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joy quotes

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“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.” Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
“Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.” Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides
“Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.” Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
“Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.” George MacDonald, Phantastes
“How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!” William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
“May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope.” Pope Francis, Laudato si'
“To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.” George Eliot, Middlemarch
“pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.” Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.” Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“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...” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
“supreme joy is a hundredfold greater in anticipation than in possession; its savour is greater while we wait for it than when it is ours.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of...” George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.” John Keats, Endymion
“There is thus an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,—the purest joy of life.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” Mark Twain, Following the Equator
“Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my...” Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“All that remains is a fate whose outcome alone is fatal. Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
“The whole world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and darkness...” Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.” Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
“What I know for sure is that every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and step out and dance—to live free of regret and filled with as much joy, fun, and laughter as you can stand.” Oprah Winfrey, What I Know For Sure
“Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.” Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
“I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter—the Eternity they have entered—where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I...” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“Suddenly he knew joy and sorrow felted into one fabric. Courage and fear were one thing too.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.” L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
“It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.” Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides
“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.” William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
“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
“It was a joy. Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
“I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself, and am only loud and merry to conceal my sadness.” Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
“How could he rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“A Christmas gambol oft could cheer the poor man's heart through half the year.” Walter Scott, Marmion
“philosophy . . . people are much to blame to represent it to children for a thing of so difficult access, and with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect. Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostly countenance?...” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.” Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides
“Anyhow there was no bitterness in her; none of that sense of moral virtue which is so repulsive in good women. She enjoyed practically everything.” Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
“do try, to be more cheerful and take life as you find it.” L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz
“I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.” Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
“The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Over the Teacups
“Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.” Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

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Related topics

happiness life love beauty sadness pain grief sorrow crying fear care eternity death freedom truth wisdom work courage reading hope

Related authors

Honoré de Balzac (3)
Leo Tolstoy (2)
William Shakespeare (2)
Michel de Montaigne (2)
Charles Dickens (2)
George Eliot (2)
J. R. R. Tolkien (2)
Lao Tzu (2)
Samuel Johnson (2)
L. Frank Baum (2)
Emily Brontë (2)
Bertrand Russell (1)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1)
Mark Twain (1)
John Steinbeck (1)
Stephen King (1)
Ayn Rand (1)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1)
Albert Camus (1)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1)

Related sources

Letters of Two Brides (3)
Tao Te Ching (2)
War and Peace (2)
Much Ado About Nothing (2)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (2)
Wuthering Heights (2)
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (2)
East of Eden (1)
The Brothers Karamazov (1)
The Fountainhead (1)
The Myth of Sisyphus (1)
Middlemarch (1)
The Hobbit (1)
Frankenstein (1)
The Conquest of Happiness (1)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (1)
Following the Equator (1)
Tropic of Cancer (1)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1)
The Return of the King (1)