joy Quotes

“And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.”

“But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon.”

She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy

“I found that eating alone by the window in a quiet restaurant is one of life’s greatest secret pleasures.”

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

“And her joy was nearly like sorrow.”

“He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten!”

“This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it”

“So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one.”

And now the folding doors were thrown open, and a troop of children rushed in as if they intended to upset the tree; they were followed more silently by their elders. For a moment the little ones stood silent with astonishment, and then they shouted for joy, till the room rang, and they danced merrily round the tree, while one present after another was taken from it.

“Truly precious memories will never vanish even if you discard the objects associated with them . . . No matter how wonderful things used to be, we cannot live in the past. The joy and excitement we feel here and now are more important . . . Does this spark joy?”

“Take each item in one’s hand and ask: ‘Does this spark joy?’ If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.”′

“Books: Once you have pile your books, take them in your hand one by one and decide whether you want to keep or discard each one. The criterion is, of course, whether or not it gives you a thrill of pleasure when you touch it.”

“Reduce until you reach the point where something clicks. Sort by category, in the correct order, and keep only those things that inspire joy. Do this thoroughly and quickly, all in one go. If you follow this advice, you will dramatically reduce the volume of the things you own, experience an exhilaration you have never known before, and gain confidence in your life . . . the click point differs from one person to another.”

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

“There were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.”

“The charitable say in effect, ‘I seem to have more than I need and you seem to have less than you need. I would like to share my excess with you.’ Fine, if my excess is tangible, money or goods, and fine if not, for I learned that to be charitable with gestures and words can bring enormous joy and repair injured feelings.”

“The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living.”

“Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.”

“I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn’t mine anymore, but one in which I’d found the simplest and most lasting joys.”

“And if we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? To answer this question we shall have to go to him, for only he knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship means joy.”

“And he found that he actually had hind legs! Instead of dingy velveteen he had brown fur, soft and shiny, his ears twitched by themselves, and his whiskers were so long that they brushed the grass. He gave one leap and the joy of using those hind legs was so great that he went springing about the turf on them, jumping sideways and whirling round as the others did, and he grew so excited that when at last he did stop to look for the Fairy she had gone.”

“He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the new-comer, and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome.”

“The small fox ran back along the tunnel as fast as he could, carrying the three plump hens. He was exploding with joy. ‘Just wait!’ he kept thinking, ‘just wait till Mummy sees these!’ He had a long way to run but he never stopped once on the way and he came bursting in upon Mrs. Fox. ‘Mummy!’ he cried, out of breath. ‘Look, Mummy, look! Wake up and see what I’ve brought you!’ Mrs. Fox, who was weaker than ever now from lack of food, opened one eye and looked at the hens. ‘I’m dreaming,’ she murmured and closed the eye again.”

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

“You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, and inner peace - arise from beyond the mind.”

“Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.”

“I really try to enjoy life and have joy with what I do.”

“No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”

“Joy bursts in our lives when we go about doing the good at hand and not trying to manipulate things and times to achieve joy.”

“Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.”

“Behold me, here I am; thy little handmaiden Acceptance-with-Joy and all that is in my heart is thine.”

“If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.”

We embrace the spectrum of emotions, from the heights of transcendent joy to the depths of hatred and despair.

“I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”

“When you wear the weed of impatience in your heart instead of the flower Acceptance-with-Joy, you will always find your enemies get an advantage over you.”

“Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect- perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, and immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment. How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.”

“Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it, or else, for ever and ever, the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.”

“Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for “down here” is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment’s rest from the life we were placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

“I felt fear’s echo, and along with that I felt the unhinged, uncontrollable joy which had been its accompaniment and opposite face, joy which had broken out sometimes in those days like Northern Lights across black sky.”

“Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.”

“With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”

“They offer themselves so sweetly and confidently and willingly, even if it seems that there is no one to appreciate them. Just as though they sang a joyous little song to themselves, that it is so happy to love, even though one is not loved in return.”

