This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"No woman has ever told the truth of her life. The autobiographies of most famous women are a series of accounts of the outward existence, of petty details and anecdotes which give no realization of their real life. For the great moments of joy or agony they remain strangely silent." - Isadora Duncan
"Keep the home near heaven. Let it face toward the Father’s house. Not only let the day begin and end with God, with mercies acknowledged and forgiveness sought, but let it be seen and felt that God is your chiefest joy, His will in all you do the absolute and sufficient reason." - James Hamilton
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases! it will never pass into nothingness." - John Keats
"All real joy and power of progress... depend on finding something to reverence, and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain." - John Ruskin
"All real joy and power of progress in humanity depend on finding something to reverence, and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain." - John Ruskin
"The laws, the life, and the joy of beauty in the material world of God, are as eternal and sacred parts of His creation as, in the world of spirits, virtue; and in the world of angels, praise." - John Ruskin
"There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy and of admiration. That country is richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings." - John Ruskin
"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joy, and dividing our grief." - Joseph Addison
"Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul; and thus it may be looked on as weakness in the composition of human nature. But if we consider the frequent reliefs we receive from it and how often it breaks the gloom which is apt to depress the mind and damp our spirits, with transient, unexpected gleams of joy, one would take care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life." - Joseph Addison
"The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure - fearlessness and achievement." - Joseph Campbell
"Culture is a massive exercise in restraint, inhibition, and curtailment of joy on behalf of pseudo-safety and grim necessities. We live out our lives in the long shadows it casts." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty." - Joseph Joubert
"The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed." - Joseph Joubert
"We’re here to feel the joy of life pulsing in us - now." - Joyce Carol Oates
"Life is that which we see and experience through the spirit; but the world around us we come to know through our understanding and reason. And such knowledge brings us great joy or sorrow." - Kahlil Gibran
"The secret of the heart is encased in sorrow, and only in sorrow is found our joy, while happiness serves but to conceal the deep mystery of life." - Kahlil Gibran
"Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy." - Kahlil Gibran
"Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is a magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear - it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination." - Kahlil Gibran
"We are naught but frail atoms in the heavens of the infinite and we cannot but obey and surrender to the will of Providence. If we love, our love is neither from us, nor is it for us. If we rejoice, our joy is not in us, but in Life itself. If we suffer, our pains lies not in our wounds, but in the very heart of Nature." - Kahlil Gibran
"When either your joy or your sorrow become great the world becomes small." - Kahlil Gibran
"There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward." - Kahlil Gibran
"You pray in your distress and in your need; when that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance." - Kahlil Gibran
"The theologian who has no joy in his work is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this science." - Karl Barth
"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"All plants, animals, and men are already in eternity, traveling across the face of time. Whence we know not. Whither, who is able to say? Let us have one world at a time, and let us make the journey one of joy to our fellow passengers, and just as convenient and happy for them as we can, and trust the rest as we trust life." - Luther Burbank
"A righteous person once asked, “On which day of your life did you experience the greatest amount of joy?” The righteous man replied, “It was the day when I traveled on a ship and someone greatly humiliated me. He treated me with ultimate disgrace. Nevertheless I did not feel even a drop of resentment. I experienced great joy that I reached such a level that no insult could cause me any pain.”" - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"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 results of certain lines followed and laws obeyed, and so a matter of character." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"Property is a divine trust. Things are tools, not prizes. Life is not for self-indulgence, but for self-devotion. When instead of saying, “The world owes me a living,” men shall say, “I owe the world a life,” then the kingdom will come in power. We owe everything to God but our sins... So live, that when thy summons comes to give an account of thy stewardship, it may be done with joy, and not with grief!" - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"We are ordinarily so indifferent to people that when we have invested one of them with the possibility of giving us joy, or suffering, it seems as if he must belong to some other universe, he is imbued with poetry." - Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
"The wise man is always happy, and every good thing is full of joy." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Twelve Things to Remember: The value of time. The success of perseverance. The pleasure of working. The dignity of simplicity. The worth of character. The power of kindness. The influence of example. The obligation of duty. The wisdom of economy. The virtue of patience. The improvement of talent. The joy of originating." - Marshall Field
"Truth illuminates and gives joy; and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men’s spirits are indissolubly held." - Matthew Arnold
"Work has to include our deepest values and passions and feelings and commitments, or it's not work, it's just a job. A job is something to pay our bills with. Work is something that touches our heart and expresses our being. That joy is the key to spirit." - Matthew Fox
"There is a spirit in the soul, untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, itself wholly spiritual. In this principle is God, ever verdant, every flowering in all the joy and glory of His actual Self. Sometimes I have called this principle the Tabernacle of the soul, sometimes a spiritual Light, anon I say it is a Spark. But now I say that it is more exalted over this and that than the heavens are exalted above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion... It is free of all names and void of all forms. It is one and simple, as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise behold it." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"Man should remember that God speaks the truth and promises by Himself, the Truth. If God were to be false to His word, His Truth, He would be false to His Divinity, and then He would not be God. It is his promise that our pains shall be changed to joy." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else." - Nathaniel Branden
"To know and to think, to see the truth with the eye of the mind, is always a joy… As love is the life of the heart, so is the endeavor after knowledge and truth the life of the mind." - Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
"Positive thinkers get positive results because they appreciate the inestimable value of a day, this day, not the next day, but this day, and every day. Today offers at least sixteen hours that may be crammed full of opportunity, joy, excitement, achievement." - Norman Vincent Peale
"How do you find the happiness that you want?... Do those things which give you the deepest, most exquisite feelings of joy... It isn’t what you do for yourself that really makes you happy, though it may give you justifiable pleasure, but what you do for others." - Norman Vincent Peale
"The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Thus only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that, a hundred years after his is dead and forgotten, men who never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought - the subtle rapture of a postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Happiness lies in making others happy, in forsaking self-interest to bring joy to others... To live for self is the source of all misery." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"Many people may doubt that finding God is the purpose of life; but everyone can accept the idea that the purpose of life is to find happiness. I say that God is Happiness. He is Bliss. He is Love. He is Joy that will never go away from your soul. So why shouldn’t you try to acquire that Happiness? No one else can give it to you. You must continuously cultivate it yourself." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us, or the pain against which it can protect us." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
"Remember, the first road to God is prayer, the second is joy." - Paulo Coelho
"When the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no heaven." - Percy Bysshe Shelley