Joy

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”– Buddha

“Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.”
— Wilfred Grenfell

“When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life”
— Jean Shinoda Bolen

“There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.”
— Kahlil Gibran

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”
— Joseph Campbell

“I do it for the joy it brings, cause I’m a joyful girl. ‘Cause the world owes us nothing, we owe each other the world.”
— Ani Difranco

If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal – that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. ~Henry David Thoreau

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid. ~J.D. Salinger

All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming – a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I spend a lot of my time simply feeling joy. Walking out into a sunlit garden, playing with my golden retrievers, petting my cats, joking around with my kids, kissing my husband. There are so many things that simply bring me joy. Joy is different from happiness, because happiness can be fleeting, but joy is ever-lasting. The things that bring me joy will always bring me joy, even in just the memory of how wonderful they were when they are gone. I think of my parents with joy, for having known them, now that I am over the sorrow of their loss. I think of past friends with joy, even though they brought me great sorrow. And I know those joys, those memories, will be with me all my life, as will my love for them. Love, and joy, are eternal.