c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that (Hell) contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.
— C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
— André Gide
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Feelings are something you have
—  not something you are.
Scatter joy!
— 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
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
On with the dance! let joy be unconfin'd
— George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Joy is strength.
— Mother Teresa
I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.
— Henri Matisse
The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful
—  it is gratitude that makes us joyful.
It's only natural to feel lonely after the enjoyable moments pass. But as you experience new joys those feelings of sorrow will start to fade.
— Mizu Sahara
Joy must be one of the pivots of our life. It is the token of a generous personality. Sometimes it is also a mantle that clothes a life of sacrifice and self-giving. A person who has this gift often reaches high summits. He or she is like sun in a community.
— Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers
No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
If you prefer smoke over firethen get up now and leave.For I do not intend to perfumeyour mind's clothingwith more sooty knowledge.No, I have something else in mind.Today I hold a flame in my left handand a sword in my right.There will be no damage control today.For God is in a moodto plunder your riches andfling you nakedlyinto such breathtaking povertythat all that will be left of youwill be a tendency to shine.So don't just sit around this flamechoking on your mind.For this is no campfire songto mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.Jump now into the spacebetween thoughtsand exit this dreambefore I burn the damn place down.
— Adyashanti
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Accept your dark side, understanding it will help you to move with the light. Knowing both sides of our souls, helps us all to move forward in life and to understand that, perfection doesn't exist.
— Martin R. Lemieux
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 everybody. 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
God put Santa Claus on earth to remind us that Christmas is 'sposed to be a happy time.
— Bil Keane, Jeffy's Lookin' at Me
There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness.
— Helen Keller
There's light and joy, but there's also darkness all around and we can be lost in it.
— David Almond, Kit's Wilderness
People who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all.
— Milan Kundera, The Joke
If you are joyful, do not worry about lukewarmness. Joy will shine in your eyes and in your look, in your conversation and in your countenance. You will not be able to hide it because joy overflows.
— Mother Teresa, A Life For God: The Mother Teresa Reader
It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again(15).
— Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson
I was surrounded by friends, my work was immense, and pleasures were abundant. Life, now, was unfolding before me, constantly and visibly, like the flowers of summer that drop fanlike petals on eternal soil. Overall, I was happiest to be alone; for it was then I was most aware of what I possessed. Free to look out over the rooftops of the city. Happy to be alone in the company of friends, the company of lovers and strangers. Everything, I decided, in this life, was pure pleasure.
— Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
You've got to S-M-I-L-ETo be H-A-Double-P-Y
— Shirley Temple Black
I'm happy, Ahren. I'm a princess. I have everything.""I think you're mistaking comfort for joy.
— Kiera Cass, The Heir
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
There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes.
— Oswald Chambers
Because when you’re laughing, there is no other emotion in that moment except for joy.
— Robert Schimmel, Cancer on Five Dollars a Day* (*chemo not included): How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life
Oh happy pessimists! What a joy it is to them to be able to prove again and again that there is no joy.
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms
One must have sorrow to truly appreciate joy.
— Megan Hart, Stranger
One bulb at a time. There was no other way to do it. No shortcuts--simply loving the slow process of planting. Loving the work as it unfolded. Loving an achievement that grew slowly and bloomed for only three weeks each year.
— Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards, The Daffodill Principle
It is strange,' he said at last. 'I had longed to enter the world of men. Now I see it filled with sorrow, with cruelty and treachery, with those who would destroy all around them.' 'Yet, enter it you must,' Gwydion answered, 'for it is a destiny laid on each of us. True, you have seen these things. But there are equal parts of love and joy.
— Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron
I've been quite a late developer on the clothes front, but I've suddenly realised it is one of life's joys.
— Benedict Cumberbatch
That timeI thought I could notgo any closer to griefwithout dyingI went closer,and I did not die.Surely Godhad his hand in this,as well as friends.Still, I was bent,and my laughter,as the poet said,was nowhere to be found.Then said my friend Daniel,(brave even among lions),“It’s not the weight you carrybut how you carry it -books, bricks, grief -it’s all in the wayyou embrace it, balance it, carry itwhen you cannot, and would not,put it down.”So I went practicing.Have you noticed?Have you heardthe laughterthat comes, now and again,out of my startled mouth?How I lingerto admire, admire, admirethe things of this worldthat are kind, and maybealso troubled -roses in the wind,the sea geese on the steep waves,a loveto which there is no reply?
