Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)

When I seek you, my God, I seek the happy life.

Augustine (354-430)

You must know that the Devil is not deaf either, and yet his servants make a great noise. The Devil would rather see us doubting than hear us shouting ... If they were to put me in a barrel, I would shout ?glory? out through the bunghole. I can say glory, glory; I can sing glory, glory; I can dance glory, glory.

Billy Bray (19th century)

All the delights in the sensual life are but as the putrid waters of a corrupt pond where toads lie croaking and spawning, compared to the crystal streams of the most pure and pleasant fountain.

John Flavel (1627-91)

Oh, if these communicated drops be so sweet, what is there in Christ the fountain!

John Flavel (1627-91)

Regeneration is the point from which all true pleasure commences; you never live a cheerful day till you begin to live to God.

John Flavel (1627-91)

Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of ? something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat?s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moments when are last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even at best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it ? tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your hear. But if it should really become manifest ? if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself ? you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, ?Here at last is the thing I was made for.? We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he can not imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

The only way to be happy in Christ is to be desperately unhappy without him.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)

But if you have a very bad temper, I hope, in another sense, you may lose it, and never find it any more.

Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-92)

If you ever lose the joy of religion, you will lose the power of religion.

Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-92)

Is it good reasoning for men to say, ?These people are so miserable that they must be on the way to heaven??

Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-92)

To the extent to which a believer is inconsistent with his profession, to that extent will he be unhappy.

Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-92)

What if the overflowing of holy joy should seem to be disorderly, what matters it if God accepts it? He who has long been immured in prison, when he gets his liberty may well take a frisk or two, and an extra leap for joy, and who shall grudge him? He who has long been hungry and famished, when he sees the table spread, may be excused if he fall to it with more of eagerness than politeness.

Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-92)

I may say that it was not uncommon in those days to call conversion ?becoming serious?; and judging by the faces of some of its professors, it appeared to be a very serious matter indeed. Would it not be well if the people of God had always telltale faces, evincing the blessings and gladness of salvation so clearly that unconverted people might have to call conversion ?becoming joyful? instead of ?becoming serious??

J. Hudson Taylor (19th century)

If a man were crowned with all the delights of the world, nay, if God should build him a house among the stars, yet the restless eye of his unsatisfied mind would be looking still higher. He would be prying beyond the heavens for some hidden rarities which he thinks he has not yet attained to; so unquenchable is the thirst of the soul till it comes to bathe in the river of life and to centre upon true blessedness.

Thomas Watson (1620-86)

Let others praise their great intellectuals: I should like to praise the fool whom God chose to shame the wise.  Our brother Moishe was by trade a pall-bearer at funerals; he suffered from a gentle form of madness, which was dangerous to others. At our meetings he would weep copiously and make an awful din when the preacher spoke of our Saviour?s sufferings, and laughed aloud when he spoke of His victory.  The other believers in the congregation considered Moishe a disturbing element. One of them promised him ? he was very poor ? that if he would only keep quiet during the services, he could come and dine at his house every Sunday, and enjoy roast meat, cakes and fruit.  For one whole Sunday Moishe kept comparatively calm; but the following week, when the preacher spoke of the Resurrection, he stood up in the middle of the sermon and shouted: ?Roast or no roast, hallelujah!?

Richard Wurmbrand (1909-2001)