Joy

"It is in the nature of man to want what he does not have. This modern concern for happiness seems a real testimony of its absence."

"But if a person hasn't ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I'm grateful for it."

"I used to hold you as my everything,And so I built my castles in your lands,But you proved to me your inadequacies,With this, how will my castles stand?"

"Why are those who knew him, when they pass from the memory of a young man, sensitive and gay, to the work – novels and writings – surprised to pass into a nocturnal world, a world of cold torment, a world not without light but in which light blinds at the same time that it illuminates; gives hope, but makes hope the shadow of anguish and despair? Why is it that he who, in his work, passes from the objectivity of the narratives to the intimacy of the Diary, descends into a still darker night in which the cries of a lost man can be heard? Why does it seem that the closer one comes to his heart, the closer one comes to an unconsoled center from which a piercing flash sometimes bursts forth, an excess of pain, excess of joy? Who has the right to speak of Kafka without making this enigma heard, an enigma that speaks with the complexity, with the simplicity, of enigma?"

"We rise, we fall. Life is a lesson. But, if not lived with the heart,holds no depth, no meaning. We must feel pain, to feel the joy, to feel the pain, and so on, so forth. It requires great courage. I try with all my mightto hold gratitude in the lesson. Thank you universe for showing mefor teaching me."

"life as a life, from the pain we laughed.. and from the joy we cried.. but supposedly i'm supposed to be grateful but I don't think I'll be to happy whatever im not sad.. my other side told me that the government is putting hallucinogens in our water and torturing us under the guise of healthcare.. if u thought right, wonder if u are the first prisoner to go through the presidential rendition and torture program and they seem to think u'll be some hero or something for going through it.. but in reality u are just a fucking slave that's being abused. thanks"

"The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama."

"My joy is like Spring, so warmit makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears,so vast it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names,so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,so I can see that my joy and pain are one."

"The joy that comes from the action lasts forever while the pain is only temporary."

"Let Him pull you from the drowning waters of our world. He will wipe the tears from your pain; soothe the disappointments of tomorrow and comfort you from this cold, dark life. He will bring you everlasting Joy."

"The clouds were gathering over Mary, too--deep and dark, but of altogether another kind from those that enveloped Letty: no troubles are for one moment to be compared with those that come of the wrongness, even if it be not wickedness, that is our own. Some clouds rise from stagnant bogs and fens; others from the wide, clean, large ocean. But either kind, thank God, will serve the angels to come down by. In the old stories of celestial visitants the clouds do much; and it is oftenest of all down the misty slope of griefs and pains and fears, that the most powerful joy slides into the hearts of men and women and children."

"It's painful to hold out hope for the things that once brought you joy. You have to find ways to make yourself forget."

"We live in a world of shadow and light, pain and joy. We spend our entire lives investigating the many possible patterns of human experience including interactions between humankind and nature and with one another. We must learn from our chronicles and assist future generations by living a fully engaged life attempting to ascertain how to live in an authentic and joyous manner."

"I'm probably the only person in the world that feels physical pain as a reaction to joy."

"Don't let pain keep you out of the garden."

"The glance embroiders in joy, knits in pain, and sews in boredom. When indifferent, the eye takes stills, when interested, movies. Laughter is regional: a smile extends over the whole face."

"Each heart knows its own bitterness and no one else can share its joy."

"It is as great a crime to leave a woman alone in her agony and deny her relief from her suffering as it is to insist upon dulling the consciousness of a natural mother who desires above all things to be aware of the final reward of her efforts, whose ambition is to be present, in full possession of her senses, when the infant she already adores greets her with its first loud cry and the soft touch of its restless body upon her limbs."

"You really think joy is easier to come by than pain? What have you had more of?"

"After the rain, the sun will reappear. There is life. After the pain, the joy will still be here."