“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”

“All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.”

“Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.”

“If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”

“Dearest Daughter. I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.”

“The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.”

“Into the void of silence, into the empty space of nothing, the joy of life is unfurled.”

“Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.”

“A mindfulness practitioner is able to generate joy and happiness. It’s not so hard. There’s a little difference between joy and happiness. Joy still has some of the element of excitement or anticipation in it. In happiness, there is ease and freedom.”

“...The miracle is not to walk on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth. Walk in such a way that you become fully alive, and joy and happiness are possible. That is the miracle that everyone can perform....If you have mindfulness, concentration, and insight then every step you make on this Earth is performing a miracle.”

“Great day to sing up on a wire.”

“like the rainbow after the rain joy will reveal itself after sorrow”

“Indeed, there are impressive indications that the positive quality of joy is in Christianity - and possibly nowhere else. If that were certain, it would be proof of a very high order″

“The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians - when they are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.”

“When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.”

“It was a good morning, there were high white clouds above the mountains. It had rained a little in the night and it was fresh and cool on the plateau, and there was a wonderful view. We all felt good and we felt healthy, and I felt quite friendly to Cohn. You could not be upset about anything on a day like that. That was the last day before the fiesta.”

“Everybody’s doing ups!”

“Belmonte was no longer well enough. He no longer had his greatest moments in the bull-ring. He was not sure that there were any great moments. Things were not the same and now life only came in flashes.”

“There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.”

“I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.”

“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”

“Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.”

“The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycle of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages us to embrace it all-and to find in all of it opportunities for growth.”

″ One of the most interesting and remarkable things Christians learn is that laughter does not exclude weeping. Christian joy is not an escape from sorrow. Pain and hardship still come, but they are unable to drive out the happiness of the redeemed.”

“No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand!”

“Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.”

“Joy is what God gives, not what we work up. Laughter is the delight that things are working together for good to those who love God, not the giggles that betray the nervousness of a precarious defense system.”

″‘Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.‘”

“‘It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.‘”

″‘So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren’t allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that’s how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck.‘”

“May all sentient beings be endowed with happiness! May they all be separated from suffering and its causes! May they be endowed with joy, free from suffering! May they abide in equanimity, free from attachment or aversion!”

“One of the gasping joys of summer was my daily bath in the spring. It was cold water, I never stayed in long, but it woke me up and started me into the day with a vengeance.”

“I have just listened to this symphony which Mozart dashed off in one day and it had enough wild and crazy joy to last forever, whatever forever is Mozart came as close as possible to that.”

“My sorrows are evil and they are at strife with joys that are good, and I cannot tell which will gain the victory.”

“If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution. First, you cannot achieve them without suffering, and second, insofar as you do achieve them, you are likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to you, or at least demanding of you, than you can now imagine. Then why desire to evolve at all, you may ask. If you ask this question, perhaps you do not know enough of joy.”

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

“And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all round them. It lasted only a second or so but what it brought them in that second none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound. Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterwards. Lucy could only say, ‘It would break your heart.’ ‘Why,’ said I, ‘was it so sad?’ ‘Sad! No,’ said Lucy.”

“Every day and every hour the light became more brilliant and still they could bear it. No one ate or slept and no one wanted to, but they drew buckets of dazzling water from the sea, stronger than wine and somehow wetter, more liquid, than ordinary water, and pledged one another silently in deep draughts of it. And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.”

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

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”

“I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog.”

“We chase wild dreams and long for all that eludes us, when the greatest joys are within our grasp, if we can only recognize them.”

“It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave. The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom. Lucy had done so never.”

“You got to take the crookeds with the straights. That’s what Papa used to say.”

“Accept that sorrow and strife are part of even a joyful life.”

″ One man ... had contrived to telegraph to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world.”

