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joy quotes

  •    O quanta qualia sunt illa sabbata, Quae semper celebrat superna curia. O what their joy and their glory must be, Those endless sabbaths the blesse'  d ones see.

    - Peter Abelard
    Hymnarius Paraclitensis, bk.1, no.29,'Sabbato.  Ad Vesperas' (translated by J M Neale).

  • Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine. Et nos amours, faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne? La joie venait toujours apre'  s la peine. Under Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine. And our loves, must I remember them? Joy always came after pain.

    -Kostrowitzki
      Les  Alcools,'Le Pont Mirabeau'.

  • To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      Of  A E Housman.'A  Worcestershire Lad', collected in Forewords and  Afterwords (1973).

  • When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 38:7.

  • Great is the L, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDPsalms 48:1^2.

  • Create in me a clean heart,O God; and renew a right spirit within me.Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.Restore unto methe joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Thenwill Iteachtransgressorsthy ways; and sinnersshall be converted unto thee.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 51:10^13.

  • They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms126:5^6.

  • Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes 9:7.

  • Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the L hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The L hath made bare his holyarm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDORDIsaiah 52:9^10.

  • For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Isaiah 55:12.

  • The Spirit of the Lord G isuponme; becausethe Lhath anointed meto preach good tidings untothemeek; he hath sent me, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;To proclaim the acceptable yearofthe L, and the dayof vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for thespirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the L, that he might be glorified.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ODORD ORDORDIsaiah 61:1^3.

  • His lord said unto him,Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will maketheerulerover many things: enter thou intothejoy of thy lord.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 25:21.

  • And there were in the same country shepherds abiding inthefield, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shoneround about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of Davida Saviour, which is Christthe Lord. And thisshall be a sign unto you;Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying ina manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, theshepherdssaid onetoanother,Let usnowgo even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke 2:8^15.

  • Either what womanhaving ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep thehouse, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke15:8^10.

  • He who binds to himself a Joy Doth the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

    -William Blake
      MS Notebooks, p.105.

  • O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

    -William Blake
      Songs of Experience,'The Sick Rose'.

  • Man was made for Joyand Woe, And when this we rightly know, Thro'the world we safely go. Joy and Woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine.

    -William Blake
    c.1803  Auguries of Innocence, l.56^60.

  • When you come to the end of a perfect day, And you sit alone with your thought, While the chimes ring out with a carol gay For the joy that the day has brought, Do you think what the end of a perfect day Can mean to a tired heart, When the sun goes down with a flaming ray, And the dear friends have to part?

    - CarrieJacobs Bond
      'A Perfect Day'.

  • Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest! Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest! Thine be ilka joyand treasure, Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure!

    - Robert Burns
      'Ae Fond Kiss', stanza 5.

  • There'snot a joy theworld cangive likethat ittakes away.

    -Rochdale
      'Stanzas for Music'.

  • And yet, amidst that joyand uproar, Let us think of them that sleep, Full manya fathom deep, By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore!

    -Thomas Campbell
      'The Battle of the Baltic', stanza 8.

  • So I lie, whose fount of pride, Dear distress, and joy allied, Is my somber flesh and skin, With the dark blood dammed within.

    - Countee Cullen
      On These I Stand,'Heritage'.

  • You are a human boy, my young friend. A human boy.O glorious to be a human boy!† O running stream of sparkling joy To be a soaring human boy!

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^3  Rev Mr Chadband. Bleak House, ch.19.

  •    Hark, the glad sound! The Saviour comes, The Saviour promised long; Let every heart exult with joy, And every voice be song!

    - Philip Doddridge
    Hymns,'Hark,  the Glad Sound' (published1755).

  • My heart's so full of joy, That I shall do some wild extravagance Of love in public; and the foolish world, Which knows not tenderness, will think me mad.

    -John Dryden
      All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act 2.

  • Since every man who lives is born to die, And none can boast sincere felicity, With equal mind, what happens, let us bear, Nor joy nor grieve too much for things beyond our care. Like pilgrims to th'appointed place we tend; The world's an inn, and death the journey's end.

    -John Dryden
      Palamon and  Arcite, bk.3, l.883^8.

  • Joy ruled the day, and Love the night.

    -John Dryden
      The Secular Masque, l.81.

  • My mind to me a kingdom is; Such perfect joy therein I find That it excels all other bliss That world affords or grows by kind. Though much I want which most men have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

    - Sir Edward Dyer
      'In Praise of a Contented Mind'.

