Quotes & Sayings About Delightful Things

Few things are more delightful than grandchildren fighting over your lap. — Doug Larson

They [the children] live in a world of delightful imagination; they pursue persons and objects that never existed; they make an Argosy laden with gold out of a floating butterfly,
and these stupid [grown-up people] try to translate these things into uninteresting facts. — Woodrow Wilson

There was no amazement, but only an impression of delightful rightness, of being reminded of happy things that had in some strange way been overlooked. — H.G.Wells

If we look at the works of JS Bach ... on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered. — Claude Debussy

The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see gardening begun on his own estate. He had often wondered at Ben Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature who was not half Ben's size and yet had had the sense to come into his garden and begin at once. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

(Excerpt from Leaving Things Alone)
You train your eye and your vision lusts after colour. You train your ear, and you long for delightful sound. You delight in doing good, and your natural kindness is blown out of shape. You delight in righteousness, and you become righteous beyond all reason. — Thomas Merton

Far better die, she said. She took in her hand a casket which held herbs for killing, but as she sat there with it, she thought of life and the delightful things that are in the world; and the sun seemed sweeter than ever before. — Edith Hamilton

I've occasionally been wrong about certain things, which is in a way more delightful than being right. — Jaron Lanier

If you were going to give a gold medal tot he least delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didn't give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway. Carmelita Spats was rude, she was violent, and she was filthy, and it is really a shame that I must describe her to you, because there are enough ghastly and distressing things in this story without even mentioning such an unpleasant person. — Lemony Snicket

It is a little theory of mine that has much exercised my mind lately, that most of the problems of this silly and delightful world derive from our apologising for those things which we ought not to apologise for, and failing to apologise for those things for which apology is necessary. — Stephen Fry

It seemed, however, that I had. I didn't want any more, so I got them. And now I am glad, for if, as I had sometimes wished at that time, I could have finished with a consciousness become unbearable, if, in other words, I had then died, I would never have known a great many very beautiful and delightful things. Evidently, then, it is wise not too soon to lose patience with life, but to wait and see what it may have round its next corner. I — Elizabeth Von Arnim

The will's operation is quite distinct from the will's feeling: By its operation, which is love, the will is united with God and terminates in him, and not by the feeling and gratification of its appetite that remains in the soul and goes no further. The feelings only serve as stimulants to love, if the will desires to pass beyond them; and they serve for no more. Thus the delightful feelings do not of themselves lead the soul to God, but rather cause it to become attached to delightful feelings. But the operation of the will, which is the love of God, concentrates the affection, joy, plea sure, satisfaction, and love of the soul only on God, leaving aside all things and loving him above them all. — San Juan De La Cruz

Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful excercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all animals, had a fine thumb. Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life. — Robert Penn Warren

You're not impatient any more. Then you were in a hurry, because you thought you could encompass everything in your life. You wanted to learn everything and experience everything and be everybody. In a way, that was charming and delightful in you: I used to write in my notebooks that you were zestful. But it also made you seem confused. You did things in fits and starts. You learned as a stammerer talks ... Today, you are not in such a hurry. I think you have decided that you can do only a few things at all well, and they are more than enough. — John Hersey

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home. — Marcel Proust

The genius of Christian spirituality is to integrate [the] spirit of possession with the spirit of dispossession. The spirit of dispossession implies that all the good and delightful things of this world are never allowed to own, possess, or shackle me. Dispossession implies that I am always free, my own person, liberated from the tyranny that possession can easily exercise over us. — John Powell

The upsides of acting in things is mostly getting your hair done and having people give you clothes. So as long as you can have a little bit of that in your life, then it's just as delightful to be behind camera. — Tina Fey

Real worship is, among other things, a feeling in the heart that is appropriately expressed. You can worship God in any manner appropriate to you by feeling in the heart and expressing that humbling but delightful sense of admiring love. Let your heart dictate your worship to the God you love, and who loves you. — A.W. Tozer

The Poet's License! 't is the right, Within the rule of duty, To look on all delightful things Throughout the world of beauty. To gaze with rapture at the stars That in the skies are glowing; To see the gems of perfect dye That in the woods are growing, And more than sage astronomer, And more than learned florist, To read the glorious homilies Of Firmament and Forest. — John Godfrey Saxe

While the others chatted over their parcels Jean wrote her letter, and Jean could write delightful letters. She had a decided talent in that respect, and her correspondents all declared her letters to be things of beauty and joy forever. She — L.M. Montgomery

If the heart has been reformed by the spirit, it makes use of both the useful and delightful things created and given by God in a holy manner and with thanksgiving. — Martin Luther