″‘So that’s what it is!’ he suddenly exclaimed aloud. ‘What joy!‘”

“Infinite riches are all around you if you will open your mental eyes and behold the treasure house of infinity within you. There is a gold mine within you from which you can extract everything you need to live life gloriously, joyously, and abundantly.”

“Order will ease your load and free your mind for greater peace, joy, and creativity. By more effectively ordering your day, you will gain a sense of control, a sense of purpose, increased productivity, an environment of creativity, and a greater focus and flow of accomplishments.”

“But Cody’s oldfashioned family tiptoe sneak carries that strange apocalyptic burst of gold he somehow always manages to produce, like I said elsewhere the time in Mexico he drove an old car over a rutted road very slowly as we were all high on tea and I saw golden Heaven, or the other times he’s always seemed so golden like as I say in a davenport of some sort in Heaven in the golden top of Heaven.”

“The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological. At such moments we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves.”

“My joy grows with every soul that seeks the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Remember, you have one life. That’s all. You were made for God. Don’t waste it.”

“When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline, And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh With his own touch, and leads a minstrelsy Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine,— He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine, And to my thoughts brings transformation high, So that I say, ‘My time has come to die, If fate so blest a death for me design.’ But to my soul, thus steeped in joy, the sound Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven, It holds my spirit back to earth as well. And thus I live: and thus is loosed and wound The thread of life which unto me was given By this sole Siren who with us doth dwell.”

“Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck.”

“I am mad with joy. –At least I think it’s joy. Strangers have come, and it’s a whole new game.”

“God is full of love, joy and peace. Every religion has said that God is within us or we are a part of God so why do we think small?”

“Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things are. Joy is what happens when we see that God’s plan is perfect and we’re already staring in a perfect show.”

“The simple joy he felt at being once more a part of such familiar things also contained an element of strangeness and unreality. With a sharp stab of wonder he reminded himself, as he had done a hundred times in the last few weeks, that he had really come home again —”

“Pablo looked different, and it took me a moment to figure out how. He had a smile, a smile that showed his teeth, a smile that made his eyes scrunch up. He was making a little high-pitched chipmunk sound. Pablo was laughing.”

“You made me happy and you made me laugh, and if I could do it all over again, I would not hesitate. Look at our life, at the trips we took, the adventures we had. As your father used to say, we shared the longest ride together, this thing called life, and mine has been filled with joy because of you.”

“Something from God was happening there.”

“He was smiling ... He was smiling. ”

“Jesus’ suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love.”

“There are three possibilities: you can offer to serve the other with joy, you can make the offer with coldness or resentment, or you can selfishly insist on your own way.”

“There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind.”

“Don’t feel bad for one moment about doing what brings you joy.”

“I am so sick of you stealing my joy. But that’s changing too. My joy doesn’t come from my friends, it doesn’t come from my job, it doesn’t even come from my husband. My joy is found in Jesus, and just in case you forgot, He has already defeated you. So go back to hell where you belong and leave my family alone!”

“Your human joy fascinates me-the way you experience things, in your life span, so wildly and deeply and all at once, is... entrancing. I’m drawn to it, even when I know I shouldn’t be, even when I try not to be.”

“But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy.”

“Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.”

“The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!”

“We all have an obligation to be happy.”

“My goal was not joy but purity, not happiness but beauty, and spirituality.”

“Sweet potato stew.”

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”

“We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of pure joy.”

“Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardships and heartbreaks. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.”

“And then one day, after the longest (and somehow, shortest) nine months of your life you get to take part in a miracle. It’s a blur of pain (which you promptly forget) and joy (which you remember forever). And then, suddenly, you’re cradling a tiny bundle in your arms.”

“Taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life.”

“Sadly, many of the things that undermine our joy and happiness, we create ourselves. Often it comes from the negative tendencies of the mind, emotional reactivity, or from our inability to appreciate and utilize the resources within us… We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy.”

“She laughed and the ringing bells in her laugh had a hard metallic sound.”

