Gladness In Life Quotes & Sayings

Praise is God's sunlight in the heart. It destroys sin germs. It ripens the fruits of the Spirit. It is the oil of gladness that lubricates life's activities. — Smith Wigglesworth

Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours ... never doubt the excellence and permanence of what is yet to be. Join the great company of those who make the barren places of life fruitful with kindness. — Helen Keller

Loneliness

It's Hell for us to draw the fetters
Of life in alienation, stiff.
All people prefer to share gladness,
And nobody - to share grief.

As a king of air, I'm lone here,
The pain lives in my heart, so grim,
And I can see that, to the fear
Of fate, years pass me by like dreams;

And comes again with, touched by gold,
The same dream, gloomy one and old.
I see a coffin, black and sole,
It waits: why to detain the world?

There will be not a sad reflection,
There will be (I am betting on)
Much more gaily celebration
When I am dead, than - born. — Mikhail Lermontov

He does not want a girl who trifles with Christianity. He wants a woman who is radically given to Christ. He does not want a girl who prays tepid, lukewarm prayers. He wants a woman who lives in defiance of the powers of Hell. He does not want a girl who is self-adorning with the latest fashions and trends. He wants a woman who is adorned with the inner jewelry of Christ-given holiness. He does not want a girl who dishonors and belittles her parents. He wants a woman who honors the authorities God has placed in her life and serves them with charity and gladness. He does not want a girl whose Bible is an accessory to her wardrobe. He wants a woman whose hunger and thirst is to know the Lord, and who diligently feasts upon His Word. He does not want a girl whose tongue is a deceptive weapon of selfishness. He wants a woman whose words drip with the honey of the name of Jesus. — Leslie Ludy

Joy and grief are never far apart. In the same street the shutters of one house are closed, while the curtains of the next are brushed by shadow of the dance. A wedding-party returns from church, and a funeral winds to its door. The smiles and the sadness of life are the tragi-comedy of Shakespeare. Gladness and sighs brighten and dim the mirror he beholds. — Robert Aris Willmott

We weep for gladness, weep for grief;
The tears they are the same;
We sigh for longing, and relief;
The sighs have but one name,
And mingled in the dying strife,
Are moans that are not sad
The pangs of death are throbs of life,
Its sighs are sometimes glad. — George MacDonald

The West in the voice of her thundering cannon had said at the door of Japan, Let there be a nation - and there was a Nation. And now that it has come into existence, why do you not feel in your heart of hearts a pure feeling of gladness and say that it is good? Why is it that I saw in an English paper an expression of bitterness at Japan's boasting of her superiority of civilization - the thing that the British, along with other nations, has been carrying on for ages without blushing? Because the idealism of selfishness must keep itself drunk with a continual dose of self-laudation. But the same vices which seem so natural and innocuous in its own life make it surprised and angry at their unpleasantness when seen in other nations. — Rabindranath Tagore

If I could, I would ask the world to make me skates so that I could find its frozen water and set myself free to smile, laugh, dance and cheer.

I'd see the boundaries that would be in a world frozen in its place and they would keep me safe, away from where the waters warm, away from the stares, away from the thoughts that melt and tear.

I would ask the world to skate with me, looking at the gladness I had found, knowing, really knowing, there was nothing left to fear.

I think then we would be free to live life as we could, with more in common than apart, the fog would lift, the confusion would end and true understanding would hold us dear. — Liane Holliday Willey

The great controversy is ended. Sin and sinners are no more. The entire universe is clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beats through the vast creation. From Him who created all, flow life and light and gladness, throughout the realms of illimitable space. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things, animate and inanimate, in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love. — Ellen G. White

If you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. — George Eliot

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance. — Samuel Johnson

God ... made childhood joyous, full of life, bubbling over with laughter, playful, bright and sunny. We should put into their childhood days just as much sunshine and gladness, just as much cheerful pleasure as possible. Pour in the sunshine about them in youth. Let them be happy, encourage all innocent joy, provide pleasant games for them, romp and play with them; be a child again among them. Then God's blessing will come upon your home, and your children will grow up sunny-hearted, gentle, affectionate, joyous themselves and joy-bearers to the world. — J.R. Miller

Annie said her prayers, read her Bible, and tried not to forget God. Ah! could she only have known that God never forgot her, whether she forgot him or not, giving her sleep in her dreary garret, gladness even in Murdoch Malison's school-room, and the light of life everywhere! — George MacDonald

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. — Frederick Buechner

We are only asking you to give to Christ that which you give to others, to transfer the old emotions, the blessed emotions, the exercise of which makes gladness in the life here below, to transfer them to Him, and to rest safe in the Lord. Faith is trust. — Alexander MacLaren

Embrace love; it's the best gift you'll ever find in life. Lift your joy off the ground by loving what you do and doing what you love. — Israelmore Ayivor

Know ye not that there is here in this world a secret confraternity, which one might call the Company of Melancholiacs? That people there are who by natural constitution have been given a different nature and disposition than the others; that have a larger heart and a swifter blood, that wish and demand more, have stronger desires and a yearning which is wilder and more ardent than that of the common herd. They are fleet as children over whose birth good fairies have presided; their eyes are opened wider; their senses are more subtile in all their perceptions. The gladness and joy of life, they drink with the roots of their heart, the while the others merely grasp them with coarse hands. — Jens Peter Jacobsen

No one has success until he has the abounding life. This is made up of the many-fold activity of energy, enthusiasm and gladness. It is to spring to meet the day with a thrill at being alive. It is to go forth to meet the morning in an ecstasy of joy. It is to realize the oneness of humanity. — Lilian Whiting

The poetry of the new year is problematically punctual. An impeccable guest who arrives on time when you are running frantically behind schedule. Catching you precisely at that awkward stage of housecleaning when the contents of closet and cupboard are strewn across the room and there is no sensible place left to sit down. No, you haven't had a chance to change the guest room towels, your clothes or your habits. It is at this stage that you begin to stammer out apologies and resolutions. The visitor fixes you with a gaze that breaks like dawn over your clutter and chagrin. 'What a beautiful life,' murmurs your guest, pressing an oddly shaped package into your hands. Gladness rises in the heart like a cloud of hummingbirds. Always the same, unpredictable, utterly original gift. You consider the paradox of that as you hold it between your palms. Like freshly kneaded dough: this brand new day. — Pavithra K. Mehta

And if we fail at marriage, we are lucky we don't have to fail with the force of our whole life. I would like there to be an eighth sacrament: the sacrament of divorce. Like Communion, it is a slim white wafer on the tongue. Like confession, it is forgiveness. Forgiveness is important not so much because we've done wrong as because we feel we need to be forgiven. Family, friends, God, whoever loves us forgives us, takes us in again. They are thrilled by our life, our possibilities, our second chances. They weep with gladness that we did not have to die. ( — Ann Patchett

There is little we can point to in our lives as deserving anything but God's wrath. Our best moments have been mostly grotesque parodies. Our best loves have been almost always blurred wtih selfishness and deceit. But there is something to which we can point. Not anything that we ever did or were, but something that was done for us by another. Not our own lives, but the life of one who died in our behalf and yet is still alive. This is our only glory and our only hope. And the sound that it makes is the sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that floats through the night air from a great banquet. — Frederick Buechner

I have for many years endeavored to make this vital truth clear; and still people marvel when I tell them that I am happy. They imagine that my limitations weigh heavily upon my spirit, and chain me to the rock of despair. Yet, it seems to me, happiness has very little to do with the senses. If we make up our minds that this is a drab and purposeless universe, it will be that, and nothing else. On the other hand, if we believe that the earth is ours, and that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy upon the hills and gladness in the fields because the Artist in our souls glorifies creation. Surely, it gives dignity to life to believe that we are born into this world for noble ends, and that we have a higher destiny than can be accomplished within the narrow limits of this physical life. — Helen Keller

Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!
Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.
The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.
The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling, and it scatters gems in profusion.
Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling, and gladness without measure. The heaven's river has drowned its banks and the flood of joy is abroad. — Rabindranath Tagore

Follow Christ in the denial of all the wills of self, and then all is put away that separates you from God; the heaven born new creature will come to life in you, which alone knows and enjoys the things of God, and has his daily food of gladness in that manifold blessed, and blessed, which Christ preached on the mount. — William Law

Yes, we are raw. Yes, we are in the dark belly of a whale. Yes, we ache. Who can be Jesus' "little sunbeam" at such a time? Would Jesus even want such a thing? He is after much more than happiness in our lives. He is after a sustaining joy and he will give us that joy by giving us himself, whether through the small gifts of life that bring us gladness or through the dark night of suffering. Sweeping affliction under the rug of our heart, therefore, is simple denial, an act of cowardice, and act of ungratefulness. We must dare to look it square in the eyes. — Ben Palpant

We ask God to endow human souls with justice so that they may be fair and may strive to provide for the comfort of all that each member of humanity may pass his life in the utmost comfort and welfare. Then this material world will become the very paradise of the Kingdom this elemental earth will be in a heavenly state and all the servants of God will live in the utmost joy happiness and gladness. We must all strive and concentrate all our thoughts in order that such happiness may accrue to the world of humanity. — Abdu'l- Baha

Thus it is that our faith and trust in our Heavenly Father, so far as this mortal experience is concerned, consists not simply of faith and gladness that He exists, but is also a faith and trust that, if we are humble, He will tutor us, aiding our acquisition of needed attributes and experiences while we are in mortality. We trust not only the Designer but also His design of life itself, including our portion thereof! — Neal A. Maxwell

Great Love has many attributes, and shrines For varied worshippers, but his force divine Shows most its many-named fulness in the man Whose nature multitudinously mixed
Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought
Resists all easy gladness, all content Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul Flooded with consciousness of good that is Finds life one bounteous answer. — George Eliot

Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.
But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life. — Sun Tzu

It also explains why the gospel of the kingdom has such transforming power in human life. For that gospel opens the kingdom to everyone, no matter their classification, and it enables us really to become a different kind of person, beyond all condemnation, blame, and shame, and to know it. Those who mourn, when they step into the kingdom of the heavens, are "given beauty in place of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of grief, and garments of praise in place of a spirit of despair" (Isa. 61:3). — Dallas Willard

