"Joyfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of active enjoyment, and I am in that mood of delightful tranquillity which comes of having finished a tiresome series of engagements which I had anticipated without pleasure. It is not the sense only of vanished days; nor is it the sense of not having realised their joyfulness at the time; it is a deeper regret than that; it is the shadow of the uncertainty as to what will ultimately become of our individuality. If one was assured of immortality, of permanence, of growth, of progress, these regrets would fall off from ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... are the objects of this knowledge: as sudden deaths, dismal accidents. That they are prosperous, or joyful, I cannot learn. Only one instance I have from a person worthy of credit, and thereby judge of the joyfulness, or prosperity of it, and it is this. Near forty years ago, Maclean and his Lady, sister to my Lord Seaforth, were walking about their own house, and in their return both came into the nurse's chamber, ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... his towels over his arm, his head thrown back as he drank in the freshness of the morning-scented air. It was scented with dew and grass and the breath of waking trees and growing things; early twitters and thrills were to be heard here and there, insisting on morning joyfulness; rabbits frisked about among the fine-grassed hummocks of their warren and, as he passed, scuttled back into their holes, with a whisking of short white tails, at which he laughed with friendly amusement. Cropping stags lifted their antlered heads, and fawns ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 1. That Christ is the head of his church. 2. That she is free in her government, from all other jurisdiction except Christ's: These two points, I say, are the special cause of our imprisonment; being now convict as traitors for the maintaining thereof. We have been ever waiting with joyfulness to give the last testimony of our blood in confirmation thereof, if it should please our God to be so favourable as to honour us with that dignity; yea, I do affirm, that these two points above-written, and all other things which belong to Christ's crown, sceptre and kingdom, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... 'the deepest thing in our nature,' so is it fear that will bring the depths of our nature within our knowledge. A great capacity of suffering belongs to genius; and it has been observed that an alternation of joyfulness and dejection is quite as characteristic of the man of genius as intensity in either kind." In his Notes from Books, p. 216, he recurs to it:—"'Pain,' says a writer whose early death will not prevent his ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... than if there had always been hope of him, or the danger had been less? For so Thou also, merciful Father, dost more rejoice over one penitent than over ninety-nine just persons that need no repentance. And with much joyfulness do we hear, so often as we hear with what joy the sheep which had strayed is brought back upon the shepherd's shoulder, and the groat is restored to Thy treasury, the neighbours rejoicing with the woman who found it; and the joy of the solemn service of Thy house forceth to tears, when in Thy house ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... glorious things to come, so that our eyes may be blinded to the miserable playthings of the dust, which the fire of God's vengeance will ere long consume. We need these glorious visions of the great realities so that we can go forward with joyfulness to suffer, be rejected of men and bear the bright and blessed testimony, the Father expects from His beloved children. Take up the watchword of the last days! True to Christ—all in Christ—all for Christ—Onward to Glory. Soon He will call ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... shoeless feet, looking out every now and then on the blue ocean, and thinking what a beautiful world it is we inhabit, and how grievous that man should mar it by his evil temper and wicked deeds. Then he would occasionally sing all the hymns he knew at the top of his voice, from very joyfulness of heart. In the week-days, when at work, he would repeat over what he had learned on the Sundays. Thus five months, by his ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... have music—loud, crashing music—for we want at least to make this a merry day for us since it seems as though we should have a sad and unhappy night. Yes, yes, a merry day we will have; and after that, let come what come may! The saloons shall resound with laughter and joyfulness; and naught but rejoicing and fun shall be heard in the great royal saloons. And invite also the Duke of Norfolk, my noble cousin, who shares with me my royal coat-of-arms. Yes, invite him, that I may enjoy once more his haughty and imposing beauty and grandeur before ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... a great deal to render this young gentleman happy. All that was necessary to make up a day of perfect joyfulness with him, was a dozen marbles, permission to wear his worst inexpressibles, and to be thoroughly up in his lessons. To-day he was possessed of all these requisites, but there was also in the perspective along array of skirmishes with Aunt Rachel, who, he knew, looked ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... prevents it from arresting the attention it is intended only to direct; were it composed