If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
Mitsugi Saotome
The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow
as when you go looking for your joy.
Eudora Welty
The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident.
Sir Hugh Walpole
Here I am in 1993, wedding my best friend in all the world…
my joy.
We find greatest joy not in getting,
but in expressing what we are…
R.J. Baughan
I have drunken deep of joy,
and I will taste no other wine tonight.
Percy Bysshe Shelly, The Cenci
© Vladimir Rolov, “Die Omas über die Opas”
A labor of love is exalted because it provides joy and
self-expression to those who perform it.
Dennis Kimbro
The dance is over, the applause subsided…
but the joy and feeling will stay with you forever.
W. M. Tory
Resolve to keep your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Helen Keller
Of no worldly good can the joy be perfect,
unless it is shared by a friend.
Latin Proverb
If I dream I have you, then I have you,
For all our joys are but fantastical.
John Donne, The Dream
The very nature of joy makes nonsense of
our common distinction between having and wanting.
C.S. Lewis
And joy is everywhere;
It is in the earth’s green covering of grass;
In the blue serenity of the sky;
In the reckless exuberance of Spring;
In the severe abstinence of gray Winter;
In the living flesh that animates our bodily frame;
In the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright;
In living;
In the exercise of all our powers;
In the acquisition of knowledge;
In fighting evils…
Joy is there everywhere.
Rabindranath Tagore
Learning to live in the present moment
is part of the path of joy.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
