the keenest joy, is not when our minds dominate but when we lose our minds…”

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

February, 1932
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Source: Fire: From A Journal of Love - The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

“Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Time

“In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Dedication
Source: Cosmos (1980)

Time, For Wife

“You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it's right.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

“Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Happiness, Children, Nature

“I want to love you wildly. I don’t want words, but inarticulate cries, meaningless, from the bottom of my most primitive being, that flow from my belly like honey. A piercing joy, that leaves me empty, conquered, silenced.”

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

Love, Silence

“We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: a part of our world.”

Carlo Rovelli book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Source: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

World, Suffering, Help, Parting

“Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Variant: You train yourself in the art of being mysterious to everyone. My dear friend! What if there were no one, who cared about guessing your riddle, what pleasure would you then take in it?
Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Art, Training

“…books are always good company if you have the right sort. Let me pick out some for you.' And Mrs. Jo made a bee-line to the well-laden shelves, which were the joy of her heart and the comfort of her life.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Life, Books, Bee, Heart

“Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Idea

“Just by gazing upon her face…
No matter how weary you are,
you will feel happy,
deep inside your heart,
you will feel a warmth
This is a "piece of joy"
This is all the happiness you need.
Normally, we call this "love"…”

Yoshiki Nakamura (1969) Artist

Source: Skip Beat!, Vol. 11

Love, Happiness, Feeling, Heart

“Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it… And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Variant: You see, I tired of constant fear, so I made a decision. Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it.
Source: Gregor the Overlander

Death, Feeling, Time, Cheating