with more science it would become vulgar from the loss of its unconsciousness; if richer, it must have parted with its purity, if deeper, with its joyfulness, if more subdued, with its sincerity. Passages are, indeed, sometimes unsuccessful; but it is to be judged in its rapture, and forgiven in its fall: he who works by law and system may be blamed when he sinks below the line above which ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... eternal glory! triumph! leisure! satisfaction! riches! Long has my heart been sad and the house drooping. But the returning master is like reviving Tammouz; and beneath your gaze, O father, joyfulness and a new existence ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... "you don't count at all, compared to me!" Then they both laughed for the sheer foolishness of that "joyfulness," which was so often on Elizabeth's lips. But David sighed. "Three years is a ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... dwellings; my people have died by the violence of the unenlightened, and none are here to say that the Lord is just! I would that the shouts of thanksgiving should arise in my fields! I would that the song of praise should grow louder than the whoop of the savage, and that all the land might speak joyfulness!" ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... your mind in a just equanimity keeping both equally distant from all extremes able to taste joy with discretion, and sorrow without becoming discouraged. This will be putting in practice the advice of the wise man: Give not up thy soul to sadness and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. The joyfulness of the heart is the life of man and a never-failing treasure of holiness, and the joy of man is length of life. Have pity on thy own soul, pleasing God and contain thyself; gather up thy heart in his holiness and drive away sadness far from ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... cost of fidelity to Jesus. Did it pay? He could lay his aching head on its hard pillow, and dream of the happiness that was gone, and awaken to ask if it had been worth while. Did it pay to be true to Christ? Listen; he speaks from his prison: "We have ever been waiting with joyfulness to give the last testimony of our blood to Christ's crown, scepter, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... they skim just over the blades of grass, and then with a rapid stroke of their long wings mount into the air and come hovering above your head, displaying their rich white and chestnut plumage to perfection. Now they chase each other for very joyfulness, uttering their sharp twittering notes; then they hover with expanded wings like miniature Kestrels, or dart downwards with the velocity of the sparrowhawk; anon they flit rapidly over the neighboring pool, occasionally dipping themselves in its calm and placid waters, and leaving ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... merciful, kind, forgiving, long-suffering, pitiful, and we shall have the same tender feeling for our brother who has done us wrong as the father had for the prodigal. We shall be ready to run to meet him. We shall be ready to forget all the past. Our hearts will be filled with joyfulness at the expected reconciliation. O brethren there is nothing needed quite so much today and every day as that heart-quality that makes people "easy ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... "half-time," though there was no half-time in the other game so close to them. Nature, too, was playing, indifferent to this bloody business. All the time, while the batteries were at work, birds were singing the spring song in ecstatic lyrics of joyfulness, and they went on far flights across a pale blue lake which was surrounded by ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... my grandfather, was as the sound of a mournful melody, but his countenance was brightened with a solemn joyfulness. He was of a pale and spiritual complexion; his eyes beamed, as it were, with a living light, and often glanced thoughts of heavenly imaginings, even as he sat in silence. He was then fourscore and two ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... architecture being repeated on a smaller scale by the little turret roofs and pinnacles of every house in the town; and the whole system of them being expressive, not by any means of religious feeling,[11] but merely of joyfulness and exhilaration of spirit in the inhabitants of such cities, leading them to throw their roofs high into the sky, and therefore giving to the style of architecture with which these grotesque roofs are associated, a certain charm like that of cheerfulness ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... he found himself confronting. 'Twas all so brave and beautiful, and there was such tragedy in the thought that life might hold clouds to dull the gold of it. 