“My joy and my accomplishments existed, and so did the pain from my abuse. How can we feel one without the other? Joyful accomplishments exist next to painful memories. I found a lot of my healing when I realized my suffering didn't undo my joy.”
Source: Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love
“Is it possible to be militant about creativity and care? Can militancy be based on something that is responsive and relationship-based? Can people be militant about joy?”
Source: Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times
“World gone money mad. The pinch of war gone, people must spend. Buy and forget. Spend and solace. Silks for sorrows. Jewels to bring back joy.”
Source: Jonah's Gourd Vine
“The only two things in life
guaranteed to bring joy
are both liquid:
fresh dark coffee in the morning
or fragrant cognac in the evening.
(In between, you're on your own.)”
Source: Heart Scrapes, Job Hell
“Devotion to God, righteousness and wisdom, will keep us safe on earth.”
Source: Think Great: Be Great!
“Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of all hell's despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heart-woes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft-cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.”
Source: Moby Dick
“Without sorrow, 'tis difficult to know the full threshold of joy.”
Source: Selah
“When enthusiasts meet, they soon become friends.”
Source: Wealth of Words
“Mot of my trips up Bald Mountain have been in isolation. This is part of the joy of the mountains for me. - Greg Goodman on HIKE NUMBER 11: Bald Mountain, p. 76”
Source: The Hiker's Guide to the Central Sierras; Shaver, Florence & Huntington Lakes Region
“Do we play anymore, step away from tasks, duties, and habits with curiosity? Tread carefully: if you are not vigilant, this may lead to wonder, which is joy, which every fear in you knows will lead to job failure and lost revenue.”
Source: Almost Everything: Notes on Hope