— Mary Oliver
There are souls in this world who have the gift of finding joy everywhere, and leaving it behind them when they go.
— Frederick William Faber
It was strange, I reflected.. that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.
— Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
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 Cavoukian
Wait for that wisest of all counselores, Time.
— Pericles
Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.
— Theodore Roosevelt
The joy you find as a teen, however frivolous and dumb, is pure and meaningful.
— Goldy Moldavsky, Kill the Boy Band
Don't put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.
— Josh Billings
The things that brought me the most comfort now were too small to list. Raspberries in cream. Sparrows with cocked heads. Shadows of bare limbs making for sidewalk filigrees. Roses past their prime with their petals loose about them. The shouts of children at play in the neighborhood, Ginger Rogers on the black-and-white screen.
— Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures
The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.
— Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go.
— Frederick William Faber
I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.
— G.K. Chesterton, Manalive
I'd rather laugh in a tent than cry in a palace.
— James Enns
To rejoice in temporal comforts is dangerous, to rejoice in self is foolish, to rejoice in sin is fatal, but to rejoice in God is heavenly.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Volumes #1-3
Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.
— Denis Waitley
And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers
The essence of life is not in the great victories and grand failures, but in the simple joys.
— Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.
— Michel de Montaigne
Embrace fanaticism. Harness joie de vivre by pursuing insane interests, consuming passions, and constant sources of gratification that do not depend on the approval of others
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Radical Sanity: Commonsense Advice for Uncommon Women
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
There was still no likelihood that we could make a living from dance. We were doing it because we loved it... We realized how full we felt
—  we were surrounded by music and dancing and joy.
The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
— Pearl Bailey
We all struggle alone through the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows of our lives.
— Elizabeth Kim, Ten Thousand Sorrows : The Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan
I trust all joy
— Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
I like joy
—  I want to be joyous. I want to smile and I want to make people laugh. And that`s all I want. I like being happy. I want to make others happy.
She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself.
— Miriam Toews
She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty years. At the end of it she was still singing.
— George Orwell, 1984
There is nothing dreary or doubtful about (the life). It is meant to be continually joyful...We are called to a settled happiness in the Lord whose joy is our strength.
— Amy Carmichael
Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
These are the hands of Rachel Joy Scott and one day, will touch millions of people's hearts.
— Rachel Scott
When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.
— Stanisław Jerzy Lec
As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
A person can drop dead even while singing. But that's no reason to stop singing.
— Marty Rubin
The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it. 'The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart.' That's a fact.
— Marilynne Robinson
Something in the air this morning made me feel like flying. . . "Spring Flight
— Eileen Granfors, And More White Sheets: An expanded text edition
The most beautiful is to see the joy in your eyes.
— Gregor Golob
The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration. Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one's self of the real joy of living.
— David O. McKay
Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them; when people in bathing suits fling themselves into the water, it is joy itself that shows in the gesture, notwithstanding any sadness the divers may actually feel. When someone jumps into the water fully clothed, it is another thing entirely: the only person who jumps into the water fully clothed is a person trying to drown; and a person trying to drown does not dive headfirst; he lets himself fall: thus speaks the immemorial language of gestures.
— Milan Kundera, Slowness
Good is not the opposite of evil, joy is the opposite of evil.
— Michael Ventura, The Zoo Where You're Fed to God
My joy was ghostly, like something not quite realized.
— Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen
It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion--joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things.
— Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder
The only joy in the world is to begin.
— Cesare Pavese
All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
— C.S. Lewis
If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, - if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, -that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
He imagines a necessary joy in things that must fly to eat.
— Wendell Berry
Nothing else in all life is such a maker of joy and cheer as the privilege of doing good.
— J.R.    Miller
Joy is a marvelous increasing of what exists, a pure addition out of nothingness.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
— William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
Suffering has its place in the scheme of things. It serves a purpose even though the sufferer may be entirely free from the taint of sin... Among the gentlest and sweetest souls are sometimes found those who suffer much. A person that accepts his lot, does his best, loving both God and man, is a success and will experience a joy in living.
— Joseph F. Merrill
this is the rough part, okay? so just stay tuned for the good part. i promise it'll come soon.
— John Green
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: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie's dresses and the way she laughed.
— Albert Camus, The Stranger
I want to thank you for the profound joy I've had in the in the thought of you.