I wonder sometimes if I'm not, after all, a piece in some other player's game, following blindly his grand designs without ever knowing that my path along the board is only a feint, while the important matters are played out elsewhere by other men.
But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: To see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost. When a life spins out as joyfully as mine has done, then the price, one paid so painfully, is now recalled in gladness. I have received full value. Here among the shepherds, my cup is filled with the water of life; it overflows. — Orson Scott Card

I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave even the smallest trace. So that all his life her son would feel gladness unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined city of steel in America. Each time almost remembering something maybe important that got lost. — Jack Gilbert

The whole history of the Christian life is a series of resurrections ... Every time we find our hearts are troubled, that we are not rejoicing in God, a resurrection must follow; a resurrection out of the night of troubled thought into the gladness of the truth. — George MacDonald

When Maggie became conscious that she was the person he sought, she felt, in spite of all the thought that had gone before, a glowing gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole frame was set to joy and tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter
she was ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment seemed a keen vibrating consciousness poised above please or pain. This one, this last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the warmth of the present without those chill, eating thoughts of the past and the future. — George Eliot

Every year, I might almost say every day, that I live, I seem to see more clearly how all the rest and gladness and power of our Christian life hinges on one thing; and that is, taking God at His word, believing that He really means exactly what He says, and accepting the very words in which He reveals His goodness and grace, without substituting others or altering the precise modes and tenses which He has seen fit to use. — Frances Ridley Havergal

Our planet is poorly equipped for delight.
One must snatch gladness from the days that are.
In this life
it's not difficult to die.
To make life
is more difficult by far. — Vladimir Mayakovsky

As reason returned to me, memory came with it, and I saw that even on the worst days, when I thought I was utterly and completely miserable, I was nevertheless, and nearly all the time, extremely happy. That gave me something to think about. The discovery was not a pleasant one. It seemed to me that I was losing a great deal. I asked myself, wasn't I sad, hadn't I felt my life breaking up? Yes, that had been true; but each minute, when I stayed without moving in a corner of the room, the cool of the night and the stability of the ground made me breathe and rest on gladness. — Maurice Blanchot

In this scheme of things we don't create our lives; we are summoned by life. The important answers are not found inside, they are found outside. This perspective begins not within the autonomous self, but with the concrete circumstances in which you happen to be embedded. This perspective begins with an awareness that the world existed long before you and will last long after you, and that in the brief span of your life you have been thrown by fate, by history, by chance, by evolution, or by God into a specific place with specific problems and needs. Your job is to figure certain things out: What does this environment need in order to be made whole? What is it that needs repair? What tasks are lying around waiting to be performed? As the novelist Frederick Buechner put it, At what points do my talents and deep gladness meet the world's deep need? — David Brooks

The heart overflows with gladness, and leaps and dances for the joy it has found in God. In this experience the Holy Spirit is active, and has taught us in the flash of a moment the deep secret of joy. You will have as much joy and laughter in life as you have faith in God. — Martin Luther

Within this restless, hurried, modern world
We took our hearts' full pleasure - You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
And spent the lading of our argosy.
Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion,
And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.
But all this crowded life has been to thee
No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell. — Oscar Wilde

The river itself portrays humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes when the rocks and stone-clad hills loom large ahead, and eternity itself would be needed to carve a passage, there is an easy way around. The discovery of it makes the river sing with gladness and turns the murmurous deeps to living water, bright with ripples and foam. — Myrtle Reed

The Bird of Time

O Bird of Time on your fruitful bough
What are the songs you sing? ...
Songs of the glory and gladness of life,
Of poignant sorrow and passionate strife,
And the lilting joy of the spring;
Of hope that sows for the years unborn,
And faith that dreams of a tarrying morn,
The fragrant peace of the twilight's breath,
And the mystic silence that men call death.

O Bird of Time, say where did you learn
The changing measures you sing? ...
In blowing forests and breaking tides,
In the happy laughter of new-made brides,
And the nests of the new-born spring;
In the dawn that thrills to a mother's prayer,
And the night that shelters a heart's despair,
In the sigh of pity, the sob of hate,
And the pride of a soul that has conquered fate. — Sarojini Naidu

Well, that was life. Gladness and pain ... hope and fear ... and change. Always change! You could not help it. You had to let the old go and take the new to your heart ... learn to love it and then let it go in turn. Spring, lovely as it was, must yield to summer and summer lose itself in autumn. The birth ... the bridal ... the death ... — L.M. Montgomery

Christianity has been cruel in much to the human race. It has quenched much of the sweet joy and gladness of life; it has caused the natural passions and affections of it to be held as sins ... — Ouida

The old cowboy doffs his hat and says, "Much obliged," as an expression of gratitude. I'm obligated to you, he is saying. The words imply humility: that I cannot get along by myself. They imply reliance: that I need the people around me, that I need God. They imply value: that I recognize the cost involved in the giving. And the words imply gladness: that my life has been filled with the joy that comes when human beings connect in gracious ways. That's — Gordon MacDonald