Joy

"Happiness. We're tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven's sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn't, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that's easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn't last. But is happiness not the sum total of lots of small joys and pleasures, huh?"

"Most people are about as happy as their self confidence will allow them to be."

"The most important quality in the man you decide to marry should be the ability to make you laugh. Beauty fades, careers end, money comes and goes, religions change, children grow up and move away, spouses get sick, struggles happen, family members die, senility sets in when your older, but the ability to make you giggle every day is the most precious gift God can give you to get through all of it."

"That's what love is like when you're young. Like spinning, filling you with excitement and joy, losing yourself in the moment. But if you don't have a focus point to keep you stable, you lose your balance and before you know it, you're falling and you can't see who you're taking down with you because you've been too busy spinning to see what else has been going on." (Nora)"

"The things you can take with you: Love, Trust, Respect, Joy,. The things you leave behind: Everything else."

"Desire I think has less to do with possession than with participation, the will to involve oneself in the body of the world, in the principle of things expressing itself in splendid specificity, a handful of images: a lover’s irreplaceable body, the roil and shimmer of the sea overshot with sunlight, a handful of cherries, the texture and weight of a word. The word that seems most apt is partake… We can say we partake of something but we may just as accurately say we take part in something’ we are implicated in another being, which is always the beginning of wisdom, isn’t it- that involvement which enlarges us, which engages the heart, which takes out of the routine limitations of self?"

"With great love comes occasions of pain. You can't skip the pain; without it, you would never know what a precious thing love is. You wouldn't know to hang onto it. You wouldn't know to fight for it. You embrace the pain because the love makes it all worthwhile."

"We're so accustomed to laughing. It's harder for us when the time comes that we can't laugh."

"At that moment when you feel like giving up, take a look and search deep inside in oder to understand how far you've come. Don't give up now! Success is right around the corner."

"People love for so many different reasons. Some love you for only what you can do for them. Others love you for how much money you have or various material things. Love is sometimes tossed around like throwing a bone to a dog. And, some people have love confused with lust or infatuation. Those are both temporary and artificial, not genuine."

"It doesn't matter how many friends I have because my best friend is God. And, he is a Super Friend. People come and people go, but God's love for you will remain the same. Embrace it, Cherish it, and Spread it everywhere you go. Let your light shine brightly for all the world to see."

"Happiness is the satisfaction you feel. There's delight, joy, excitement and pleasant surprise."

"If you love another person, you have to become a no-self, a nothing. When you love, you have to become a nobody. When you are a nobody, love happens. If you remain somebody, love never happens. One becomes afraid of love, because love opens the inner emptiness. Love is not an effort. If love is an effort, it is not love. It is the same case with the ultimate experience, it happens when you do not make an effort. Then you can simply float with the river to the Ocean."

"Put love in everything you do and you’ll find joy, happiness and success."

"Quoting geneticists, Guy Murcia says we’re all family. You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one on Earth is further removed than your fiftieth cousin. Murcia also describes out kinship though an analysis of how deeply we share the air. With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and-owing to the wind’s ceaseless circulation- over a year’s time you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as well as everyone who ever lived. (The Seven Mysteries of Life)"

"One last mystery: on one of the little ponds, this morning, I saw wind riffling the first of the waterlily leaves. They haven’t all emerged yet, but new circles tattoo the water, here and there, a coppery red. When the wind lifted their edges, each would reveal a little shadowy spot, a dot of black which seemed to flash on the water, and so across the whole surface of the pond there was what could only be described as the inverse of sparkling; a scintillant blackness. Shining blackly, black but rippling, lyrical: the sheen and radiance of death-in-life. Is that my work, to point to the world and say, See how darkly it sparkles?"

"Standing beside you,I took an oathto make your life simpler by complicating mineand what I always thought would happen did:I was lifted up in joy."

"I’ve been moving a little to the music while I worked …and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful, though I can feel how stiff my muscles are, how rigidly I’ve been holding myself…Mostly I’ve been moving cautiously, numbly, steeled because I know, at any moment, I may be ambushed by overwhelming grief. You never know when it’s coming, the word or gesture or bit of memory that dissolved you entirely…It happens every day at first, then not for a day or two, then there’s a week when grief washes in every morning, every afternoon."

"It's because when God adopts you into His family, you belong to Him. He stamps His name on you. A name that comes with His protection. And His birthright, which is eternity and the power to live with joy on this earth."

"Noelle slid up Rachel's body and turned her face with a gentle hand on her cheek. "Ace has to make his choice," she murmured, stroking Rachel's lips. "He doesn't get to lock you away from pleasure because he's all tangle up. You're made for joy."