— Rosie Alison, The Very Thought of You
Each of you has a personal vocation which He has given you for your own joy and sanctity. When a person is conquered by the fire of His gaze, no sacrifice seems too great to follow Him and give Him the best of ourselves. This is what the saints have always done, spreading the light of the Lord ... and transforming the world into a welcoming home for everyone.
— Pope Benedict XVI
Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
But to enjoy him we must know him. Seeing is savoring. If he remains a blurry, vague fog, we may be intrigued for a season. But we will not be stunned with joy, as when the fog clears and you find yourself on the brink of some vast precipice.
— John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
Now, remember: they're not for eating, but for listening, because you'll often be hungry for sounds as well as food. Here are street noises at night, train whistles from a long way off, dry leaves burning, busy department stores, crunching toast, creaking bed springs, and of course, all kinds of laughter. There's a little of each, and in far off, lonely places, I think you will be glad to have them.
— Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Letting go of someone we love is the hardest thing we will ever do. Some people never surrender to love for the fear of being hurt. But to not have loved, to not have felt the immense joy it brings, would have been a far worse kind of death.
— Goldie Hawn
Over and over again I sail towards joy, which is never in the room with me, but always near me, across the way, like those rooms full of gayety one sees from the street, or the gayety in the street one sees from a window. Will I ever reach joy? It hides behind the turning merry-go-round of the traveling circus. As soon as I approach it, it is no longer joy. Joy is a foam, an illumination. I am poorer and hungrier for the want of it. When I am in the dance, joy is outside in the elusive garden. When I am in the garden, I hear it exploding from the house. When I am traveling, joy settles like an aurora borealis over the land I leave. When I stand on the shore I see it bloom on the flag of a departing ship. What joy? Have I not possessed it? I want the joy of simple colours, street organs, ribbons, flags, not a joy that takes my breath away and throws me into space alone where no one else can breathe with me, not the joy that comes from a lonely drunkenness. There are so many joys, but I have only known the ones that come like a miracle, touching everything with light.
— Anaïs Nin, Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it runs by.
— Carl Sandburg
We all try to be are greatest, but what if are greatest hasn’t affected others with greatness…
— Taija Rae
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.
— Virginia Woolf
Man is a fallen star till he is right with heaven: he is out of order with himself and all around him till he occupies his true place in relation to God. When he serves God, he has reached that point where he doth serve himself best, and enjoys himself most. It is man's honour, it is man's joy, it is man's heaven, to live unto God.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Humility and How to Get It
If you have a dog, you will most likely outlive it; to get a dog is to open yourself to profound joy and, prospectively, to equally profound sadness.
— Marjorie Garber
...'joy' in Phillippians is a defiant 'Nevertheless!' that Paul sets like a full stop against the Philippians' anxiety...
— Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Philippians
I wondered then why children played so in the river, but adults ceased to see it with the same eyes. Why couldn't we embrace such simple joys?
— John Shors, Beneath a Marble Sky
I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I come in?’ is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, ‘I am here.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
There was an agelessness about him, a stillness; on Roose Bolton's face, rage and joy looked much the same.
— George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
Beautiful places are not just a joy for the moment, while you’re there. They will become homes for you, spaces of solace and comfort, where you can close your eyes and go to. Nothing you experience will ever go away. It belongs to you now. Just feel. Don’t be afraid to feel.
— Charlotte Eriksson
These are hard and uncertain times we’re living in,” he said. “You never know what will still be here tomorrow. That’s why we must take joy every day in what we do have, so it’s something we can carry in our memories when things change.
— Jaye L. Knight, Samara's Peril
Fred dislikes the idea going into the ministry partly because he doesn't like "feeling obligated to look serious", and he centers his doubts on "what people expect of a clergyman".
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
In what he suffered, as in all true suffering and in true joy, there was the quality of eternity. He could not believe it would ever end.
— Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch
(J)oy deserves always more.
— Linda McCarriston, Eva-Mary
Joy doesn't ever leave, you know. It's always with you. And one day you'll find it again.
— Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead
Como se reparten el sol en el naranjo las naranjas?How do the oranges divide up sunlight in the orange tree?
— Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions
I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own officious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. ... One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. ... I repeatedly followed that path - to the end. And at the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. ... You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. ... Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.
— C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!
— C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
True inner joy is self-created.It does not depend on outer circumstances.A river is flowing in and through you carrying the message of joy.This divine joy is the sole purpose of life.
— Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy: Finding Your Path to Inner Peace
Princes are fighters or administrators. Neither of those things do much to spread joy in the world. Whores, concubines, and catamites, on the other hand, are all about giving satisfaction. Now granted, sexual pleasure is a temporary sort of happiness, but it is better than a new tax or a sword in the gut.
— Jill Knowles, Concubine
The joy and smile of even one child is worth more than the prancing intellects of a thousand men, for we are, that we might have joy, and be free.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Deep SongBelief is what buries us—that& the belief in belief—No longerdo I trust liltlessness—leewardis the world'sway—Go onplunge in—the lungs willlet us float.Joy is the mile-high ledgethe leap—a breathabove the lip of the abandonedquarry—beliefthe dark the deep.
— Kevin Young, Jelly Roll
Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still. I went over to the graveyard beside the church and found them under the old cedars... I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did. I felt their completeness as whatever they had been in the world.I knew I had come there out of kindness, theirs and mine. The grief that came to me then was nothing like the grief I had felt for myself alone... This grief had something in it of generosity, some nearness to joy. In a strange way it added to me what I had lost. I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.
— Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
How wise should we be if, with joyful certainty, we accepted each unfolding of His will as a proof of His faithfulness and love!
— Susannah Spurgeon
While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will soon go better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us alone but will fulfill the deepest desires of our heart... Joy in this perspective is the fruit of hope.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit
Live from abundance
— Utilize with economy
There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
What makes a man's 80 year-old Irish uncle skip like a little boy? "Me Father is very fond of me!
— John Ortberg Jr., Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them
And so silence and ...darkness hold happiness and joy?" he said softly."Assuredly," she said, "provided one listens to the silence and gazes deeply into the darkness. Everything is there. Everything.
— Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect
Look for Joy: that's God's echo, and his footprint. Happiness . . . happiness and wittiness and cleverness do not count for much when the darkness falls. Joy is tougher.
— Sean Stewart, Nobody's Son
The Christian living in disobedience also lives devoid of joy and hope. But when he begins to understand that Christ has delivered him from the reign of sin, when he begins to see that he is united to Him who has all power and authority and that it is possible to walk in obedience, he begins to have hope, and as he hopes in Christ, he begins to have joy. In the strength of this joy, he begins to overcome the sins that have so easily entangle him. He then finds that the joy of a holy walk is infinitely more satisfying than the fleeting pleasures of sin. But to experience this joy, we must make some choices. We must choose to forsake sin, not only because it is defeating to us but because it grieves the heart of God.
— Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness
...but most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes.But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Seek joyfulness when you can, for seeking joy leads to an auspicious atmosphere.
— Jonathan D. Spence, Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K'ang-Hsi
May we all soon go about as our real selves and take joy in it, saying, yes, yes, to whatever we are.
— Carol Emshwiller, Carmen Dog
A suburban pastor maintained services appropriate for his respected, professional parish. His father, an excitable traveling evangelist, visited and challenged the congregation to confront pride and sing out loudly with the windows open. The next day, the pastor’s banker mentioned overhearing, and he was sheepish. The buttoned-up banker said, though, that the neighborhood had been WAITING TO HEAR the church live out the joy they claimed.
— David Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade
Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast away.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
She tips back her head and howls: Moooooown! Oh wonderful moooooowwwwwyyyn!
— Carol Emshwiller, Carmen Dog
time is better for you.
— Joy
And what else could we have come here for, except to sense these tiny victories? Not the big victories that crush and kill the victor. Not the wars and civil ructions, but the saving grace of a Hollandaise sauce that has escaped all the possibilities of culinary disaster and is being spread like a yellow prayer on a plump cod steak - victoriously.
— Sebastian Barry, On Canaan's Side
The faithful of Shiva or Dionysus seek contact with those forces which...lead to a refusal of the politics, ambitions and limitations of ordinary social life. This does not involve simply a recognition of world harmony, but also an active participation in an experience which surpasses and upsets the order of material life.
— Alain Daniélou, Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus
We lose our life by serving and lifting others. By so doing we experience the only true and lasting happiness. Service is not something we endure on this earth so we can earn the right to live in the celestial kingdom. Service is the very fiber of which an exalted life in the celestial kingdom is made. Oh, for the glorious day when these things all come naturally because of the purity of our hearts... We are truly happy only when we are engaged in unselfish service. Service is what godhood is all about.
— Marion G. Romney
She was crouched in the corner of the room, eating something off the floor. It was the old woman dressed in endless black. When she looked up this time there was no question she was there for me. She had the face of my mother but much older, her ancient decayed mouth coming closer for her good-night kiss. I steeled myself against her putrid smell, the mouthful of bitter dust, but as her lips touched mine it was like biting into a purple black plum whose fruit was brilliant red, like an explosion of intense joy. Its childhood smell wrinkled my nose with pleasure, its sweet juices ran down my chin, turning into a beautiful black ocean where I floated safely, not lost as I had imagined, but securely tucked away deep in space.
— Mary Woronov, Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory
One should dance while one still can.
— Marty Rubin
Worthy or not, you will receive your destiny. Awake or not you will notice.
— Julieanne O'Connor
The examined life: nothing is more futile or counterproductive. The active, joyous, spontaneous life: that is what one should aim for.
— Marty Rubin
Jesus Christ is my joy.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I was delighted to see you again, and forgot for the moment that all happiness is fleeting.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
A happier life is a life for God & His Christmas now & forever! Alleluia! Amen! 
— Melvyn M. Lusterio
A happier life is a life for God & His Christ now & forvever! Alleluia! Amen!
— Melvyn M. Lusterio
My teachers told me: Question everything; take nothing for granted. I question nothing, I take everything for granted.
— Marty Rubin
I don't travel to learn about the world. I travel for the joy of traveling.
— Marty Rubin
As long as there is thirst in you, water can quench it; but you can live a kind of life in which you never feel thirsty; do not go in the sun, do no manual work, stay at home and relax and you will not feel the thirst. But then you will find no joy in drinking water. He who toils all day, enjoys the bliss of a good night’s rest. This is ironical: if you want to enjoy the pleasure of a good night’s sleep you have to work like a labourer all day. The trouble is that you want to spend your days like an emperor and your nights like a labourer.
— Osho, Bliss: Living beyond happiness and misery
Don't let fear swallow all your happiness. Don't forget to take joy." Dag gulped. Both of their grounds were nearly closed. It was Arkady's voice alone that hinted how hard-bought this bit of wisdom might've been, yet the words had been nearly toneless.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Horizon
O happy wound, full of delight, He whom You wound Is joyous indeed.
— Jacopone da Todi, Jacopone Da Todi: The Lauds
Our lives are bound up with the lives of others. Our joy is bound up with the joy of others.
— Ken Wytsma, Pursuing Justice: The Call to Live and Die for Bigger Things
There is a real joy in being truer version of yourself.
— Mahrukh
Sing, laugh and be merry because today you're alive.
— Marty Rubin
Suffering is the sorrow of joy.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
When this world totally fails, the ground for joy remains.
— John Piper
Taking trips tore all of us up inside, for they seemed, each journey away from home, something that might have been less selfishly undertaken, or something that would test us, or something that had better be momentous, to justify such a leap into the dark. The torment and guilt - the torment of having the loved one go, the guilt of being the loved one gone - comes into my fiction as it did and does in my life. And most of all the guilt then was because it was true: I had left to arrive at some future and secret joy, at what was unknown, and what was no in New York, waiting to be discovered. My joy was connected with my writing; that was as much as I knew.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
There is a madness that is joy, and there is a madness that is just madness.
— Marty Rubin
for though life can have its unspeakable tragedies, there is simply too much joy out there for those who'd seek it.
— P.S. Clinen, The Will of the Wisp
How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Thank you! ....for sharing your childhood with me so I could experience the all joys that were missing in mine
— Ginny Toole
It is the length of the journey that ripens the joy of the outcome.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The sweet sorrow is tears of joy.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Enjoyment of Jesus is not like icing on the cake
—  it’s like powder in the shell.
Nowists are more likely to experience joy because they embrace the uncertainty of existence. They are switched on by the uncertain stuff of human life and come alive when faced with life at its most uncontrollable.
— Max McKeown, #NOW: The Surprising Truth About the Power of Now
As long as the eyes of our faith are fixed upon our troubles we will not find joy. Until our minds consciously move the Lord from our peripheral vision into the narrow corridor of our focus, joy will elude us.
— Paul Tautges, Pray about Everything: Cultivating God-Dependency
Pause & Remember- If you empty yourself of yesterday's sorrows, you will have much more room for today's joy.