Yes, the party had been delightful, but there was more to the world than that. Bigger things, more beautiful things, more real things. — Sarah J. Maas

Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things. — Samuel Johnson

People will wake up in the dark and pad to their kitchen needing strength, and the reassurance that something delightful is about to happen - and hoping that this small chore of making coffee might set the tone for a day filled with difficult, wonderful things. — James Freeman

Proceed with caution when you befriend a writer, for if you fall out of their good graces they have the delightful capability of doing any number of dastardly things to you upon the written page. — Bonnie Daly

Repentance means a change of mind. Formerly, I thought sin as a pleasant thing, but now I have changed my mind about it. Formerly, I thought the world an attractive place, but now I know better. Formerly I regarded it miserable business to be a Christian, but now I think differently. Once I thought certain things delightful, now I think them vile. Once I thought other things utterly worthless, now I think them most precious. That is a change of mind, and that is repentance. — Watchman Nee

What a delightful thing this perspective is! — Paolo Uccello

He knew that he'd known her for less than a week, but now that she was gone he was continually probing his feelings for her, the way he might probe a sore tooth with his tongue, engaging her in imaginary conversations, imagining her saying such delightful things. — Robert Hellenga

I settled in with The Uninvited Guests thinking I knew what kind of Edwardian pleasures were in store: the fraught dinner party in an endangered, rambling house, the feuding family, the rich suitor, the disruptive visitors. The novel has all of those delightful things, but it also defied every one of my expectations. I saw none of it coming. I read it in one breathless sitting, and finished wanting to give it to everyone I know. — Maile Meloy

God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the things we have calculated on without taking Him into account. We get into circumstances which were not chosen by God, and suddenly we find we have been calculating without God; He has not entered in as a living factor. The one thing that keeps us from the possibility of worrying is bringing God in as the greatest factor in all our calculations. — Oswald Chambers

We are at the moment looking at space as something to be entered by the tremendous thrust of a rocket because that is the attitude of attacking the unknown. And that causes us not to realize that we are already on the most magnificently equipped spaceship, which could hardly be improved upon. It has got a source of temperature and energy just at the right distance from it. It's beautifully equipped with oxygen, with food supplies, with all kinds of delightful things to do while on the journey ... and it's traveling through space at a colossal speed ... and it's called the planet Earth. — Alan Watts

Once upon a time, began the story of you.
Many perilous, wonderful, harrowing, brilliant, delightful, profound things happened.
And yet - the most exciting twists and best turns are yet to come. And it absolutely does not matter how old or young you are.
Like a bright carpet of wonders, enjoy the unrolling of your story. — Vera Nazarian

Even though I've done a lot it also feels like I haven't done a lot. I've sort of popped in for supporting roles in things, and that's been really delightful. — Guy Pearce

It's all a matter of habit. There's no right or wrong in it. Nobody means anything by it. And it's so quaint, and gives such a smart emphasis to things that are not in themselves very witty. I find the new small talk delightful and quite innocent. — George Bernard Shaw

On hearing of the interesting events which have happened in the course of a man's experience, many people will wish that similar things had happened in their lives too, completely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess when he describes them ; to a man of genius they were interesting adventures; but to the dull perceptions of an ordinary individual they would have been stale, everyday occurrences.
This is, in the highest degree, the case with many of Goethe's and Byron's poems, which are obviously founded upon actual facts; where it is open to a foolish reader to envy the poet because so many delightful things happened to him, instead of envying that mighty power of fantasy which was capable of turning a fairly common experience into something so great and beautiful. — Arthur Schopenhauer

One thing that's really delightful is my books tend to attract people who are funny, so I get the benefit of people writing me with things that crack me up. — Christopher Moore

One of the most delightful things about gardening is the freemasonry it gives with other gardeners, and the interest and pleasure all gardeners get by visiting other people's gardens. We all have a lot to learn and in every new garden there is a chance of finding inspiration - new flowers, different arrangement or fresh treatment for old subjects. Even if it is a garden you know by heart there are twelve months in the year and every month means a different garden, and the discovery of things unexpected all the rest of the year. — Margery Fish

Seen with the terrestrially sullied eye, we are in a situation of travelers in a train that has met with an accident in a tunnel, and this at a place where the light of the beginning can no longer be seen, and the light of the end is so very small a glimmer that the gaze must continually search for it and is always losing it again, and, furthermore, both the beginning and the end are not even certainties. Round about us, however, in the confusion of our senses, or in the supersensitiveness of our senses, we have nothing but monstrosities and a kaleidoscopic play of things that is either delightful or exhausting according to the mood and injury of each individual. What shall I do? or: Why should I do it? are not questions to be asked in such places. — Franz Kafka

