Don’t ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are there still.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
—Kahlil Gibran
The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.
—John Muir
The attitude that I take is that everyday life is more interesting than forms of celebration, when we become aware of it. That when is when our intentions go down to zero. Then suddenly you notice that the world is magical.
—John Cage
Though it is possible to utter words only with the intention to fulfill the will of God, it is very difficult not to think about the impression which they will produce on men and not to form them accordingly. But deeds you can do quite unknown to men, only for God. And such deeds are the greatest joy that a man can experience.
—Leo Tolstoy
You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your abundance.
—Kahlil Gibran
Joys divided are increased.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.
—Karl Barth
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for joy.
—Pema Chödrön
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud.… I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God became incarnate.… There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
—Thomas Merton
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
—Angela Monet
Isn't it nice… once you've outgrown the ideas of what life should be and you just enjoy what it is.
—Taylor Jenkins Reid in After I Do
We have become terribly vulnerable, not because we suffer but because we have separated ourselves from each other. A patient once told me that he had tried to ignore his own suffering and the suffering of other people because he had wanted to be happy. Yet becoming numb to suffering will not make us happy. The part in us that feels suffering is the same as the part that feels joy.
—Rachel Naomi Remen
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
—Plato
The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.
—Robert Baden-Powell