C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Joy
Joyousness is Nature’s garb of health.
Joy is the best of wine.
Without kindness, there can be no true joy.
Sorrows remembered sweeten present joy.
I wish you all the joy that you can wish.
True joy is only hope put out of fear.
Joys are our wings, sorrows are our spurs.
Far beneath a soul immortal is a mortal joy.
A blithe heart makes a blooming visage.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Joy in one’s work is the consummate tool.
Joy surfeited turns to sorrow.
He who can conceal his joys is greater than he who can hide his griefs.
In every exalted joy, there mingles a sense of gratitude.
The cup of joy is heaviest when empty.
Profound joy has more of severity than gayety in it.
Joy softens more hearts than tears.
True joy is a serene and sober motion.
Joy never feasts so high as when the first course is of misery.
Joy is more divine than sorrow; for joy is bread, and sorrow is medicine.
Joys too exquisite to last, and yet more exquisite when passed.
There is a sweet joy that comes to us through sorrow.
The joy of a strong nature is as cloudless as its suffering is desolate.
Deep joy is a serene and sober emotion, rarely evinced in open merriment.
How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much.
We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.
Sweets with sweets war not; joy delights in joy.
These spiritual joys are dogged by no sad sequels.
Capacity for joy admits temptation.
What is joy? A sunbeam between two clouds.
In this world, full often our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.
There is not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.
The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed.
When the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven.
Joy is a flame which association alone can keep alive, and which goes out unless communicated.
Who partakes in another’s joys is a more humane character than he who partakes in his griefs.
Little joys refresh us constantly, like house-bread, and never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then satiety.
Trouble is a thing that will come without our call; but true joy will not spring up without ourselves.
Here below is not the land of happiness: I know it now; it is only the land of toil, and every joy which comes to us is only to strengthen us for some greater labor that is to succeed.
The very society of joy redoubles it; so that, whilst it lights upon my friend it rebounds upon myself, and the brighter his candle burns the more easily will it light mine.
There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
Joy wholly from without, is false, precarious, and short. From without it may be gathered; but, like gathered flowers, though fair, and sweet for a season, it must soon wither, and become offensive. Joy from within is like smelling the rose on the tree; it is more sweet and fair, it is lasting; and, I must add, immortal.
The joy resulting from the diffusion of blessings to all around us is the purest and sublimest that can ever enter the human mind, and can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. Next to the consolations of divine grace, it is the most sovereign balm to the miseries of life, both in him who is the object of it, and in him who exercises it.
God is merely tuning the soul, as an instrument, in this life. And these joys of the Christian, are only the notes and chords that are sounded out in the preparation—preludes to the perfect harmony that shall flood the soul—forerunners of the perfected and rapturous joy that shall bless the soul, in that exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
Real joy seems dissonant from the human character in its present condition; and if it be felt, it must come from a higher region, for the world is shadowed by sorrow; thorns array the ground; the very clouds, while they weep fertility on our mountains, seem also to shed a tear on man’s grave who departs, unlike the beauties of summer, to return no more; who fades unlike the sons of the forest, which another summer beholds new clothed, when he is unclothed and forgotten.
Many men fail to realize that joy is distinctly moral. It is a fruit of the spiritual life. We have no more right to pray for joy, if we are not doing the things that Jesus said would bring it, than we would have to ask interest in a savings bank in which we had never deposited money. Joy does not happen. It is a flower that springs from roots. It is the inevitable result of certain lines followed and laws obeyed, and so a matter of character. Therefore, we cannot say that joy is like a fine complexion, a distinct addition to the charm of the face, which yet would be structurally perfect without this charm. Joy is a feature, and the face that does not have it is disfigured. The Christian life that is joyless is a discredit to God, and a disgrace to itself.