The world is crammed with delightful things. I think young people make such a mistake about that - not letting themselves be happy. I sometimes think that happiness is the only thing that counts. — Virginia Woolf

The things kids can do on screens can be really delightful - if they are age appropriate. But no, they shouldn't spend all their time on a screen; they should split up their time doing multiple, different things. — Clive Thompson

And, by the way, one of the most delightful things I find in America is meeting a people without prejudice
everywhere open to the truth. — Oscar Wilde

People can go on telling themselves things like "Think before you speak!" or "You don't believe that yourself" or "Forget it!" But they can also say, "Oh, what lovely flowers!" or "Are you a phone freak or something?" or "Suit yourself," or "This record makes me feel so happy!' Wonderful! Words are delightful little gifts we exchange like the Easter eggs we paint and hide for others to find and enjoy. I'd forgotten that, but you reminded me of it. — Thomas Brussig

One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory. — Zhou Enlai

Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels! — Anthony De Mello

In our pursuit of the things of this world, we usually prevent enjoyment, by expectation; we anticipate our own happiness, and eat out the heart and sweetness of worldly pleasures, by delightful forethoughts of them; so that when we come to possess them, they do not answer the expectation, nor satisfy the desires which were raised about them, and they vanish into nothing. — John Tillotson

He who prohibited the making of a graven image would never himself have made an image in the likeness of holy things [i.e., by creating an image of them here on earth]. Nor is there at all any composite thing or creature endowed with sensation [made by God here on earth] like those in heaven. But the face is a symbol of the rational soul, the wings are the lofty ministers and energies of powers right and left, and the voice is delightful glory in endless contemplation. — Clement Of Alexandria

Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless. — Catherynne M Valente

But children can't be a center of life and a reason for being. They can be a thousand things that are delightful, interesting, satisfying, but they can't be a well-spring to live from. Or they shouldn't be. — Doris Lessing

We live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires. — J.G. Holland

But what do I love when I love you? Not the beauty of any body or the rhythm of time in its movement; not the radiance of light, so dear to our eyes; not the sweet melodies in the world of manifold sounds; not the perfume of flowers, ointments and spices; not manna and not honey; not the limbs so delightful to the body's embrace: it is none of these things that I love when I love my God. And yet when I love my God I do indeed love a light and a sound and a perfume and a food and an embrace - a light and sound and perfume and food and embrace in my inward self. There my soul is flooded with a radiance which no space can contain; there a music sounds which time never bears away; there I smell a perfume which no wind disperses; there I taste a food that no surfeit embitters; there is an embrace which no satiety severs. It is this that I love when I love my God. (Confessions 10.6.8) — Timothy J. Keller

I just adored Peter Medak, the director. He's such a character, but he was so much fun. Some directors come in and they truly get angry about things.Peter was still in a fantastic mood. He's a delightful person. He threw a big party at the end of the pilot, which was so sweet. And his wife is an opera singer. He's just a very warm, crazy beautiful individual. — Brigid Brannagh

If you love home - and even if you don't - there is nothing quite as cozy, as comfortable, as delightful, as that first week back. That week, even the things that would irritate you - the alarm waahing from some car at three in the morning; the pigeons who come to clutter and cluck on the windowsill behind your bed when you're trying to sleep in - seem instead reminders of your own permanence, of how life, your life, will always graciously allow you to step back inside of it, no matter how far you have gone away from it or how long you have left it. — Hanya Yanagihara

There shall be poets! When woman's unmeasured bondage shall be broken, when she shall live for and through herself, man
hitherto detestable
having let her go, she, too, will be poet! Woman will find the unknown! Will her ideational worlds be different from ours? She will come upon strange, unfathomable, repellent, delightful things; we shall take them, we shall comprehend them. — Arthur Rimbaud

He sat down in his chair by the fire and began to chat, as was his habit before he and his wife parted to dress for dinner. When he was out during the day he often looked forward to these chats, and made notes of things he would like to tell his Mary. During her day, which was given to feminine duties and pleasures, she frequently did the same thing. Between seven and eight in the evening they had delightful conversational opportunities. He picked up her book and glanced it over, he asked her a few questions and answered a few ... — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Exceed due measure, and the most delightful things become the least delightful. — Epictetus

The Shepherd laughed too. "I love doing preposterous things," he replied. "Why, I don't know anything more exhilarating and delightful than turning weakness into strength, and fear into faith, and that which has been marred into perfection. If there is one thing more than mother which I should enjoy doing at this moment it is turning a jellyfish into a mountain goat. That is my special work," he added with the light of a great joy in his face. "Transforming things - to take Much-Afraid, for instance, and to transform her into - " He broke off and then went on laughingly. "Well, we shall see later on what she finds herself transformed into. — Hannah Hurnard