'Tis but human that those of maturer years who have known sorrow should be reminded of it by the very faith and joyfulness of youth. One of the fine features of the Tower of Camylott was its Long Gallery, which was of such length and breadth and so finely panelled as to be renowned through all the land. At each end the broad windows looked out upon noble stretches ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Varick, was doing a thriving business. She established a list of customers among the great ladies in the city, who bought large daily supplies from her, paying her the highest prices. Her young heart seemed overflowing with joyfulness at her unexpected success. It enabled her to take home many a dollar to her mother. Alas! she seemed to think—if, indeed, she thought at all upon the subject—that the strawberry season ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... happy, too prosperous, too universally beloved, to love well. He was a man, with all his beauty, more likely to be fascinating to his own sex than to hers, for the women who love best, do not love in the character they live in; and his out-of-doors heart, whose joyfulness was so contagious, and whose bold impulses were so manly and open, contented itself with gay homage, and left unplummeted the sweetest as well as deepest wells of the thoughtful tenderness ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... his prophecy, which is merely poetical. For what else is the awaking his musical instruments? The often and free changing of persons? His notable prosopopeias, when he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His majesty? His telling of the beasts' joyfulness, and hills leaping, but a heavenly poesy: wherein almost he showeth himself a passionate lover of that unspeakable and everlasting beauty to be seen by the eyes of the mind, only cleared by faith? But truly now having named him, I fear me I seem to ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... provender every twenty-four hours. The proprietor of this here fodder-emporium is named McGuire, and when I tells him I'm there to settle Emily's account in full, he carries on as though entirely overcome by joyfulness—not that he's got any grudge against Emily, understand, but for other good and abundant sufficiencies. He states that so far as Emily's personal conduct is concerned, during her enforced sojourn in his midst, she's always deported herself like a perfect ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... sun, and the sun rose and rose, promising to gild the east again with its glory. The long burden was taken off Amelia. Her laugh began again to enliven Redcleugh, when she saw that Mr. Bernard was able to bear it. Then, sir, to bear it was to begin to love it, for it was the most infectious joyfulness that ever gladdened man's ears. The change, once begun, went on; he hung upon her voice as if it had been music. Every laugh shook him out of his long misery—it appeared to be to him like new life running along the nerves of the old dead tabernacle. So ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Purcell's, had become a purely personal one which no one since has copied with the slightest success. Still it must have been good for Haydn to hear such a rolling river of tone as the "Amen" of The Messiah, the springtide joyfulness and jubilation of "And the glory of the Lord," the white heat of "And He shall purify," and "For unto us a Child is born," with its recurring climaxes of ever-increasing intensity. He frankly imitated none of these things, but they must, consciously or unconsciously, have heightened the ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... about her, Gertrude, with swimming eyes, saw Solomon dash toward Glover and catch his bag. As the boy spoke to him she saw Glover's head lift in the deliberate surprise she knew so well. She felt his wandering eyes bend upon her, and his hand rose in suppressed joyfulness. ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... breathless babble tells What Colin said, what Colin did. In grace upon the grass they lie And spread their tresses to the sun, And rival, musical as they, The blackbird's alto shake and run. Did ever Love, on hunting bent, Come idly humming through the hay, And, to his sudden joyfulness, Find fairer game at close of day? Though every maid's a lily-rose, And meet to sway a sceptred king, Yet Laura's is the face I love, And Laura's are the lips ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... loneliest struggles, and now that he knew that he was in it, nothing could really hurt him. No wonder that he walked on towards the gaol with a feeling of new joy and strength. But when he came to the dark, frowning prison where numbers of men and women were lying in sin and misery, this joyfulness left him. He says, 'A great power of darkness struck at me.' The prisoners were not the sort of people he had hoped to find them. They were a set of what were then called 'Ranters.' They began to swear and to say wicked ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... vision is the revelation of Jehovah as king of Judah. That relation guaranteed defence and demanded obedience. It was a sure basis of hope, but also a stringent motive to loyalty, and it had its side of terror as well as of joyfulness. 