Joy's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 288)

"We read to know that we are not alone."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: reading
2,940 people liked it

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: life
2,869 people liked it

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
— Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

tags: fear, inspirational
2,831 people liked it

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
— Mother Teresa

tags: catholicism, christianity, forgiveness, god, goodness, happiness, honesty, kindness, relgion, world
2,818 people liked it

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: books, reading
2,586 people liked it

"Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated."
— G.K. Chesterton

tags: books, inspirational
2,497 people liked it

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
— Shel Silverstein

tags: inspirational
2,391 people liked it

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
— Albert Einstein

2,396 people liked it

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
— Henry David Thoreau

tags: confident, direction, dream, dreams, imagine, life, live
2,308 people liked it

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
— Mark Twain

tags: books, health, humor, misprints
2,309 people liked it

"A day without laughter is a day wasted."
— Charlie Chaplin

tags: philosophy
2,241 people liked it

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: friends
2,187 people liked it

"Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it."
— Mother Teresa

tags: is---, life
2,218 people liked it

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
— Margaret Mead

tags: activism, change, inspirational, life, philosophy, world
2,061 people liked it

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
— Albert Einstein

tags: reality
2,074 people liked it

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."
— Helen Keller

tags: inspirational
2,141 people liked it

"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."
— Charles Dickens

tags: chocolate, friendship
1,938 people liked it

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: good, writing
1,863 people liked it

"I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much."
— Mother Teresa

tags: catholicism, christianity, god, inspirational, religion
1,799 people liked it

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master..."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

tags: love
1,702 people liked it

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
— Albert Einstein

1,764 people liked it

"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."
— Albert Einstein

tags: humor
1,602 people liked it

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: books, friends, novelist, quotes
1,587 people liked it

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
— Maya Angelou

tags: inspirational, writing
1,629 people liked it

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when their right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust noone but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."
— Marilyn Monroe

tags: monroe
1,801 people liked it

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
— Albert Einstein

tags: religion, science
1,544 people liked it

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

tags: books, library, reading
1,406 people liked it

"I cannot live without books."
— Thomas Jefferson

tags: books
1,348 people liked it

"When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes."
— Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

tags: books
1,319 people liked it

"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them."
— Mark Twain

tags: bookroom, books, wisdom
1,318 people liked it

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"
— Henry Ward Beecher

tags: books, humor
1,206 people liked it

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
— Roald Dahl

tags: believe, glittering-eyes, hidden, magic, secrets, unlikely-places, watch, world
1,198 people liked it

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

tags: hope, imagination, inspirational
1,084 people liked it

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

tags: america, books, politics
1,001 people liked it

"Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself."
— George Bernard Shaw

tags: books, children
1,001 people liked it

"If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

953 people liked it

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity."
— Gilda Radner

tags: ambiguity, life, stories, uncertainty, unpredictability
993 people liked it

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
— Elie Wiesel

tags: activism, ethics, justice, philosophy
943 people liked it

"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live."
— Gustave Flaubert

tags: books, inspirational, life, reading
921 people liked it

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King

tags: reading, writing
916 people liked it

"For Attractive lips, speak words of kindness, For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people, For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry, For Beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day, For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others."
— Audrey Hepburn

tags: beauty, charity, inspirational, kindness
983 people liked it

"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend."
— Paul Sweeney

942 people liked it

"She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain."
— Louisa May Alcott (Work: A Story of Experience)

tags: books
829 people liked it

"Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly."
— Cornelia Funke (Inkheart)

tags: books, reading
841 people liked it

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: books
794 people liked it

"7 DEADLY SINS

Wealth without work

Pleasure without conscience

Science without humanity

Knowledge without character

Politics without principle

Commerce without morality

Worship without sacrifice."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: character, commerce, conscience, happiness, humanity, knowledge, money, morality, pleasure, politics, principle, sacrifice, science, sin, sins, wealth, work, worship
819 people liked it

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

tags: love
818 people liked it

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
— Arthur O'Shaughnessy (Poems of Arthur O'Shaughnessy)

tags: dreams, music
778 people liked it