No joy without alloy. [ Proverb ]

Joy is the best of wine. [ George Eliot ]

Memory, bosom-spring of joy. [ Coleridge ]

Joy surfeited turns to sorrow. [ Proverb ]

Sleep in peace, and wake in joy. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

Hope is the ruddy morning of joy. [ Richter ]

Love divine, all love excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down. [ Toplady ]

Be our joy three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang;
Dare, never grudge the throe! [ Browning ]

We shape ourselves the joy or fear
Of which the coming life is made,
And fill our Future's atmosphere
With sunshine or with shade. [ Whittier ]

Joys
Are bubble-like - what makes them,
Bursts them too. [ Bailey ]

One hour of joy dispels the cares
And sufferings of a thousand years. [ Baptiste ]

Capacity for joy admits temptation. [ Mrs. Browning ]

Joy softens more hearts than tears. [ Mme. de Sartory ]

To weep for joy is a kind of manna. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Joy, and Temperance, and Repose,
Slam the door on the doctor's nose. [ Longfellow ]

Benign restorer of the soul!
Who ever fly'st to bring relief.
When first we feel the sure control,
Of love or pity, joy or grief. [ Rogers ]

Brief is sorrow, and endless is joy. [ Schiller ]

And the stern joy which warriors feel
In foemen worthy of their steel. [ Scott ]

No joy so great but runneth to an end;
No hap so hard but may in time amend. [ Robert Southwell ]

Light is the burden love lays on;
Content and love brings peace and joy,
What mair hae queens upon a throne? [ Burns ]

True joy is a serene and sober motion. [ Seneca ]

True joy is only hope put out of fear. [ Lord Brooke ]

Twist ye, twine ye! even so,
Mingle shades of joy and woe,
Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife,
In the thread of human life. [ Scott ]

Joyousness is Nature's garb of health. [ Lamartine ]

The cup of joy is heaviest when empty. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

Joy is the mainspring in the whole
Of endless Nature's calm rotation.
Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll
In the great Time-piece of Creation. [ Schiller ]

Life protracted is protracted woe,
Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy,
And shuts up all the passages of joy. [ Johnson ]

A blithe heart makes a blooming visage. [ Scotch Proverb ]

I have a heart with room for every joy. [ Bailey ]

Sorrows remembered sweeten present joy. [ Pollok ]

Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells; hail, horrors! [ Milton ]

My grief lies onward, and my joy behind. [ Lucrece ]

Heaven, the treasury of everlasting joy! [ William Shakespeare ]

My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such perfect joy therein I find.
That it excels all other bliss
That God or Nature hath assign'd,
Though much I want that most would have.
Yet still my mind forbids to crave. [ Wm. Byrd ]

When you give, give with joy and smiling. [ Joubert ]

O radiant Dark! O darkly fostered ray!
Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day. [ George Eliot ]

Something the heart must have to cherish,
Must love, and joy, and sorrow learn;
Something with passion clasp, or perish,
And in itself to ashes burn. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Forsaken ]

Joy in one's work is the consummate tool. [ Phillips Brooks ]

Music exalts each joy, allays each grief.
Expels diseases, softens every pain,
Subdues the rage of poison and of plague. [ Armstrong ]

The soul was made for joy and good cheer. [ Newell Dwight Hillis ]

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives. [ Auerbach ]

Contentment opes the source of every joy. [ Beattie ]

Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear. [ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream ]

I wish you all the joy that you can wish. [ William Shakespeare ]

I know
The past and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly;
For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul
Requires no other heaven. [ Shelley ]

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. [ Bible ]

Base envy withers at another's joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach. [ Thomson ]

The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love. [ Bailey ]

Religion without joy, - it is no religion. [ Theodore Parker ]

Joys are our wings, sorrows are our spurs. [ Richter ]

All who joy would win
Must share it - happiness was born a twin. [ Byron ]

What is joy? A sunbeam between two clouds. [ Madame Deluzy ]

Without kindness, there can be no true joy. [ Carlyle ]

And I have loved thee. Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers. [ Byron ]

Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief. [ William Shakespeare ]

Great joy is only earned by great exertion. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

His folded flock secure, the shepherd home
Hies merry-hearted; and by turns relieves
The ruddy milk-maid of her brimming pail;
The beauty whom perhaps his witless heart.
Unknowing what the joy-mixed anguish means,
Sincerely loves, by that best language shown
Of cordial glances, and obliging deeds. [ Thomson ]

Far beneath a soul immortal is a mortal joy. [ Young ]

Grief should be
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate,
Conforming, cleansing, raising, making free. [ Aubrey de Vere (the younger) ]

True friends have no solitary joy or sorrow. [ William Ellery Channing ]

Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair;
A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given;
And death was safety and great joy to find;
But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven. [ Michael Angelo ]

A sorrow shared is but half a trouble,
But a joy that's shared is a joy made double. [ Proverb ]

