by Beckett, Thoreau, Merton, de Mello, Eckhart, Kingsolver, Shaw, Bonhoeffer, Buber, and others
       
 
Joy is not a constant condition. Most people manage a settled cheerfulness, but this, no matter how admirable, has nothing to do with joy, which flashes suddenly on our darkness. Like the light in an El Greco painting, joy does not merely illuminate the landscape. It transforms it.

- Sr. Wendy Beckett

Man is the artificer of his own happiness. Let him be aware how he complains of the disposition of circumstances, for it is his own disposition he blames. If this is sour, or that rough, or the other steep, let him think if it not be his own work. If his look curdles all hearts, let him not complain of a sour reception; if he hobbles in his gait, let him not grumble at the roughness of the way; if he is weak in the knees, let him not call the hill steep. - Henry David Thoreau

If what most people take for granted were really true?if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it, I should have been a very happy person, a spiritual millionaire, from the cradle even until now?What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear. - Thomas Merton

If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that things is Attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy. - Anthony de Mello

As long as we look for some kind of pay for what we do, as long as we want to get something from God in some kind of exchange, we are like the merchants. If you want to be rid of the commercial spirit, then by all means do all you can in the way of good works, but do so solely for the praise of God. Live as if you did not exist. Expect and ask nothing in return. Then the merchant inside you will be driven out of the temple God has made. Then God alone dwells there. See! This is how the temple is cleared: when a person thinks only of God and honors him alone. Only such a person is free and genuine. - Meister Eckhart

I pity people who can't find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It's a matter of joy in life. - Sophie Scholl

Happiness does not consist in ruling over one's neighbors or in longing to have more than one's weaker fellowmen. Nor does it consist in being rich and in oppressing those lowlier than oneself. No one can imitate God by doing such things. They are alien to His sublimity. On the contrary, anyone who takes his neighbor's burden upon himself, who tries to help the weaker one in points where he has an advantage, who gives what he has received from God to those who need it, takes God's place, as it were, in the eyes of those who receive. He is an imitator of God. - Minucius Felix

There are people who suffer terrible distress, and they cannot tell anyone of it, and they go about full of suffering.  But if you meet them with a kindly countenance, you may lighten their load with your joy.  And it is no small thing to cheer another. - Martin Buber

My friends, pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds of heaven. And let not sin confound you in your doings. Fear not that it will wear away your work and hinder its being accomplished. Do not say: "Sin is mighty, wickedness is mighty and our evil environment is mighty, and we are lonely and helpless in the face of it.... Fly from that dejection, children! There is only one means of salvation. Take yourself and make yourself responsible for all people's sin; that is the truth, you know, friends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all people, you will see at once that it is really so: that you are guilty. By throwing your own indolence and impotence on others, you will only end by sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Praise incessantly, hold high expectations, laugh, sing out loud, celebrate without cease the good luck of getting set down here on a lively earth. - Barbara Kingsolver

This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; 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 you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. - George Bernard Shaw

Thomas Jefferson was so convinced that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable human right that he wrote it into the Declaration of Independence and called it a self-evident truth.  But Christians have this to add: those who pursue happiness never find it. Because joy and peace are extremely elusive, happiness is a will-o'-the-wisp, a phantom, and even if we reach out our hand to grasp it, it vanishes into thin air.  God gives joy and peace not to those who pursue them but to those who pursue him, and strive to love.  Joy and peace are found in loving and nowhere else. - John Stott

You must not think that I am unhappy. What is happiness and unhappiness?  It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on what happens inside a person.  I am grateful for every day?and that makes me happy. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

used by permission, www.bruderhof.com

Keep looking through our pages, especially under 'Stories' and find more clues to true happiness.

Peace,

Eric