"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with."
— Mark Twain

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in god my Saviour.

Luke 1:46-47"
— Luke

"... joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed."
— Kahlil Gibrán

""There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

-The Art of Mending"


"
— Elizabeth Berg

"Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are."
— Marianne Williamson

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."
— John Keats

"Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

" . . . Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy."
— Charles Dickens

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy."
— Rabindranath Tagore

"Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence."
— George Eliot

"There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt sqaure, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead."
— Elizabeth Berg

"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other"
— Chinese Proverb

"Let your joy be unconfined!"
— Mark Twain

"The soul is like an uninhabited world
that comes to life only when
God lays His head
against us.
"
— Thomas Aquinas

""One of the secrets of life is to find joy in the journey."
"But Grandma, you weren't on *this* journey. It was just crazy--"
Grandma held up her hand. "You have six brothers. You got to spend a whole day in the car with them. You're all healthy, well fed, happy... Someday, when you're a little older, I'll bet you'd give anything to be back in that van of yours with all of your brothers, smelly diapers and all."
I mulled that over.
"Well what about Dad?" I pointed out. "He didn't find any joy in the journey. He was yelling at trees."
Grandma sat back, "Your father and mother are masters at finding joy in the journey."
I didn't understand.
Grandma continued, "Do you really think your parents would have had seven kids if they couldn't find joy in the journey?... I would be willing to wager that he'll be laughing about this trip on Monday morning with his friends at work."
Grandma took my hands into hers. "There are a lot of people in this life that will try to convince you that they're selling something that will bring you joy. The simple fact of the matter is that *things* don't bring you joy. You have to find joy in life experience. And if you take along somebody you love, then that journey is going to be all the more enjoyable.
"I can promise you right now that both good and bad things are going to happen to you in your life. Good and bad things happen to evrybody. Some people are good at finding the miserable things in life, and some are good at finding the joy. No matter what happens to you, what you remember is up to you.""
— Matthew Buckley (Chickens in the Headlights:)

""To be happy--one must find one's bliss""
— Gloria Vanderbilt

"Scatter joy!"
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You ought to live your life with such freedom and joy that uptight Christians will doubt your salvation."
— Steve Brown (A Scandalous Freedom: The Radical Nature of the Gospel)

"Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don't have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.

I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better - and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. When it is the right kind of joy, when it is not egotistic, when it comes from the perception of the good, then it wants to communicate itself, and it gets passed on. In this connection, it always strikes me that in the poor neighborhoods of, say, South America, one sees many more laughing happy people than among us. Obviously, despite all their misery, they still have the perception of the good to which they cling and in which they can find encouragement and strength.

In this sense we have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately only faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and to be a human being. This results, then, in the courage to rejoice, which in turn becomes commitment to making sure that other people, too, can rejoice and receive good news."
— Pope Benedict XVI

"For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love."
— George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)

"The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy like a bird in spring."
— G.K. Chesterton

"She felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. Afterward she felt a little foolish, and never spoke to anyone about it.
Now, however, she knows she wasn't being foolish. She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human. It's a rare gift to under stand that you life is wondrous, and that it won't last forever. "
— Steven Galloway (The Cellist of Sarajevo)

"It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can enjoy every moment of movement, as long as where we are is as good as where we'd like to be. That's not to say that you need to be satisfied forever with where you are today. But you need to honor what you've accomplished, rather than thinking of what's left to be done (p. 159)."
— John Bingham (No Need for Speed: A Beginner's Guide to the Joy of Running)

"There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers."
— Rabindranath Tagore

"Tirelessly they flew on and on, and tirelessly she kept pace. She felt a fierce joy possessing her, that she could command these immortal presences. And she rejoiced in her blood and flesh, in the rough pine bark she felt next to her skin, in the beat of her heart and the life of all her senses, and in the hunger she was feeling now, and in the presence of her sweet-voiced bluethroat dæmon, and in the earth below her and the lives of every creature, plant and animal both; and she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her."
— Philip Pullman (The Subtle Knife)

"We could all do with a bit more joy in our lives couldn't we? The wonderful thing is that when we start spreading joy, we begin to actually experience more joy in our lives too!"
— Steve Goodier

"Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living."
— Sean O'Casey

"According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous. (quoted by Carol Lynn Pearson in Consider the Butterfly)"
— Deepak Chopra (Synchrodestiny: Harnessing the infinite power of coincidence to create miracles)

"To get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
— Mark Twain

"The sky and the strong wind have moved the spirit inside me till I am carried away trembling with joy."
— Uvavnuk

"Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar .... Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!"
— Vladimir Nabokov (Strong Opinions)

"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

"Don't put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today."
— Josh Billings

"don't ride for the ribbon, but ride for your own joy to life."
— Gajoch

"It was joy, joy, happy joy.
Happy, happy joy.
A big fat smiley sun rose above the rooftops and beamed down its blessings onto the borough known as Brentford."
— Robert Rankin (Web Site Story)

"There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away."
— Henry Ward Beecher

"We find these joys to be self evident: That all children are created whole, endowed with innate intelligence, with dignity and wonder, worthy of respect. The embodiment of life, liberty and happiness, children are original blessings, here to learn their own song. Every girl and boy is entitled to love, to dream and belong to a loving “village.” And to pursue a life of purpose.

We affirm our duty to nourish and nurture the young, to honour their caring ideals as the heart of being human. To recognize the early years as the foundation of life, and to cherish the contribution of young children to human evolution.

We commit ourselves to peaceful ways and vow to keep from harm or neglect these, our most vulnerable citizens. As guardians of their prosperity we honour the bountiful Earth whose diversity sustains us. Thus we pledge our love for generations to come. "
— Raffi

""I was born with eyes that can never close..." "
— Joy Harjo

"GOD KNOWS BEST, I LIVE IT EACH DAY"
— Linda Wattley