The end is the beginning of all things,
Suppressed and hidden,
Awaiting to be released through the rhythm
Of pain and pleasure.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Look, I really don't want to wax philosophical, but I will say that if you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.

- Mel Brooks

Try to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment.

- Sydney Smith

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.

- Leo Buscaglia

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

- E. B. White

We are
People who need to love, because
Love is the soul's life,
Love is simply creation's greatest joy.

- Hafiz of Persia

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh....

- Kahlil Gibran

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.

- Helen Keller

Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.

- Audre Lorde

Don't postpone joy until you have learned all of your lessons. Joy is your lesson.

- Alan Cohen

We need to attach a reason to our emotional states. At the high end of the emotional spectrum, we believe that true joy is an effect rather than a cause. Because of this deep-seated belief, we spend most of our lives chasing whatever we think causes the effect of joy -- it may be a perfect relationship, lots of money, fame, the perfect place to live, even our God. At the low end of the emotional spectrum, the game we play is blame. We blame anything from the food we have just eaten to our partners to the government for the reason that we feel bad.

- Richard Rudd

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

- Eudora Welty

This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

- George Bernard Shaw

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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;

- Rabindranath Tagore

Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

- Leo Tolstoy



Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.

- Henri Nouwen



Common sense is strengthened by joy.

- Rebbe Nachman of Breslov



Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy, you must have somebody to divide it with.

- Mark Twain



Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by its breathtaking moments.

- Michael Vance



What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?

- Sigmund Freud



What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?

- Sigmund Freud



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



I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

- Louise Bogan



Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy

- Francis of Assisi



Joy is a heart full and a mind purified by gratitude.

- Marietta McCarty



Joy is the best makeup.

- Anne Lamott



I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

- John D. Rockefeller



There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



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 secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

- Pearl S. Buck



We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.

- Helen Keller



Oh, this is the joy of the rose: / That it blows, / And goes.

- Willa Cather



You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand-heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain.

- Henry David Thoreau



The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.

- Mortimer Adler



There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

- Aeschylus



We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

- Kahlil Gibran



The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

- Kahlil Gibran



... joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

- Kahlil Gibran



A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

- John Keats



The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -- as soon as we quit pretending we're small or unholy.

- Bo Lozoff



Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

- Thich Nhat Hanh



In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual, delays, but which can at any moment become what it would have become long earlier if one had not obtained what one wanted, atrocious.

- Marcel Proust



The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

- Audre Lorde