“I wake up thinking of yesterday. The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.”

“I’ve excluded happiness as one of those possibilities we seek for ourselves. Oh, I still want it, but that’s beside the point. Contentment - they say it’s the ultimate, but I can’t even wish for that. I don’t even want the desire to be content. I can only hope for silence.”

“True spirituality is a thing of joy and of the earth, and has nothing to do with fake adult dignity. It has nothing to do with long words and sorrowful faces. It has to do with the dance of consciousness that is within you, and with the sense of spiritual adventure that is within your hearts.”

“You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it.”

“Ralph started the motorcycle again and rode around in the moonlight once more, faster and faster, until he was dizzy from circling, dizzy with excitement, dizzy with the joy of speed.”

“Jumping with joy she skips down the street...”

“With that, he reached into his pocket, and guess what he took out-- Nutcracker, whose lost teeth he had put back in very neatly and firmly, and whose broken jaw he had fixed as good as new. Marie cried out for joy.”

″‘Why, mother!’ cried Rebecca, clasping her knees with her hands; ‘why, mother, it’s enough joy just to be here in the world on a day like this; to have the chance of seeing, feeling, doing, becoming! When you were seventeen, mother, wasn’t it good just to be alive? You haven’t forgotten?‘”

“I could eat a frittered flum.”

“Let us all sing! It’s good for almost anything.”

“Men are, that they might have Joy.”

“when you smile my heart just fills up with joy”

“Today we are still glad to remember that we have relatives among the Horse People. And it gives us joy to see the wild horses running free.”

“In the pre-war rural world of the English countryside, The Crowstarver tells about a close-knit farming community and the ways of animals and birds. But this is a story of country life with a difference. Joy comes to a childless shepherd and his wife when a baby found lying in the straw of a sheep pen becomes their very own child. As he grows up it becomes clear that Spider is not “normal”.

“The girl gave the colt to her parents. Everyone was joyful.”

″‘A robber’s daughter, joy and gladness!’ shouted Matt. ‘A robber’s daughter- here she comes!‘”

“I could say these unfiltered things to him because he didn’t care. Wes Bennett knew what a mess I was underneath it all, and there was a little bit of joy in knowing he saw the real me. Freedom.”

“When the end of the war did come, it came swiftly. [...] There was little joy, little celebration of victory, only a sense of profound relief.”

“You see, the verdict is in. And now I perform on the basis of the verdict. Because He loves me and He accepts me, I do not have to do things just to build up my résumé. I do not have to do things to make me look good. I can do things for the joy of doing them. I can help people to help people – not so I can feel better about myself, not so I can fill up the emptiness.”

“It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally.”

“You can’t see the future coming--not the terrors, for sure, but you also can’t see the wonders that are coming, the moments of light-soaked joy that await each of us.”

“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Joy is an emotion, and yet it creates something physical. It creates strength.”

“To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to.”

“And here the first word that I wish to say to you: joy! Do not be men and women of sadness: a Christian can never be sad! Never give way to discouragement! Ours is not a joy born of having many possessions, but of having encountered a Person: Jesus, in our midst.”

“Jesus on the cross feels the whole weight of the evil, and with the force of God’s love he conquers it; he defeats it with his resurrection. This is the good that Jesus does for us on the throne of the cross. Christ’s cross, embraced with love, never leads to sadness, but to joy, to the joy of having been saved and of doing a little of what he did on the day of his death.”

“I’m not going to get upset. I’m not going to let people steal my joy.”

“This woman knew joy. And Benedict had to know her.”

“On the seat of the great chief’s stool lay the little garden snake. Nyasha laughed with relief and joy. ‘My little friend!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s such a pleasure to see you, but why are you here?’ ‘I am the king,’ Nyoka replied. And there, before Nyasha’s eyes, the garden snake changed shape.”

“This is a throughly enjoyable yarn, veering between farce and tragedy, and people with highly quixotic but believable characters. It revels in the joy and the danger of exploration...”

