Joy

"Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life---and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion---to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it."

"...there was something in the texture of the weave that felt happy: theecho of a memory so far down in his soul it was all emotion, aburst of colour and warmth, adrift from time and place."

"What she liked was simply life. "That's what i did it for," she said, speaking aloud to life... Could any man understand what she meant, either, about life? …But to go deeper, beneath what people said, and these judgments, how superficial, how fragmentary, they are. In her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? It was an offering…it was her gift."

"Your current situation = the life expectations you have accepted as completed, unless you change your comfort zone to create a better life."

"Unhappiness comes from living the life of two people--the one people want you to be and the one you want to be."

"The cure is as simple as this: Live your words and live your belief system."

"photographs are very interesting, and you can look into them a million times and still find a new meaning in them, something in the past that was caught in the film itself…"

"I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt makingcreatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality’. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath."

"It is not a person or situation that affects your life; it is the meaning you give to that person or situation, which influences your emotions and actions. Your choice is to change the meaning you gave it or to change your response, in order to create the outcome you want."

"I have found contentment and joy in being exactly where God wants me to be, and that is what makes me happy."

"As a being and life form, all of mankind must seek the absolute sunshine of being. To do otherwise is to deny the essence of life; which is growth in body mind and soul. These in turn reflects Self love."

"The emotional scars of our mistakes will teach us far more than the joy of our successes"

"Where ignorance is bliss, awareness is joy, and self-awareness is orgasmic."

"listen thoughtfullysounds of laughtergaiety and melancholy galore"

"And in myself, too, many things have perished which, I imagined, would last for ever, and new structures have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are difficult of comprehension."

"If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. But that is the most that hope can do for us - to make some hardship lighter. When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic. Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment. We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here."

"May you fill your days with love, laughter, and joy."

"The rule for J. O. Y is Jesus, Others and You. You can’t have a perfect joy if all you think about is about how to groom your life!"

"True joy comes from knowing Christ personally and from depending on His strength rather than your own."

"To feel the joy of life, love what you do."