This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Life without absorbing occupation is hell - joy consists in forgetting life.
Hell | Joy | Life | Life | Occupation |
I wonder why love is so often equated with joy when it is everything else as well. Devastation, balm, obsession, granting and receiving excessive value, and losing it again. It is recognition, often of what you are not but might be. It sears and it heals. It is beyond pity and above law. It can seem like truth.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Achievement | Cost | Destiny | Effort | Joy | Men | Money | Teach | Will | Work | Worth |
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making your happy.
Force | Happy | Joy | Life | Life | Little | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Will | World |
This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a true force of Nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, an, as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
Force | Happy | Joy | Life | Life | Little | Nature | Opinion | Purpose | Purpose | Will | World | Privilege |
During [these] periods of relation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has not other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Beauty | Defeat | Despise | Discipline | Evil | Joy | Life | Life | Mind | Strength | Vision |
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry.
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. As long as there is the enthusiasm of the chase they enjoy it. But when they begin to look around and think of settling down, they find that that part by which joy enters in, is dead in them. They have spent their lives in heaping up colossal piles of treasure, which stand at the end, like the pyramids in the desert, holding only the dust of things.
Enthusiasm | Joy | Men | Pleasure | Receive | Wealth | Think |
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.
Agony | Existence | Famous | Joy | Life | Life | Truth | Woman |
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.
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
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.