“Or he made fancy figure 8′s. He liked to make bigger and bigger ones. One day, carried away by the joy of it, he made one so big it took up the whole river.”

“When Ramona left the shoe store with her beautiful red boots, girls’ boots, in a box, which she carried herself, she was so filled with joy she set her balloon free just to watch it sail over the parking lot and up, up into the sky until it was a tiny red dot against the gray clouds.”

“She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this ‘must’. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying.”

“After all, you can’t truly be happy if you’ve never known pain. You can’t truly feel joy if you’ve never felt heartbreak. You can’t know what it’s like to be filled unless you’ve been empty.”

“And the better in memory to fix the path of the children’s last retreat, they call that place Pied Piper Street, where anyone playing a pipe or drum was driven back the way he’d come; nor did they allow an inn or tavern to spill forth joy on a street so solemn.”

“the girl...swept away the snow behind the little house with the broom, and what did she find but real ripe strawberries, which came up quite dark-red out of the snow! In her joy she hastily gathered her basket full, thanked the little men, shook hands with each of them, and ran home to take her step-mother what she had longed for so much.”

“The Mayor was still, and the Council stood as if they were changed into blocks of wood. Unable to move a step or cry to the children merrily skipping by, they could only follow with the eye that joyous crowd at the Piper’s back.”

“The Angel that presided o’er my birth Said, ‘Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth, Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.”

“The winter is cold, is cold. All’s spent in keeping warm. Has joy been frozen, too? I blow upon my hands Stiff from the biting wind. My heart beats slow, beats slow. What has become of joy?

If joy’s gone from my heart Then it is closed to You Who made it, gave it life...

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon,for each day to have a new and different sun.”

“The robbers of time are the past and the future. Man should bless the past, and forget it, if it keeps him in bondage, and bless the future, knowing it has in store for him endless joys, but live fully in the now.”

″‘You’d follow me around like a dog-’ At this, Mark paused, struck to his very heart with joy at the thought of arousing such love and devotion in what would be the biggest bear in the whole world. ‘Wouldn’t that be something!‘”

″‘It must be the sea!’ exclaimed Moomintroll with a whoop of joy, and he started running upwind, his heart thumping with excitement, for if there is anything Moomintrolls really love, it is swimming.”

“She was boisterous with joy after the day’s fright, and had been shamming death in fun.”

“What a joyful thing it is to awaken, on a fresh glorious morning, and find the rising sun staring into your face with dazzling brilliancy! -to see the birds twittering in the bushes, and to hear the murmuring of a rill, or the soft hissing ripples as they fall upon the sea-shore!”

“Roving has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, the joy of the heart, the very sunshine of my existence. In childhood, in boyhood, and in man’s estate, I have been a rover; not a mere rambler among the woody glens and upon the hill-tops of my own native land, but an enthusiastic rover throughout the length and breadth of the wide wide world.”

“To me, it seems the only pleasure in this world worth having is the joy we derive from living for those we love, and those we can help.”

“Then a moment’s pause, while both sides look up at the spinning ball. There is flies, straight between the two posts, some five feet above the cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of real, genuine joy rings out from the School-house players-up, and faint echo of it comes over the close from the goal-keepers under the Doctor’s wall. A goal in the first hour - such a thing hasn’t been done in the School-house match these five years.”

“How many have laid waster to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements-how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!”

“Because-they are saying, ‘one of the great art recoveries of history.’ And this is the part I hoped would please you- maybe not who knows, but I hoped. Museum masterworks, returned to public ownership! Stewardship of cultural treasure! Great joy! All the angels are singing! but it would never have happened, if not for you.”

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

“I would tell you stories from dawn to dusk if it meant filling your eyes with happiness.”

“I would not have you be alone, Lina, not in your joys or your sorrows. I would wish your strand knotted to mine, always.”