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.' The place of vision is the heavenly sanctuary of which the temple was a prophecy. Eminently significant and characteristic ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... upon his face as he lay in his coffin, and more than 35,000 gathered for the great Memorial Service in the Olympia, the largest obtainable building in London, on the evening before the funeral. All the press commented upon the remarkable joyfulness of our funeral services, and the funeral itself the next day was admitted to have been the most impressive sight the great city has seen in ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... glad," said Patricia, recovering herself first and beginning to realize the joyfulness of the astounding news. "Let me tell ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... her hand, and her eyes were radiant again with love and joyfulness. "Where you go, I shall go," she said, enthusiastically! "Your life is my life, and your misfortunes are my misfortunes. I am not afraid of bad omens!" [Another bad omen occurred on that day. Field-Marshal von Mullendorf, who was to accompany the troops, after being lifted on the left side of his ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... of his youth, she attributed the same perfect sympathy with their sentiments which seemed to exist between themselves. Courthope felt this—he felt that he was idealised through no virtue of his own; but it was a delightful sensation, and brought out the best that was in him of wit and pure joyfulness. To Eliz the creatures of her imagination were too real for perfect pleasure; her face was tense, her eyes shot sparkles of light, her voice was high, for her the entertainment of the invisible guests involved real ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... were in all branches of Christian service; some of them are ministers of the Gospel, some evangelists, some mission workers, some Y. M. C. A. secretaries, Sunday-school teachers, fathers, mothers, personal workers. Nothing could possibly exceed the clearness and the confidence and the joyfulness of many of ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... shut up sharp, then we'll start as soon as possible," Miles said, with a jump of irrepressible joyfulness, for nothing ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... birds love, because some sense of the human beings who once lived there still clings about the half wild fields and gives protection. The day was bright and warm. The birds were everywhere, flashing out of the pine thickets into the birches in all the joyfulness of nest-building, and filling the air with life and melody. It is poor hunting to move about at such a time. Either the hunter or his game must be still. Here the birds were moving constantly; one might ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... radiance. Flame-colored tapestry covered the walls with a purple glow; and when her eye had grown a little used to it, the stranger saw, to her astonishment, that, in the tapestry, there were figures moving up and down in dancing joyfulness, in form so beautiful, and of so fair proportions, that nothing could be seen more graceful; their bodies were as of red crystal, so that it appeared as if the blood were visible within them, flowing and playing in its courses. They smiled on the stranger, and saluted her with various bows; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and disappointment that threw so much gloom over and produced such a thorough change in his future life? She had left with her gallant young husband, in bright hopes of a brilliant future. For some years their life in Paris was one of gayety, pleasure, and joyfulness. In the course of a few years, the dissipations of Paris began to pall upon the taste of the young couple. With unbounded wealth and means of enjoyment, they grew ennuyeed, discontented, and finally contentious. Jealousy, like a serpent, stole into their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... go the devil in youth, with anything like a fair chance, were probably little worth saving from the first; they must have been feeble fellows—creatures made of putty and pack-thread, without steel or fire, anger or true joyfulness, in their composition; we may sympathise with their parents, but there is not much cause to go into mourning for themselves; for to be quite honest, the weak brother is the ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here my portion. For the first of these, that scripture, Col. i. 11, was great information to me, namely, to pray to God to be strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. I could seldom go to prayer before I was imprisoned; but for not so little as a year together, this sentence, or sweet petition would, as it were, thrust itself into my mind, and persuade me, that if ever I would go through long- suffering, I must ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... all its might, but without the brutality of our more terrible life, where as here wealth rises up in the midst of poverty, only here wealth is noble and without the blatancy and self-satisfaction you find in our squares, and poverty has not lost all its joyfulness, its air of simplicity and romance, as ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... absence: and it was a pleasant thing to trudge along so freely in the starlight, on the private embassy of love. Happy Charles! I know not if ever more exhilarated feelings blessed the youth; they made him trip along the silent road, in a gush of joyfulness, at the rate of some six miles an hour; I know not if ever such delicious thoughts of Emily's attachment, and those gorgeous mysteries in India, of adventure, enterprise, escape, had heretofore caused his heart to bound so ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 'Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth,' and in the verse immediately following: 'Remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh.' Ecclesiasticus, likewise, says, chap. 30, 22-25: 'The gladness of the heart is the life of man, and the joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days. Love thine own soul, and comfort thy heart, remove sorrow far from the; for sorrow hath killed many, and there is no profit