Quotes About Joy

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

There has been only one Christmas - the rest are anniversaries.

For centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas. Christmas means fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home.

We'll sing and dance and suffer and die, but we'll make lives here. Which is what existence is all about, isn't it?

It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song. I kiss you and the world begins to fade.

A lonely impulse of delight

The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.

Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.

For the good are always the merry, Save by an evil chance, And the merry love the fiddle, And the merry love to dance.

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over it their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Gray Truth is now her painted toy.

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with merry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head

Be secret and exult Because of all things known That is most difficult

IMITATED FROM THE JAPANESE A MOST astonishing thing — Seventy years have I lived; (Hurrah for the flowers of Spring, For Spring is here again.) Seventy years have I lived No ragged beggar-man, Seventy years have I lived, Seventy years man and boy, And never have I danced for joy.

Yet surely there are men who have made their art Out of no tragic war, lovers of life, Impulsive men that look for happiness And sing when they have found it.

An aimless joy is a pure joy

But soon a tear-drop started up, For aimless joy had made me stop Beside the little lake To watch a white gull take A bit of bread thrown up into the air; Now gyring down and perning there He splashed where an absurd Portly green-pated bird Shook off the water from his back; Being no more demoniac A stupid happy creature Could rouse my whole nature.

My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.

When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.

I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth In something that all others understand or share; But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth A company of friends, a conscience set at ease, It had but made us pine the more. The abstract joy, The half-read wisdom of daemonic images, Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy.

Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

Protect his house, His anxious house where days are counted From thunderbolt protect, From gradual ruin spreading like a stain; Converting number from vague to certain, Bring joy, bring day of his returning, Lucky with day approaching, with leaning dawn.

Father, I am welling over with limpid joy! No sicklying taint of sorrow overlies the lucid lake of liquid love, upon which, hand in hand, Aline and I are to float into eternity!

If you don't laugh at all, you've missed the point. If you only laugh, you've missed your chance from illumination.