joy

1.

Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant; but knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in frame, unlimited in space and indefinite in duration.

- Clinton, De Witt

2.

Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.

- Donne, John

3.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome --to be got over.

- Schopenhauer, Arthur

4.

It's not that I don't enjoy it, but it's kind of like a trip to Disneyland. You get so excited about a ride on the Matterhorn, and then when it's over, you realize you wasted all that time in line for a minute and a half upside down and the chance to throw up.

- Murphy Brown

5.

Science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom--panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life in the tropic forest--Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of, some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact: but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old chaos of scattered observations. Is not that a joy, a prize, which wealth cannot give nor poverty take away? What it may lead to he knows not. Of what use it may be he knows not. But this he knows, that somewhere it must lead, of some use it will be. For it is a truth.

- Lectures on Science and Superstition. 1866.

6.

I sometimes wander whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

- Lewis, C. S.

7.

Eternally, and for ever, in heaven, says St. John, Christ says and is and does what prophets prophesied of Him that He would say and be and do. "I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright Morning Star. And let him that is athirst, come: and whosoever will, let him take of the Water of Life freely." For ever Christ calls to every anxious soul, every afflicted soul, to every man who is ashamed of himself, and angry with himself, and longs to live a gentler, nobler, purer, truer, and more useful life, "Come, and live for ever the eternal life of righteousness, holiness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, which is the one true and only salvation bought for us by the precious blood of Christ our Lord." Amen.

- Water of Life Sermons. 1865

8.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

- Tao Te Ching

9.

I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning.

10.

It is only in your mind that you have to excel, at anything or everything. Of course, it would be very nice to excel at most things. Indeed, we recommend that you try and do your best. But realistically, you are entitled to do the bare minimum to get by. All your accomplishments are just a bonus, something to enjoy, not requirements. You don't have to do anything to prove that you are worthy of existing.

- Albert Ellis, Michael Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi

11.

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

- Kurt Vonnegut

12.

Cultivate more joy by arranging your life so that more joy will be likely.

- Witkin, Georgia

13.

No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.

- Marden, Orison Swett

14.

The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life.

- Orwell, George

15.

Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.

- Ruskin, John

16.

He who has not forgiven an enemy has never yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life.

- Lauter

17.

Friendship improves hapiness and reduces misery, by doubting our joys and dividing our grief.

- Joseph Addison

18.

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

- W.H. Auden

19.

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.

- Agatha Christie

20.

Fill your life with as many moments and experiences of joy and passion as you humanly can. Start with one experience and build on it.

- Marcia, Wieder