The Structure of Magic I by Richard Bandler and John Grinder is a delightful simplification of the infinite complexities of the language I use with patients. In reading this book, I learned a great deal about the things that I've done without knowing about them. — Milton H. Erickson

In search of ideas I spent yesterday morning in walking about, and went to the stores and bought things in four departments. A wonderful and delightful way of spending time. I think this sort of activity does stimulate creative ideas. — Arnold Bennett

Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort that is. — Louisa May Alcott

Crafting, or 'making things,' has always been a delightful pastime of mine because it requires putting common elements together in order to achieve a lovely something that nobody needs. — Amy Sedaris

It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I've never read before. — Helene Hanff

Bob Goff, the craziest lawyer, love activist, world-changer I know, and the delightful author of Love Does, says this: The world can make you think that love can be picked up at a garage sale or enveloped in a Hallmark card. But the kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence. It's a love that operates more like a sign language than being spoken outright. . . . The brand of love Jesus offers is . . . more about presence than undertaking a project. It's a brand of love that doesn't just think about good things, or agree with them, or talk about them . . . Love does.1 — Lysa TerKeurst

I am going to spend as much time as I can creating delightful things out of my existence, because that's what brings me awake and that's what brings me alive. I — Elizabeth Gilbert

WHEN YOU'RE TRYING SOMETHING NEW,
YOU'RE TORN BETWEEN
ANTICIPATING A DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE
AND THINKING YOU'RE A FOOL TO
IGNORE WHAT YOU KNOW YOU LIKE. — Jenny Holzer

It is true that He does sometimes require of us things that to others seem hard. But when the will is once surrendered, the revolutionized life plans become just the plans that are most pleasant, and the things that to others seem hard, are just the things that are easiest and most delightful. Do not let Satan deceive you into being afraid of God's plans for your life. — R.A. Torrey

How little we realize things till they come upon us personally. I believe I have been a perfect fiend of indifference, even intolerance, of deaf people, and now it's me. Well, I am determined to become the most Delightful Deaf Old Lady that ever existed and I am practicing to that end ... — Susan Hale

Delicious foods are drugs that will inflame the gut and rot the bones, but there is no harm if one eats moderately. Delightful things are all purveyors of destruction and decadence, but there is no regret if one enjoys them moderately. — Zicheng Hong

It is a place that 'grows upon you' every day. There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn. — Charles Dickens

It has made me better loving you ... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it's a delightful story. — Henry James

'Go back up.' The angel chuckled. 'Well, that would be easy enough if I wanted to go up, but I assure you that I've had quite enough of up to last forever.' The angel shook with mirth again. 'Or until tomorrow. Or whenever I'm overcome with the lust for it once more. It's quite delightful, except that it's terrifying. Which is, of course, how so many of the best things are.' — Leta Blake

Can't we just go in a dark corner like normal people who need to hide from highly trained evil killers?" she said.
"What, and let everyone imagine all the delightful things two jinn can do in the dark?"
"You're unbelievable."
"Thank you. — Heather Demetrios

But that would be terrible queer, Anne. And what would Mrs Harmon Andrews say?"
"Ah, there's the rub," sighed Anne. "There are so many things in life we cannot do because of the fear of what Mrs Harmon Andrews would say. What delightful things we might do were it not for Mrs Harmon Andrews! — L.M. Montgomery

Meditation is another dimension of natural beauty. People talk about appreciating natural beauty-climbing mountains, seeing giraffes and tigers in Africa, and all sorts of things. But nobody seems to appreciate this kind of natural beauty of ourselves. This is actually far more beautiful than flora and fauna, far more fantastic, far more painful and colorful and delightful. — Chogyam Trungpa

In my life I had come to realize that when things were going very well indeed it was just the time to anticipate trouble. And, conversely, I learned from pleasant experience that at the most despairing crisis, when all looked sour beyond words, some delightful break was apt to lurk just around the corner. — Amelia Earhart

What do you think an artist is? ... he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war. — Pablo Picasso

I love the feel of hitting the ball hard, the pleasure of a rally. It is these things that make tennis the delightful game that it is. — Helen Wills Moody

Not that we must always partake of [God's feast] solemnly. "God who made good laughter" forbid. It is one of the difficult and delightful subtleties of life that we must deeply acknowledge certain things to be serious and yet retain the power and will to treat them often as lightly as a game. — C.S. Lewis