therein. Envy and wrath shorten the life, and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... distinction into periods, but into states. Consequently, the angels do not know what time is, and when it is mentioned they perceive in place of it state; and when state determines time, time is only an appearance. For joyfulness of state makes time seem short, and joylessness of state makes time seem long; from which it is evident that time in the spiritual world is nothing but quality of state. It is from this that in the Word, "hours," "days," "weeks," "months," and "years," signify states and progressions of state ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... work, they, too hastily, made a catamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish main, and merrily started on a fishing trip, just without a long reef with many jagged gaps, running parallel with the shore, about half a mile from it. By some bad tide or hap, or natural negligence of joyfulness (for though they could not be heard, yet by their gestures they seemed singing at the time) forced in deep water against that iron bar, the ill-made catamaran was overset, and came all to pieces; when dashed by broad-chested ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... splendid burst of joy; the joy of earth, when the sun is bright in a cloudless heaven, and the fresh wind blows cheerfully across the plain. There is no question of duty here, of a task to be performed in heaviness, but a simple tide of joyfulness such as filled the heart ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 'not a mile to win'ard.' I give one look, an' then I sings out: ''Tain't a sail! It's a flag of distress! Can't you see, you land-lubber, that that's the Stars and Stripes upside down?' 'Why, so it is,' says Andy, with a couple of reefs in the joyfulness of his voice. An' Tom he began to growl as if somebody had cheated him out ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... joyfulness and reverence are a necessary part of theoretic pleasure is very evident when we consider that, by the presence of these feelings, even the lower and more sensual pleasures may be rendered theoretic. Thus Aristotle has subtly noted, that "we ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... antique wisdom, the passionate bitter Book of Job, almost, in a way, like the Gospels of Christ. But not for the same reason: the book of Francis teaches neither heroism nor resignation, nor divine justice and mercy; it teaches love and joyfulness. It keeps us for ever in the company of creatures who are happy because they are loving: whether the creatures be poor, crazy Brother Juniper (the comic person of the cycle) eating his posset in brotherly happiness with the superior he had angered; or Brother Masseo, unable ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... hard working-day plainness, mingled with poverty, pervades it; but there is no sham seen: if the people are poor, commonly dressed, noisy—if they effervesce sometimes, and shout "Hallelujah" with a fiery joyfulness, and pray right out, as if they were being ship-wrecked or frightened to death, why let them have their way, for they are happy amongst it. Their convictions are strong, and when they are at it they ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... great joyfulness? I'm not so sure of that. Don't you know it makes mamma feel very serious to have a daughter eight—or is it nine—years old? And as for myself, I begin to feel the grey hairs popping out all over my head at the very ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... The joyfulness of all this company who had been thus miraculously brought together was so great that the night seemed short to them while praising God in the Church for the goodness that He had shown to them. When towards morning they had taken a little rest, they all went to hear mass and receive ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... at the eyes of the slaves, in the hope of discovering a Christian among them and informing Vinicius. But when the hope failed him, he fell to eating and drinking uncommon quantities, not sparing praises on the cook, and declaring that he would endeavor to buy him of Vinicius. His joyfulness was dimmed only by the thought that at night he must go to Ostrianum. He comforted himself, however, as he would go in disguise, in darkness, and in the company of two men, one of whom was so strong that he was the idol of Rome; the other a patrician, a man of high dignity in the army. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... homes of the godly with a gravity and a solemnity which almost effected the banishment of laughter and drove forth music as an outcast from the domestic hearth. Dominated by this sense of things, men shut their eyes to the joyfulness of life and the beauties of nature and literature and poetry and art. The Sabbaths of such men were days to be feared; their sanctuaries places without a gleam of sunshine. What wonder if the pulpit came under the yoke of bondage, or that, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... and children were leaping, and dancing, and shouting, and electing their festal king, and exchanging their new-year gifts of wax candles and little clay figures: and that now-a-days we are doing just the same thing in the same season, in the same places, only with all the real faunic joyfulness gone out of it with the old slain Saturn, and a great deal of empty and luxurious show come in instead! It