Joy Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Confucius

Emily Dickinson

Helen Keller

Mark Akenside

George Bancroft

John Perry Barlow

Henry Ward Beecher

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Emily Dickinson

I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.... the world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow—I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.

Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

Stanisław Jerzy Lec

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

Joseph Campbell

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.

Elsa Schiaparelli

There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined make Happiness.

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

Robert Staughton Lynd

Softly the loud peal dies, In passing winds it drowns, But breathes, like perfect joys, Tender tones.

Frederick Tennyson

I find, in being black, a thing of beauty: a joy; a strength; a secret cup of gladness.

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.

Why then should I clothe him to make him look ridiculous in the foolish masculine fashions of his time? There is nothing more banal than these statues of recent notabilities, to be seen in every big city of Europe, masquerading as tailors' models of their ugly period. Man's naked form on the other hand belongs to no particular moment in history ; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.

To return after long years of painful absence to some place which has been the scene of our former joys, and whence the force of circumstance, and not choice, has driven us, is oppressive to the heart.

The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practiced at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness.

Holbrook Jackson

The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.

The tender heart, the broken and contrite spirit, are to me far above all the joys that I could ever hope for in this vale of tears.

Joy is like restless day; but peace divine
Like quiet night;
Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine
Through Peace to Light.

Adelaide Anne Procter

Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?

Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Father's palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.

Thomas Traherne

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust — ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of friendship, love, and liberty,
Ere I was old!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family — but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.