This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Joy has its friends, but grief its loneliness." - Robert Nathan
"The only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide... Those who expect joy to come out of sadness can discover the beginnings of a new life in the center of the old." - Henri Nouwen, fully Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen
"Joy... is found only in the good things of the soul." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"Love, hope and joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train, hate fear and grief, the family of pain; these mix’d with art, and to due bounds confin’d, make and maintain the balance of the mind." - Alexander Pope
"The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy, is virtue’s prize." - Alexander Pope
"Secret pleasure is rather fear than joy." - Publius Syrus
"What is the difference between mourning and sadness? Mourning takes hold of one’s heart, but not one’s mind, while sadness takes hold of the mind. Mourning leads to thinking, while sadness stops one’s thoughts. Mourning stems from the light in one’s soul, while sadness comes from the darkness of the soul. Mourning arouses one to life, while sadness brings to the opposite. The Torah obligates mourning when it is appropriate, while it forbids sadness and commands we serve the Almighty with joy." - Moshe Rosenstein, fully Moshe ben Chaim Rosenstein
"No one really understands the grief or joy of another." - Christian Friedrich D. Schubert
"When we pray, we should feel the seriousness of speaking directly to the Almighty. The concept of seriousness should not be mistaken for sadness since sadness is a transgression. Seriousness should stem from the true joy of fulfilling a mitzvah [biblical law or good deed], the joy of having the merit to pray to the Almighty." - Moshe Schwab
"Behold the wretched and dismal slavery of him who is in thrall to pleasures and pains, those utterly capricious and tyrannical master. We, however, must escape to freedom. But this is only possible if we are indifferent to Fortune. Then we shall attain that one overriding blessing - the serenity and exhaltation of a firmly anchored mind. For when error is banished, we shall have the great and satisfying joy that comes from the discovery of truth, plus a kind of disposition and cheerfulness of mind. The source of our pleasure in these things will not derive from their being good, but that they emerge from a good that is one’s own." -
"To feel, to feel exquisitely, is the lot of every man; it is the charm that lends a superstitious joy to fear. But to appreciate belongs to the few; to one or two alone, here and there, the blended passion and understanding that constitute in its essence worship." - Elizabeth Sara Sheppard
"We can do nothing well without joy, and a good conscience which is the ground of joy." - Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)
"When is a man free? Now when he is driftwood on the stream of life... free of all cares or worries or ambitions... He is not free at all... To be free in action, in struggle, in undiverted and purposeful achievement, to move forward towards a worthy objective across a fierce terrain of resistance, to be vital and allow in the exercise of a great enterprise - that is to be free, and to know the joy and exhilaration of true freedom. A man is free only when he has an errand on earth." - Abba Hillel Silver
"Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an external cause, and hatred is nothing but sorrow with the accompanying idea of an external cause. We see too that he who loves a thing necessarily endeavors to keep it before him and to preserve it, and, on the other hand, he who hates a thing necessarily endeavors to remove and destroy it." -
"To miss the joy is to miss all." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
"The infant is born in the same universe where lives the adult of ripe mind. But its position is not like a schoolboy who has yet to learn his alphabet, finding himself in a college class. The infant has it own joy of life because the world is not a mere road, but a home, of which it will have more and more as it grows up in wisdom. With our road that gain is at every step, for it is the road and the home in one; it leads us on yet gives us shelter." -
"The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite idea which once realised makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite rest and only see the infinite motion, then existence appears to us a monstrous evil., impetuously rushing towards an unending aimlessness." -
"Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation." -
"Grief should be like joy, majestic, sedate, confirming, cleansing, equable, making free, strong to consume small troubles, to command great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end." - Aubrey de Vere, fully Aubrey Albericus de Vere NULL
"The experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested, compounded equally of joy and consciousness, free from admixture of any other perception, the very twin brother of mystical experience, and the very life of it is supersensous wonder... It is enjoyed by those who are competent thereto, in identity, just as the form of God is itself the joy with which it is recognized." - Visvanatha Chakravarti, fully Visvanatha Chakravarti Thakura
"In activity we must find our joy as well as glory; and labor, like everything else, that is good, is its own reward." - Edwin Percy Whipple
"I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thought; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean of the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man - a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things." - William Wordsworth
"When looking back at your past suffering, feel joy. They have already benefited you by atoning for your misdeeds and at present you no longer feel pain from those past misfortunes." - Avraham Yellin
"It is especially important to express your feelings of joy when giving charity to a poor person. Show the person you are glad to be able to help him out. Showing displeasure giving charity erases the merit of giving." - Yorah Daiah
"Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair; a lamp unto my feet, that sun was given; and death was safety and great joy to find; but dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven." - Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL
"Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, expels diseases, softens every pain, subdues the rage and poison and of plague." - John Armstrong
"Any heart turned God-ward, feels more joy in one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raised by all the feasts on earth since its foundation." - Gamaliel Bailey
"Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps." - William Blake
"He who binds to himself a joy does the winged life destroy. But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise." - William Blake
"Joy impregnate. Sorrows bring forth." - William Blake
"To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees." - William Blake
"There is the laughter which is born out of the pure joy of living, the spontaneous expression of health and energy - the secret laughter of the child. This is a gift of God. There is the warm laughter of the kindly soul which heartens the discouraged, gives health to the sick and comfort to the dying... There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter that triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence." - J. E. Boodin