makes one sad, mankind ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... cracky lintels; but nothing showed life, except an old yellow cat, and a pair of house-martins, who had scarcely time to breathe, such a number of little heads flipped out with a white flap under the beak of each, demanding momentous victualling. At these the yellow cat winked with dreamy joyfulness, well aware how fat they would be when ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of social enjoyment, and full of the fire and joyfulness of youth, he knew how to seclude himself from the pleasures he relished so much. He was a hard and faithful student, allowing nothing to draw him from his books when he meant to devote himself to them. He read not only law, but history, poetry, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... got older I became aware of the folly of this perpetual reaching after the future, and of drawing from to-morrow, and from to-morrow only, a reason for the joyfulness of to-day. I learned, when, alas! it was almost too late, to live in each moment as it passed over my head, believing that the sun as it is now rising is as good as it will ever be, and blinding myself as much as possible to what may follow. But when I was young I was the victim ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... supposed good secured their giddy-pated adhesion; the first taste of trouble ensures their desertion. They are the same men acting in the same fashion at both times. Two things are marked by our Lord as suspicious in such easily won discipleship—its suddenness and its joyfulness. Feelings which are so easily stirred are superficial. A puff of wind sets a shallow pond in wavelets. Quick maturity means brief life and swift decay, as every 'revival' shows. The more earnestly we believe ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... and Robert was drawn into a list. Then, full of joyfulness at being allowed to help, she gathered up her reins, she nodded her pretty little head at him, and was just starting off her ponies at full speed, equally eager 'to tell Harry' and to ransack Churton for the stores ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that touching look in the eyes of a dog when, as we say, it all but speaks. Often have I seen that same look, still more intense, in Tony's eyes, when he has become mazed with efforts to express himself, and I have wished that as with the dog, a pat, a small caress, could change the look into a joyfulness. But it is just because I am fond of him that I am able to feel with him and to a certain extent to divine his half-uttered thoughts; to take them up and return them to him clothed in more or less current English which, he knows, would ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... sinners prudence. Whoso discovereth secrets loseth his credit and shall never find friend to his mind. Health and good estate of body are above all gold. There is no joy above the joy of the heart. Give not over thy mind to heaviness: the joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days. Envy and wrath shorten life: carefulness ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... satisfactions, they both may feel wretched; and yet with another turn of mind they both may be content. Optimism and pessimism, contentment and envy, self-dependence and dependence upon the judgment of the world, joyfulness and despondency, are more decisive contrasts for the budget of happiness than the difference between fifteen dollars a week and fifteen dollars a minute. Some of my best friends have to live from hand to mouth, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... one was allowed to come near, lest he cause its perfection to crumble away. So, to dry ourselves after the rain, we all dug, and the Desert-Gods laughed in their bitter little minds as they saw. Among the rest, Sowter and I dug a hole, dug deeply, widely, with much laughter and joyfulness. And to us, as the afternoon wore towards evening, came the C.O., and, after watching us for a few minutes, told us that we marched ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... that the life in a Jesuit mission was much diversified and rendered pleasant to the Indians, who have a rooted love of show. Each mission had, of course, its patron saint,*1* and on his day nobody worked, whilst all was joyfulness and simple mirth. At break of day a discharge of rockets and of firearms and peals upon the bells announced the joyful morn. Then the whole population flocked to church to listen to an early mass. Those who could find ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... the city gates were flung wide open, the roads were filled with folk hurrying to one another, the fields were thronged with labourers. They held high festival together, and the land was full of peace and joyfulness. ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... neuropathic Madonnas—Pater calls them "peevish"—in his Venus of the Uffizi, than in the paintings of any other Renaissance artist. The veils are there, the consoling veils of an exquisite art missing in the lacerated realistic holy people of the Flemish Primitives. Joyfulness cannot be denied Botticelli, but it is not the golden joy of Giorgione. An emaciated music emanates from the eyes of that sad, restless Venus, to whom love has become a scourge of the senses. Music? Yes, here is the "coloured hearing" of Mendoza. These canvases ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker |
