Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian. – G.K. Chesterton
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. – St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Openness to God makes us open towards our brothers and sisters and towards an understanding of life as a joyful task to be accomplished in a spirit of solidarity. – Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate
In the absence of any other proof, my thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence. – Sir Isaac Newton
We need to have it said to us that only with Christ has true joy made its appearance and that, in our own lives, nothing matters apart from learning to see and understand Christ, the God of grace, the light and joy of the world. Indeed, our joy will only be true if it is not based on things, which can be taken away from us and destroyed, but thrusts its roots into the intimate depths of our lives, into that depth which no worldly power can take away from us. In addition, every external loss should become for us an initiation into that interiority and should make us more mature for living our true life. – Pope Benedict XVI as quoted in Christ Our Joy
A willingness to be pleased requires modesty and even innocence–easy to deride as mawkish and sentimental. – Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two? – G.K. Chesterton
The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for all that He, in His goodness sends to us day after day. – St. Gianna Molla
The sacramental imagination gets the world into proper focus… G.K. Chesterton insisted that Catholicism was about thick steaks, cigars, pubs and laughter. Catholicism is more than that, of course. But it’s also that and to miss that is to miss something crucial in the Catholic world. The Catholic world isn’t nervous about its legitimate pleasures. In fact, it’s a world in which those pleasures can be fully enjoyed because they’re understood for what they really are – anticipations of the joy that awaits us in the kingdom of God. And that, I suggest, is a lot more appealing than granola –and-Corona-Lite Gnosticism. – George Weigel, Letters to a Young Catholic
Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man. He takes his political benefits for granted, just as he takes the skies and the seasons for granted. He considers the calm of a city street a thing as inevitable as the calm of a forest clearing, whereas it is only kept in peace by a sustained stretch and effort similar to that which keeps up a battle or a fencing match. – G.K. Chesterton, Robert Browning
Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money, power and influence – Henry Chester
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.—G. K. Chesterton
If ever you have felt, in the contemplation of a sunset or any perfect work of nature or art… in the thrill of good news or in the passion of first love, that it was really worthwhile being alive – then that moment was a revelation to you, if you had the heart to understand, of what you owe the Almighty for having created you. – Fr. Ronald Knox
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.
—G. K. Chesterton
Enthusiasm is a form of social courage. – Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.—G. K. Chesterton
To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts. – Henry Miller
You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.—G. K. Chesterton
Only when love and truth are in harmony can man know joy. – Pope Benedict XVI
Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don’t have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.
I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nevertheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better – and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. When it is the right kind of joy, when it is not egotistic, when it comes from the perception of the good, then it wants to communicate itself, and it gets passed on. In this connection, it always strikes me that in the poor neighborhoods of, say, South America, one sees many more laughing happy people than among us. Obviously, despite all their misery, they still have the perception of the good to which they cling and in which they can find encouragement and strength.
In this sense we have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately only faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and to be a human being. This results, then, in the courage to rejoice, which in turn becomes commitment to making sure that other people, too, can rejoice and receive good news. – Pope Benedict XVI, Salt of the Earth
Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult. – G. K. Chesterton, “Christmas and Salesmanship”
Living Differently 