Joy

“ We listen ever with delight intense,
And drink it in as drinks the dew the flower:
The hours go by and yet we sit entranced,
And rise at last unwearied and unsated,
Our joy in life rekindled or enhanced,
In spirit and in senses recreated. ”

“ Thus, when pleasure begins from its sweetness to cloy, And the warm heart grows rank like a soil over ripe, We must turn from the earth for some promise of joy, And look up to heaven for a holier type. ”

“ This day let pleasure smile on every face,
And beam in every eye with sprightly grace;
Let artless joy the flowing lay inspire,
And sweet affection consecrate the lyre.
And see! all nature smiles around ”

“ Gladness and sighs brighten and dim the mirror of daily life. Tears and laughter are twin-born. Like two children sleeping in one cradle, when one wakes and stirs the other wakes also.
Be not dismayed at the trials of life; they are sent for your good. God knows what keys in the human soul to touch in order to draw out its sweetest and most perfect harmonies. These may be the strains of sadness and sorrow as well as the loftier notes of joy and gladness. Think not that uninterrupted joy is good. The sunshine lies upon the mountain top all day, and lingers there latest and longest at eventide. ”

“ At this moment I tremble with joy in the soft breezes, I thrill with life, I drink the rain-drops, and the next moment and to-morrow will bring each its store of work and joy for me, and I shall be the highest thing I could wish to be, the thing I was made to be. ”

“ To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that—perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims. ”

“ It brings a heaven into the soul, and causes it, amidst all the scoffs and tauntings of a benighted, ill-natured, and ridiculing world, to rejoice with joy unspeakable, even a joy that is full of glory. ”

“ Into their romance, into their world of little things, their joys of the moment, their happiness of the hour, had suddenly descended a great and lasting joy, the happiness of the great, grave issues of life—a happiness so deep, so intense, as to thrill them with a sense of solemnity and wonder. ”

“ But when the sunshine returns to the soul, when the heart glows with affection, and hope is bright and buoyant, and the world within us becomes lighted up with a sweet and serene joy, how changed is the aspect of the world without! ”

“ Joy, I have found thee!
Far from the halls of Mirth,
Back to the soft green earth,
⁠Where people are not many;
I find thee, Joy, in hours
With clouds, and birds, and flowers—
⁠Thou dost not charge one penny. ”

“ Tho' I shall walk in valley ways for long,
I still shall hear the echo of the song,—
My life is measured by its one great height.
Joy holds more grace than pain can ever give,
And by my glimpse of joy my soul shall live. ”

“ Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song—the joy that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws everything it has upon the dust, and knows not a word. ”

“ What is Happiness? The immortal union of two Souls in one, creatures of God's eternal light, partaking each other's thoughts, bestowing upon each other the renewal of joy, and creating loveliness in form and action by their mutual sympathy and tenderness. ”

“ For I have found a joy that is full, and more than full. For when heart, and mind, and soul, and all the man, are full of that joy, joy beyond measure will still remain. Hence, not all of that joy shall enter into those who rejoice; but they who rejoice shall wholly enter into that joy. ”

“ In the very passion of delight that pours like wine through the veins is a solemn outfall—in the very deliciousness of joy an intensity that is almost pain. It is all so solemn and so grand, so noble and so loving, surely we cannot be less than what we live in! ”

“ Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, "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. ”

“ There is joy in my heart—deep joy—joy which no mortal tongue can express, for the happiness I feel is not of the world. The fresh breezes of morning fan my brow; to-morrow they will sigh over my grave. The earth returns to the earth, the spirit to the God who gave it. ”

“ They feel their hearts melt with joy in the prospect of broad skies and sunlit fields, in the sound of morning birds and rushing streams; they hear great choirs of happy spirits chanting perpetually in heaven and in earth, and on every side of their obscure way open vistas of inspired vision. No stranger meddles with their joy, or even knows of it. God is not a stranger; to Him they tell it all, with Him they share it, and their joy is part of the joy of the Eternal. ”

“ More especially is this the case, when childhood with its fresh uncalculating energies becomes the subject of consideration—when we sit down to make cool comments upon its outbursts of ungoverned feeling, and its thrilling voice of joy which echoes upon the weary ear like the summer song of birds, startling the tired spirit into hope that some new spring of gladness has been found, when it is but nature at her joyous revelry, making pastime of common and familiar things, and exulting in the fulness of her own delight. ”

“ Heaven is nothing but joy. But consider, has joy been the most beautiful thing in your life, is it joy that sounded the deepest harmonies? Remember how you have stood upon that faraway hillside and laid to rest your comrade beneath the forest shadows? ”

“ How can we then but rejoice with joy unspeakable, as the children of immortality; living habitually above the gloom and damps of earth, and leading lives of ministration; bestowing everywhere sweetness and light,—radiating upon the earth something of the beauty of the unseen world. ”

“ How transporting and ineffable are the joys of convalescence!—the calm of mind—the voluptuous langour—the unrebuked abandonment to mere pleasurable sensation—the delight that every natural object imparts, fill those hours with a dream-like, faint ecstasy, more dear to memory than tumultuous joy. ”

“ I ask, "Holds earth or sin, or woe?"
My heart replies, "I do not know."
Nay! all we know, or feel, my heart,
Today is joy undimmed, complete;
In tears or pain we have no part;
The act of breathing is so sweet,
We care no higher joy to name. ”

“ Where happy spirits, crowned with circlets bright
Of starry beam, and gloriously bedight,
Taste the high joy none but the bles'd can prove.
There thou or joinest the immortal quire
In melodies that even Heaven fair
Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire
Of the omnipotent Father, cleavest the air,
On holy message sent - What pleasures higher?
Wherefore does any grief our joy impair? ”

“ That your joy might be full; not only that you might be full of joy, but that your joy in me and in my love may rise higher and higher, till it come to perfection, when you enter into the joy of your Lord. ”

“ Still hungrier for delight as delights grow more rare.
We pause; we hush our heart,
And thus address the gods:—
“The world hath failed to impart
The joy our youth forebodes,
Failed to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear. ”

“ And he will also find that this purifying interaction of spiritual and mental forces will give the mind an abiding foundation of joy for its starts of rapture and flights of ecstasy;—a joy, in whose light and warmth languor and discontent and depression and despair will be charmed away;—a joy, which will make the mind large, generous, hopeful, aspiring, in order to make life beautiful and sweet;—a joy, in the words of an old divine, "which will put on a more glorious garment above, and be joy superinvested in glory!" ”

“ Joy is elemental—a vast vibration that sweeps through centuries as years! A day in His courts is as a thousand, and a thousand years are as one day, because they thrill with an immortal and imperishable emotion. ”

“ Everybody knows what joy is,—a certain sense of gladness and of pleasure, a contentment and a satisfaction, sometimes noisily breaking into transient surges of rapture, sometimes rolling with the tranquil swell of calm delight. It is a state which comes upon any particular faculty, when that finds its natural gratification. So there may be a partial joy of any one faculty, or a total joy of the whole man, all the faculties normally developed and normally gratified. ”

“ It wreathes the face with smiles, creates friends, promotes cheerfulness, awakens tenderness, and scatters happiness. It fills the heart with joy, it robs sorrow of its pain and makes of earth a very heaven below. ”

“ Thus shalt thou be—ah, and thou deem'st, indeed,
That thou shalt gain thereby no happy meed
[Pg 302] Reft of the world's joys? nor canst understand
How thou art come into a happy land?—
Love, in thy world the priests of heaven still sing,
And tell thee of it many a joyous thing;
But think'st thou, bearing the world's joy and pain,
Thou couldst live there? nay, nay, but born again
Thou wouldst be happy with the angels' bliss;
And so with us no otherwise it is,
Nor hast thou cast thine old life quite away
Even as yet, though that shall be to-day. ”

“ Just cultivate a cast-iron smile of joy the whole day through; If they call you "Little Sunshine", wish that THEY'D no troubles, too — You may — grin. Rise up in the morning with the will that, smooth or rough, You'll grin. ”

“ Women and Men, in wisdom, innocence and health—all joy! 70
Riotous, laughing bacchanals, fill’d with joy!
War, sorrow, suffering gone—The rank earth purged—nothing but joy left!
The ocean fill’d with joy—the atmosphere all joy!
Joy! Joy! in freedom, worship, love! Joy in the ecstacy of life! ”

“ How can such joy be not merely clouded but utterly destroyed? A moment, and from the body everything is expelled; light from the eyes, speech from the lips, movement from the limbs, joy, passion from the heart. ”

“ Therese, ever happy, smiling, and joyous in the midst of pain, in spite of your extreme sensitiveness to suffering, I rejoice with you in the glorious triumph which you have won over self through your tender love of God. Obtain for me the grace to walk in your footsteps, that I may always find a sincere delight in that which gives joy to God, even though it be the very fact of my being utterly deprived of all sensible joy. ”

“ For verily it is the most joy that may be, as to my sight, that He that is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is lowest and meekest, homeliest and most courteous: and truly and verily this marvellous joy shall be shewn us all when we see Him. ”

“ My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed, “Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.” ”

“ The elder whirling for joy the one in petticoats, a fat baby eddying half-willingly, half by the force of the gust, driven backward, struggling forward—both drunk with the pleasure, both shouting their hymn of joy. ”

“ But the swift accession of joy may come in another way, from the sudden transformation of one’s world, from the arrival of some good thing which is at once unexpected and big enough to lift us to a higher level of happiness. ”

“ As I recall, this morning, the fresh and living delights revealed to me in that hour, I am conscious of a joy which makes me conceive of true love as an ocean of everlasting and ever-new experiences, into which we may plunge with increasing delight. ”

“ The particular moment when hope and certainty combined reward the day's toil is the very quintessence of joy and delight. Nothing in the shape of enjoyment can come near it. What a strange power has that helpless-looking mass—the brain! ”

“ Yet walking through this newly-created world, she felt that joy more keen than pain—that wordless ecstasy whose channel is the senses, but which sends the spirit groping back toward God who gave it life. ”

“ The greater is that wild and fiery joy which accompanies actual discovery; the lesser light is the mild and tranquil enjoyment snatched from rude life and spent amid the radiance and fragrance of civilisation. ”

“ They captivate the whole soul, and, for the time being, subdue it to an intense, powerful, poetical influence, impressing it with melancholy, sorrow, and sadness, elevating it heavenwards in hopeful joy and inspired happiness. ”