— Jenni Young
Looking in the mirror, I saw a joyful face. And this happy girl was just about to go on a trip, with a one way ticket in her bag. Life was a never ending journey.
— Nico J. Genes, Magnetic Reverie
The little white bundle—toddling dutifully down the hall to the front door—froze. Then a high-pitched scream as he began to run as fast as he could (which was not very fast at all, any more) and Boris—whooping with laughter—dropped to his knees.“Oh!” snatching him up, as Popchik wriggled and struggled. “You got fat! He got fat!” he said indignantly as Popchik jumped up and kissed him on the face. “You let him get fat! Yes, hello, poustyshka, little bit of fluff you, hello! You remember me, don’t you?” He had toppled over on his back, stretched out and laughing, as Popchik—still screaming with joy—jumped all over him. “He remembers me!
— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
Even ripples have a rhythmTo feel it, listen to their soundTap your feet as they directAnd joy shall abound…
— Neelam Saxena Chandra
I was glad to hear that you were to be confirmed.
— Theodore Roosevelt, Letters to His Children
I have better understanding how difficult and complex life can be, fortunately I know when not to take things so seriously and just enjoy every moment
— Shellie Palmer
In other words, when all the supports of human life and earthly happiness are taken away, God will be our delight, our joy. This experience is humanly impossible. No ordinary person can speak in truth like this. If God alone is enough to support joy when all else is lost, it is a miracle of grace.
— John Piper, When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy
Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires. Our chief end is to glorify God, the great Object. We do so most fully when we treasure him, desire him, delight in him so supremely that we let goods and kindred go and display his love to the poor and the lost.
— John Piper, When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy
Dear Lord, I ask that you help me make it through today with patience, understanding, and calmness in my heart. I ask that you replace any darkness in my life with light and my frustrations with joy. I ask these things in Jesus’s name, amen.
— Ron Baratono, The Writings of Ron Baratono
The joy of knowing a foreign language is inexpressible. I find it really difficult to express such joy in my mother tongue.
— Munia Khan
For awhile, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy.
— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Sometimes the key to unlocking the future is your ability to just leave the padlock of the past.
— Faithful Akpaloo
Be happy, be happy.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The days elude them, but they are the ones who witness the sorrows of the night. The wretched, gloomy nights. How they wish they could resolve the unbound grief of the human heart. If only they know what it was looking for. If only unbound joy could be the answer.
— Sanchit Gupta, The Tree with a Thousand Apples
One day I asked God to move the mountain ahead of me, but he said no because he wanted me to experience the joy of being on a mountain top.
— Gift Gugu Mona
On Christmas morning when the beach is calling and the family’s gathering and the presents are a mystery (or definitely feels book-shaped anyway), and after the splendour and celebration of Christmas Eve, we don’t want Christmas Day to be an anticlimax. We’ve gifted our Oxfam goats or geese and bought our CWS calendars, and what we’d like, on Christmas Day, what we really want, is for things to be—perfect. Just like the old days. Something new, but also something familiar.And that’s what’s so wonderful about the Christmas story, and why preachers penning their reflections approach with trepidation but also with joy: at Christmas, the news is all good.
— Bronwyn Angela White, Something new to say
Yellow joy was radiating from her. When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over. It was almost too bright to watch.
— Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells
Perhaps it's better to find joy in the rubble rather than celebrate in ignorance.
— Catherine Jones Payne, Breakwater
The joy is the journey of Life.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter.
— Ellen DeGeneres
The optimistic nature finds joy in the very feeling for life
—  the pessimistic nature finds a feeling for life only in joy.
Fine Things are reservoirs for the heart.
— Fennel Hudson, Fine Things - Fennel's Journal - No. 8
I'm actually very humbled listening to His Holiness,' the Archbishop said, 'because I've frequently mentioned to people the fact of his serenity and his calm and joyfulness. We would probably have said 'in spite of' the adversity, but it seems like he's saying 'because of' the adversity that this has evolved for him.
— Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
Symptoms of chronic stress are feelings of fragmentation and of chasing after time - of not being able to be present. What we are looking for is a settled, joyful state of being, and we need to give this state space. The Archbishop once told me that people often think he needs time to pray and reflect because he is a religious leader. He said those who must live in the marketplace - business people, professionals and workers - need it even more.
— Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World