Optimists find joy in small things. They enjoy sunsets, a good conversation with a close friend; and they enjoy life in general. They are more concerned with having many small joys rather than having one huge joy.
ROBERT M. SHERFIELD
The Everything Self-Esteem Book
Nothing brings joy as does a
tamed, controlled, attended and restrained heart.
This heart brings joy.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Anguttara Nikaya
The joy late coming late departs.
LEWIS J. BATES
Some Sweet Day
Is it that they fear the pain of death, or could it be they fear the joy of life?
TOAD THE WET SPROCKET
Pray Your Gods
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.
THOMAS GRAY
Ode in a Distant Prospect of Eton College
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the wingèd life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"He Who Binds", Poems from the Pickering Manuscript
Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel's wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever -- and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Joy flees from the selfish, it deserts the quarrelsome; it is hidden from the impure.
JAMES ALLEN
Morning and Evening Thoughts
The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.
TANITH LEE
Delusion's Master
Life's joys and sorrows meet us every day,
But some are blinded by their tears of sorrow
And see no joy.
S. MOORE
"Sonnet"
Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings.
ROLLO MAY
Man's Search For Himself
The joy of life comes from our encounters with 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.
JON KRAKAUER
Into the Wild
The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.
THICH NHAT HANH
Peace Is Every Step
The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
J. D. SALINGER
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.
STEPHENIE MEYER
The Host
For sudden Joys, like Griefs, confound at first.
DANIEL DEFOE
Robinson Crusoe
Here below is not the land of happiness; I know it not; it is only the land of toil, and every joy which comes to us is only to strengthen us for some greater labor that is to succeed.
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE
Popular Works
Joy may be a miser,
But Sorrow’s purse is free.
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD
Persian Song
Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.
EDWARD ABBEY
Desert Solitaire
Joy is circulatory. There is the joy. Then disbelief that says you must be dreaming. Then the mental pause or step back to give the universe a chance to wake you. Then the return to see if the joy is still there--and there is the joy again, insanely real and undeservedly all yours.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising