This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Fear is the anticipation and expectation of evil or pain, as contrasted with hope which is the anticipation of good. Awe, on the other hand, is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery. Fear is “a surrender of the succors which reason offers,” awe is the acquisition of insights which the world holds in store for us. Awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object, but, on the contrary, draws us near to it. That is why awe is compatible with both love and joy." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"It is in deeds that man becomes aware of what his life really is, of his power to harm and to hurt, to wreck and to ruin; of his ability to derive joy and to bestow it upon others; to relieve and to increase his own and other people’s tensions. It is in the employment of his will, not in reflection, that he meets his own self as it is; not as he should like it to be." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy." - Paul Rudnick
"The existentialist insight, in part, is that meaning is something we give to life. We do not find meaning so much as throw ourselves at it. The Zen insight, in part, is that worrying about meaning may itself make life less meaningful than it might have been. Part of the virtue of the Zen attitude lies in learning to not need to be busy: learning there is joy and meaning and peace in simply being mindful, not needing to change or be changed. Let the moment mean what it will." - David Schmidtz
"No one feels another's grief; no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by." - Franz Schubert, fully Franz Peter Schubert
"When our wills are united with the will of God, we never take all the goodness and beauty and people and things in life for granted, but we accept them again and again as a gift from him – given that we may serve him with still greater joy and thank him for it." - Albert Schweitzer
"Prayer is the constant feeling (the recognition) of our infirmity or spiritual poverty, the sanctification of the soul, the foretaste of future blessedness, the angelic bliss, the heavenly rain, refreshing, watering, and fertilizing the ground of the soul, the power and strength of the soul and body, the purifying and freshening of the mental air, the enlightenment of the countenance, the joy of spirit, the golden link, uniting the creature to the Creator." - John Sergieff of Cronstadt, aka Saint John of Kronstadt, born John Iliytch Sergieff
"Faith, then, is a quality of human living. At its best it has taken the form of serenity and courage and loyalty and service; a quiet confidence and joy which enable one to feel at home in the universe, and to find meaning in the world and in one’s own life, a meaning that is profound and ultimate, and is stable no matter what may happen to oneself at the level of immediate event. Men and women of this kind of faith face catastrophe and confusion, affluence and sorrow, unperturbed; face opportunity with conviction and drive; and face others with cheerful charity." - Wilfred Cantwell Smith
"The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion." - William Ashley “Billy” Sunday
"So much pleasure, and so little joy; so much learning, and so little wisdom… the one divine thing left to us is sadness… Without sadness where were brotherliness?" - Francis Thomson
"Joy has something within itself which is beyond joy and sorrow. This something is called blessedness... It preserves in itself its opposite, sorrow. It provides the foundation for happiness and pleasure. It is present in all levels of man’s striving for fulfillment. It consecrates and directs them. It does not diminish or weaken them. It does not take away the risks and dangers of the joy of life. It makes the joy of life possible in pleasure and pain, in happiness and unhappiness, in ecstasy and sorrow. Where there is joy, there is fulfillment. And where there is fulfillment, there is joy. In fulfillment and joy the inner aim of life, the meaning of creation, and the end of salvation, are attained." -
"To seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure is to avoid reality, the reality of other beings and the reality of ourselves. But only the fulfillment of what we really are can give us joy. Joy is nothing else than the awareness of our being fulfilled in our true being, in our personal center. And this fulfillment is possible only if we unite ourselves with what others really are. It is reality that gives joy, and reality alone..." -
"There is one Ruler, the Spirit that is in all things, who transforms his own form into many. Only the wise who see him in their souls attain the joy eternal." - Katha Upanishad
"Whatever you give to others, give with love and reverence. Gifts must be given in abundance, with joy, humility, and compassion." - Taittiriya Upanishad
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, but he beholds the light, and whence it flows, he sees it in his joy; the youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is Nature’s priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended; at length the man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day." - William Wordsworth
"In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflicting upon others such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves." - Yogashastra NULL
"To love is not a passive thing. To love is active voice. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so I am freed, at least a little, by the outgoing of love, from enslavement to that most intolerable of master, myself." - Bernard Iddings Bell
"The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"I will be grateful for the twenty-four hours that are before me. Time is a precious commodity. I refuse to allow what little time I have to be contaminated by self-pity, anxiety, or boredom. I will face this day with the joy of a child and the courage of a giant. I will drink each minute as though it is my last. When tomorrow comes, today will be gone forever. While it is here, I will use it for loving and giving. Today I will make a difference." - Max Lucado
"We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality." - Patroclus or Patroklos NULL
"If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth." - Mitsugi Saotome
"Philosophy may help to cleanse our thinking, but only in experience itself, in stumbling through life and reflecting about our moments of joy and despair, can we learn how to live." - Irving Singer
"To bring joy to a single heart is better than to build many shrines for worship." - Abu Sa’id ibn abi Khayr
"You best serve God with all of your heart. God’s real nature is happiness. Serve Him by expressing joyousness, and your reward is the awakening that your joy is His." - Alan Cohen
"It is time for you to understand the purpose of your life. You are a chalice for God’s Love and a vehicle for Him to bless the world. Realize your Divine purpose and your will is aligned with His. Goodness is the theme of all life. See the Perfection in your life and you recapture your Childhood Vision. As you give up patterns of evaluation and cynicism, you accept the benevolence of God. Pain is born of resistance, and joy is a function of the acceptance of God’s whole and Holy Love for you. Find purpose in your joy, and you find purpose in God." - Alan Cohen
"It is time for you to understand the purpose of your life. You are a chalice for God’s Love and a vehicle for Him to bless the world. Realize your Divine purpose and your will is aligned with His. Goodness is the theme of all life. See the Perfection in your life and you recapture your Childhood Vision. As you give up patterns of evaluation and cynicism, you accept the benevolence of God. Pain is born of resistance, and joy is a function of the acceptance of God’s whole and Holy Love for you. Find purpose in your joy, and you find purpose in God." -
"It is time for you to understand the purpose of your life. You are a chalice for God’s Love and a vehicle for Him to bless the world. Realize your Divine purpose and your will is aligned with His. Goodness is the theme of all life. See the Perfection in your life and you recapture your Childhood Vision. As you give up patterns of evaluation and cynicism, you accept the benevolence of God. Pain is born of resistance, and joy is a function of the acceptance of God’s whole and Holy Love for you. Find purpose in your joy, and you find purpose in God." -
"The task of theology is to show how the world is founded on something beyond transient fact, and how it issues in something beyond the perishing of occasions. The temporal world is the stage of finite accomplishment. We ask of theology to express that element in perishing lives which is undying by reason of its expression of perfection proper to our finite natures. In this way we shall understand how life includes a mode of satisfaction deeper than joy or sorrow." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear, nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings." - Amelia Earhart, fully Amelia Mary Earhart
"We call "happiness" a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy." - André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
"Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle." - Annie Besant
"Never forget that life can be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle." - Annie Besant
"The truth is that you learn the lore of love only when your love is out of reach; and the lore of the blue landscape seen from your mountain-top only when you are struggling up a rock wall on your long ascent; and you learn of God only in the exercise of prayer that remains unanswered. For the one satisfaction that time cannot wither, the one joy that never knows regret, is that which is granted you when your course is run and in the fullness of time it is given you to be, having finished with becoming." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"There is no hope of joy except in human relations." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"They stagnated in that false happiness which comes of great possessions; whereas true happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating new things." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"For there is but one problem - the problem of human relations. We forget that there is no hope or joy except in human relations." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joy." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"All the irascible passions imply movement towards something... And if we wish to know the order of all the passions in the way of generation, love and hatred are first; desire and aversion, second; hope and despair, third; fear and daring, fourth; anger, fifth; sixth and last, joy and sadness, which follow from all the passions... yet so that love precedes hatred; desire precedes aversion; hope precedes despair; fear precedes daring; and joy precedes sadness." - Aristotle NULL
"Since things that are found in the soul are of three kinds - passions, faculties, states of character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, for example, of becoming angry or being pained or feeling pity; by states of character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions, for example, with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions. Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and because we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way), but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or blamed." - Aristotle NULL