“Poetry is the sudden joy that illuminates your features with a gentle smile, whose hidden cause you do not know.”

Original: Poesía, el gozo improviso que ilumina tus facciones con una sonrisa suave, y cuya oculta causa ignoras donde está. — Poetry can be an involuntary moment of happiness whose source remains mysterious even to the person experiencing it. · Letter III, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Joy
• Mystery
• Poetry

“Now I wake each morning inwardly cheerful, and remain so for the whole day, ready to bathe everyone who approaches in the light of my spirit and fill them with joy until they fall into harmony with me.”

Original: Teraz ja budzę się co rano i wraz rozweselony jestem wnętrznie i już na cały dzień taki zostaję, gotów każdego, co się przybliży, oblać jasnością ducha i rozradować go, aż się do harmonii ze mną ułoży. — A striking expression of spiritual joy as something that can be shared with others. · Letter to his mother, 16 April 1844 (Polish)

• Companionship
• Harmony
• Joy

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”

On the essential nature of joy · Interview or letter (commonly attributed)

• Joy
• Laughter
• Life

“If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.”

Poetry should arise from joy rather than obligation · Conversation / anecdote (commonly attributed)

• Joy
• Pleasure
• Poetry

“I have always thought that the best cure for despair is to interest yourself in another man’s trouble, or preferably another man’s joy.”

A compassionate prescription for escaping destructive self-absorption. · Speech, Values in Life, 1907

• Compassion
• Healing
• Joy

“A cheerful companion is a travelling wagon on the journey.”

Original: Ein lustiger Gefährte ist ein Rollwagen auf der Wanderschaft. — Good company lightens the burdens and difficulties of a journey. · Maxims and Reflections (German)

• Companionship
• Joy
• Travel

“Shared joy is double joy.”

Original: Geteilte Freude ist doppelte Freude. — Joy becomes greater when it is shared with others rather than kept to oneself. · Maxims and Reflections (German)

• Community
• Companionship
• Joy

“The spirit which proceeds out of truth and beauty is the holy spirit of joy. These are realities and these alone give and sustain life.”

Joyce connects aesthetic experience with the sustaining force of joy. · Lecture, James Clarence Mangan, 1902

• Beauty
• Joy
• Life

“I want to have the joy of writing the poem of discovery.”

He valued poetry for the discovery involved in making it, not simply for producing another successful poem. · Conversation with Robert Penn Warren, as recalled by Warren

• Creativity
• Discovery
• Joy

“I have no notion of a happy life, but a happy moment.”

Finding happiness in vivid, passing moments rather than in an imagined permanently happy life · Letters, as commonly attributed

• Happiness
• Joy
• Time

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”

Treating happiness as a serious responsibility rather than a trivial pleasure · Essay, An Apology for Idlers

• Duty
• Happiness
• Joy

“I am sorry for the man who can't be a little boy now and then, for he is certainly a sorry man.”

Defending playfulness and the enduring value of childhood within adult life · Prose remark, as recorded in biographical sources

• Childhood
• Joy
• Wisdom

“Joy is a fleeting visitor, so welcome it warmly before it departs.”

Original: الفرح ضيف زائر، فرحب به قبل أن يرحل — A gentle reminder of the transience of happiness · Literary anecdote (Arabic)

• Acceptance
• Joy
• Time

“Laughter is the cheap medicine of the soul.”

Celebrating the restorative benefit of humor in everyday struggles · Prose note on humor and health

• Healing
• Humour
• Joy

“Spring is beautiful to the one who has long endured winter.”

Original: Våren er vakker for den som lenge har hatt vinter. — Captures how joy is heightened by the memory of hardship · Attributed remark (Norwegian)

• Endurance
• Joy
• Nature

“Nothing can take from us that run from Ostend to Ghent.”

Celebrating an exhilarating moment of freedom and movement amid the uncertainty of war. · A Journal of Impressions in Belgium, September 1914

• Experience
• Freedom
• Joy

“Thank God! I do like to hear that.”

Her spontaneous response on learning her hymn had transformed a worldly man's life · Conversation (as recorded by William Alexander)

• Faith
• Gratitude
• Joy

“The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.”

True happiness transcends parting · Conversation / letter (as commonly attributed)

• Farewell
• Happiness
• Joy

“There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.”

Finding private fulfilment in the act of song itself · Imaginary Conversations

• Joy
• Music
• Solitude

“Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.”

Celebrating the quiet exhilaration of wandering among books · Pericles and Aspasia

• Books
• Joy
• Reading

“How few of us In all the world's great, ceaseless struggling strife, Go to our work with gladsome, buoyant step, And love it for its sake, whate'er it be.”

Reflecting on the rarity of finding joy in one's labour · Essay or column (commonly attributed)

• Joy
• Meaning
• Work

“The other day I met Oscar & dined with him at his seaside retreat; I had some difficulty in suppressing my own sourness & attuning myself to his enormous joy in life just at this moment.”

A vivid contrast between Dowson's melancholy temperament and Oscar Wilde's renewed delight in life · Letter to Conal O'Riordan, c. 10 June 1897

• Character
• Friendship
• Joy

“There is no pleasanter sight within the front door of any man's castle than the strewn and disordered evidences that children there abide.”

Finding warmth and meaning in the ordinary disorder created by family life · Prose memoir, Making the House a Home, 1922

• Childhood
• Home
• Joy

“I writ because it amused me; I corrected because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write; and I publish'd because I was told I might please such as it was a credit to please.”

Describing writing, revision and publication as distinct pleasures · Preface to The Works of Alexander Pope, 1717

• Creativity
• Joy
• Writing