  • The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy.

    -Elizabeth I
    c.1568  'The Doubt of Future Foes'.

  • 'I know of no joy,'she airily began,'greater than a cool white dress after the sweetness of confession.'

    - (ArthurAnnesley) Ronald Firbank
      Valmouth, ch.4.

  • There was really no joy in pouring out one's sins while he sat assiduously picking his nose.

    - (ArthurAnnesley) Ronald Firbank
      Valmouth, ch.6.

  • She felt that those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.

    - E(dward) M(organ) Forster
      Howards End, ch.7.

  • 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; Where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

    - Benjamin Franklin
    Attributed prayer, traditionally known as the'Prayer of St Francis'.

  • Wenn es eine Freude ist das Gute zu genieÞen, so ist es eine gr o« Þere das Bessere zu empfinden, und in der Kunst ist das Beste gut genug. As it is a joy to enjoy what isgood, so it is a greater joy to experience what is better, and in art the best isgood enough.

    -JohannWolfgang von Goethe
      ItalienischeReise 3 Mar (published1816^17, translatedby W H  Auden and Elizabeth Mayer as Italian Journey,1962).

  • And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy.

    - Oliver Goldsmith
      The Deserted Village, l.263^4.

  • Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy.

    -Thomas Gray
      Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (published1747), l.38^40.

  • Pity the poor creatures in warmer countries where the seasons never change.Where summer is eternal and they never know the pain of waiting and the joy at last when summer comes.

    - Ray Guy
      That Far Greater Bay,'Catching Conners'.

  • Joy, I did lock thee up; but some bad man Hath let thee out again.

    - George Herbert
    'The Bunch of Grapes', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

  • Jazz music hashaunted America for seventy years.It has tempted us out of our lily-white reserve with its black promise of untrammeled joy.

    -John Clellon Holmes
      Preface to reprint of  The Horn.

  • I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heav'n Than when I was a boy.

    -Honorius of Autun
      'I Remember'.

  • I should have been glad to have humanity forget all about strayalcoholic drinks†but in the present stage of human progress, this vehicle of joy could not be generally suppressed by federal law.

    - Herbert Clark Hoover
      On prohibition. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol.1.

  • Enlarge my life with multitude of days, In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      The Vanity of Human Wishes, l.255^60.

  •    7.Joy is fleeting, sinful and the forerunner of despair.

    - A(lison) L(ouise) Kennedy
      Looking for thePossible Dance,'The Scottish Methodfor the Perfection of Children'.

  • Skiing is a battle against yourself, always to the frontiers of the impossible.But most of all, it must give you pleasure. It is not an obligation but a joy.

    -Jean-Claude Killy
      In Sports Illustrated,18 Nov.

  •    When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold, Our father Adamsat under theTree and scratched with a stick in the mould; And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, Till the Devilwhispered behind theleaves,'It'spretty, but is it Art?'

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'The Conundrum of the Workshops'.

  • And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, But each for the joy of working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw theThing ashesees It for the God of Things as They are!

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'When Earth's Last Picture is Painted'.

  • Pity the planet, all joy gone from this sweet volcanic cone

    - RobertTraill Spence,Jr Lowell
      'Waking Early Sunday Morning'.

  • Why haven't Igot a real'home'a real lifewhyhaven't Igot a Chinesenurse with green trousers and two babies who rush at me and clasp my knees? I'm not a girlI'm a woman. I want things†all this love and joy that fights for outletand all this life drying up, like milk in an old breast.

    -Beauchamp
      Letter to  John Middleton Murry, 23 Mar.

  • I shall run mad with joy.

    -Thomas Middleton
      The Changeling (with William Rowley), act 2, sc.2.

  • The great joy of the artist is to become aware of a higher order of things, to recognize by the compulsive and spontaneous manipulation of his own impulses the resemblance between human creation and what is called 'divine'creation.

    - Henry Valentine Miller
      Sexus, ch.9.

  • Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love In blissful solitude.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.3, l.65^9.

  • Ah gentle pair, ye little think how nigh Your change approaches, when all these delights Will vanish and deliver ye to woe, More woe, the more your taste is now of joy.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.366^9.

  • There was always, he thought, this pleasure ahead of him, an ace of joy up his sleeve so he could say you can do anything to me, take everything away, put me in prison, but I will know [her] when we are old.

    - (Philip) Michael Ondaatje
      In the Skin of a Lion,'Remorse'.

  • . Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix. .God of Abraham,God of Isaac,God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars.Certainty.Certainty. Feeling.Joy. Peace.

    - Blaise Pascal
    FEUFIREc.1662  Note found after his death on a parchment stitched to his coat.

  • But now that age comes A moment of joy is harder and harder to get.

    -Po Chu«  -I
      'The Chrysanthemums in the Eastern Garden' (in Chinese Poems, translated byArthurWaley,1946).

  • La possession de ce qu'on aime est une joie plus grande encore que l'amour. Possessing what one loves is an even greater joy than love itself.

    - Marcel Proust
    ' 1923  A la recherche du temps perdu,'La Prisonni e' re'.

  • Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage, And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

    - Sir Walter Raleigh
      The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage.

  • When they were on that sea and had spread their sails and had their banners set high on the poops of the ships and their ensigns, it seemed indeed as if the sea were all a-tremble and all on fire with the ships they were sailing and the great joy they were making.

    -Robert of Clari   fl.c.1216
      Describing theVenetian fleet setting out.The Conquest of Constantinople (translated by E H McNeal,1936), p.42^3.

  • Joy shivers in the corner where she knits And Conscience always has the rocking-chair, Cheerful as when she tortured into fits The first cat that was ever killed by Care.

    - Edwin Arlington Robinson
      Dionysus in Doubt,'New England'. distribution  based  on  the  work  of  Keynes.  Her  works  include The  Economics  of  Imperfect  Competition  (1933)  and  Economic Heresies (1971).

  • Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base.Joy without labour is base.

    -John Ruskin
      Time andTide, letter 5.

  •   He read partly for information, partly for comparison, partly for insight, partly for the sheer joy of felicitous statement.He delighted particularly inquotationswhich distilled the essence of an argument.

    - Arthur M(eier),Jr Schlesinger
      Of John F Kennedy. AThousand Days.

  • The way was long, the wind was cold, The Minstrel was infirm and old; His withered cheek, and tresses grey, Seemed to have known a better day; The harp, his sole remaining joy, Was carried byan orphan boy, The last of all the Bards was he, Who sung of Border chivalry.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Lay of the Last Minstrel, introduction.

  • In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'To a Skylark', stanza 3.

  • I recalled when I worked in the woods and the bars of Madras,Oregon. That short-haired joy and roughness Americayour stupidity. I could almost love you again.

    - Gary Sherman Snyder
      Turtle Island,'I Went IntoThe Maverick Bar'.

  • What worlds delight, or joy of living speech Can heart, so plunged in sea of sorrows deep, And heape'  d with so huge misfortunes, reach? The careful cold beginneth for to creep, And in my heart his iron arrow steep, Soon as I think upon my bitter bale.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 7, stanza 39.

  • Alas! so all things now do hold their peace, Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing† Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less; So am not I whom love, alas, doth wring, Bringing before my face the great increase Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing, In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease. For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring, But by and by the cause of my disease Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting, When that I think what grief it is again To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.

    - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
      'Alas! so all things now do hold their peace'.

  • So cruel prison how could betide, alas, As proud Windsor? Where I in lust and joy With a king's son my childish years did pass In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy.

    - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
      'So cruel prison'.

  • There is no joy but calm!

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'The Lotos^Eaters', Choric Song, stanza 2, l.68.

  • The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Letter to a student.

  •    There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joyand that it is this which will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

    - Alice Malsenior Walker
      Possessing the Secret ofJoy, epigraph.

  • Love divine, all loves excelling, Joy of heav'n, to earth come down, Fix in us thy humble dwelling, All thy faithful mercies crown. Jesu, thou art all compassion, Pure unbounded love thou art; Visit us with thy salvation, Enter every trembling heart.

    - Charles Wesley
      'Love Divine', collected in Hymns for those that seek†Redemption.

  • For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Lines composed a few miles aboveTintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of theWye', l.88^99.

  • Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze, Avisitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner: now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will.

    -William Wordsworth
    ^1805  The Prelude, bk.1, l.1^9 (published1850).

  • I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride. Of him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough along the mountainside: By our own spirits are we deified. We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof comes in the end despondencyand madness.

    -William Wordsworth
      Of the poetThomas Chatterton, who committed suicide at the age of17.'Resolution and Independence', stanza 7 (published1807).

  • Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts.

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza 3 (published1807).

  • O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza 9 (published1807).

  • Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake, To perish never: Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor man nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterlyabolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza 9 (published1807).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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