“Now I saw in his eyes the richness of summer soil. His nose looked endearingly ruddy from being in the cold, and his voice was like a favorite song I never tired of hearing. Funny how he’d stolen his way into my heart when I’d been the thief the day we met.”

“I liked how he said my name. As if the syllables were the first notes to a song he loved to sing.”

“Now, carols are always beautiful, but if you are sad they can make you feel sadder.”

I shook my head, chewing my lip. Without realizing it, I had really enjoyed talking to someone who didn’t know that I was motherless, hadn’t seen me broken and raw after I lost her.

“Wake every person, pig, and pup, till everyone on earth is up!”

“Take a bite and I am positive you will be shouting out oh how scrumdiddlyuptious this wonderveg is!”

“This information is definite and suited to the matter of fact; but how pitifully inadequate it would have seemed to one who understood that it was also the supreme hour of ecstasy in the life of one of God’s gentlest creatures, the scene of the wedding feast and the joy-transfiguration of little Ona Lukoszaite!”

This was glorious fun; this was life. The immediate programme could hardly be bettered. First of all he was going to stalk Cayley. There was a little copse above the level of the pond, and about a hundred yards away from it. He would come into this from the back, creep cautiously through it, taking care that no twigs cracked, and then, drawing himself on his stomach to the edge, peer down upon the scene below him. People were always doing that sort of thing in books, and he had been filled with a hopeless envy of them; well, now he was actually going to do it himself. What fun!

“Come now, brother, give us a tune.”

“Oh, it was wonderful—wonderful. It’s the first thing I ever saw that couldn’t be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfies me here”—she put one hand on her breast—“it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?”

Don’t you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning like this?

“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it?

The tinkles of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne’s heart and on her lips.

“Fun forever, and no grubbing!”

“I read in Pilgrim’s Progress today how, after many troubles, Christian and Hopeful came to a pleasant green meadow where lilies bloomed all year round, and there they rested happily, as we do now, before they went on to their journey’ s end,” answered Beth, adding, as she slipped out of her father’s arms and went to the instrument, “It’s singing time now, and I want to be in my old place.

They say joy never hurts, and so I came to you without any warning.

Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man, who, like Satan, thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom. Perhaps those prayers may soften the remorse he feels in his heart. As for you, Morrel, this is the secret of my conduct towards you. There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living.

At the mention of Monte Cristo Dantès started with joy; he rose to conceal his emotion, and took a turn around the smoky tavern, where all the languages of the known world were jumbled in a lingua franca.

Well then, it is my darling! wisht, dry thy eyes—there’s a joy; kiss me.

I never shall forget the radiant face with which he came home one afternoon, and told me, as a mighty piece of news, of his having fallen in with one Clarriker (the young merchant’s name), and of Clarriker’s having shown an extraordinary inclination towards him, and of his belief that the opening had come at last. Day by day as his hopes grew stronger and his face brighter, he must have thought me a more and more affectionate friend, for I had the greatest difficulty in restraining my tears of triumph when I saw him so happy. At length, the thing being done, and he having that day entered Clarriker’s House, and he having talked to me for a whole evening in a flush of pleasure and success, I did really cry in good earnest when I went to bed, to think that my expectations had done some good to somebody.

You had distinctly impressed on me the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life: I can’t imagine how you think of surviving her loss.

“There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life.”

Mowgli made up a song that came up into his throat all by itself, and he shouted it aloud, leaping up and down on the rattling skin, and beating time with his heels till he had no more breath left, while Gray Brother and Akela howled between the verses.

He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one’s sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.

However, at last it came to an end, and we were hauled up, and swung over again to the land; we were very glad, and snorted and neighed for joy, when we once more felt firm ground under our feet.

You see, coming here, I was dreaming all the way, in the train, how we should meet, how we should talk over everything together...And I was so happy, I did not notice the journey!

“Yes,” he thought, “this now is life, this is happiness! Together, she said; let us skate together!”