Words are less needful to sorrow than to joy. [ Helen Jackson ]

Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least virtue; life's poor span
Make not an ell by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains;
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains. [ George Herbert ]

Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home
Can be contented to applaud myself, with joy,
To see how plump my bags are and my barns. [ Ben Jonson ]

Sudden joy kills sooner than excessive grief. [ Proverb ]

Prophets of fragrance, beauty, joy, and song. [ Ebenezer Elliott ]

Dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
They have a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being. [ Byron ]

It will be a joy to us to recall this, some day. [ Virgil ]

Sweets with sweets war not; joy delights in joy. [ William Shakespeare ]

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined!
No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet.
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. [ Byron ]

Life with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is. [ Browning ]

Joy is an import; joy is an exchange;
Joy flies monopolists: it calls for two;
Rich fruit! Heaven planted! never plucked by one. [ Young ]

Trust me, that for the instructed, time will come
When they shall meet no object but may teach
Some acceptable lesson to their minds
Of human suffering or human joy.
For them shall all things speak of man. [ Wordsworth ]

Joy is an exchange.
Joy flies monopolies; it calls for two:
Rich fruit, heaven-planted, never plucked by one. [ Edward Young ]

Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing. [ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida ]

These spiritual joys are dogged by no sad sequels. [ Glanvill ]

Let fate do her worst; there are moments of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy;
Which come in the nighttime of sorrow and care,
And bring back the features that joy used to wear. [ Moore ]

Profound joy has more of severity than gaiety in it. [ Montaigne ]

Women are angels, wooing:
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing:
That she beloved knows naught, that knows not this -
Men prize the thing ungamed more than it is. [ William Shakespeare ]

The joy of Jerusalem depends upon the peace of Zion. [ Proverb ]

Yes - it was love - if thoughts of tenderness.
Tried in temptation, strengthened by distress,
Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,
And yet - oh more than all! - untired by time.
Which nor defeated hope, nor baffled wile,
Could render sullen were she near to smile,
Nor rage could fire, nor sickness fret to vent
On her one murmur of his discontent;
Which still would meet with joy, with calmness part.
Lest that his look of grief should reach her heart;
Which nought removed, nor menaced to remove -
If there be love in mortals— this was love! [ Byron ]

It is of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy. [ Bailey ]

An infant when it gazes on the light,
A child the moment when it drains the breast,
A devotee when soars the Host in sight,
An Arab with a stranger for a guest,
A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
A miser filling his most hoarded chest,
Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping
As they who watch over what they love while sleeping. [ Byron ]

There is a sweet joy that comes to us through sorrow. [ Spurgeon ]

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. [ John Keats, Endymion ]

To feel envy is human; to joy in mischief is devilish. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

O memory, thou bitter sweet, - both a joy and a scourge! [ Madame de Stael ]

In every exalted joy, there mingles a sense of gratitude. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin. [ Byron ]

Constant quiet fills my peaceful breast with unmixed joy. [ Dillon ]

My joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Home should be the center of joy, equatorial and tropical. [ Beecher ]

How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! [ Robert Browning ]

There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know. [ Tupper ]

How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping! [ Jane Porter ]

The most profound joy has more of gravity than gayety in it. [ Montague ]

Woman has a smile for every joy, and a tear for every sorrow. [ Sainte-Foix ]

Variety alone gives joy; the sweetest meats the soonest cloy. [ Prior ]

There is not a joy the world can give like that it takes away. [ Byron ]

Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter,
To what shall their rarity be likened?
What price shall count their worth?
Perfect and much to be desired, and giving joy with riches,
No lovely thing on earth can picture all their beauty. [ Tupper ]

Tears of joy, like summer rain-drops, are pierced by sunbeams. [ H. Ballou ]

Joys too exquisite to last, and yet more exquisite when passed. [ Montgomery ]

Joy never feasts so high as when the first course is of misery. [ Suckling ]

Not in pulling down, but in building up, does man find pure joy. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Joy has this in common with pain, that it bereaves man of reason. [ Platen ]

As night succeeds the day, so do joy and grief succeed each other. [ Sophocles ]

Great grief makes sacred those upon whom its hand is laid.
Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate. [ Horace Greeley ]

Whoever has loved knows all that life contains of sorrow and of joy. [ George Sand ]

No greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand. [ Dante ]

We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Joy, being altogether wanting. It doth remember me the more of sorrow. [ William Shakespeare ]

He who can conceal his joys is greater than he who can hide his griefs. [ Lavater ]

Tears of joy are the dew in which the sun of righteousness is mirrored. [ Jean Paul ]

The joy of a strong nature is as cloudless as its suffering is desolate. [ Ouida ]

Of all the lights you carry in your face, joy shines farthest out to sea.

The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. [ Bible ]

Love mocks all sorrows but its own, and damps each joy he does not yield. [ Lady Dacre ]

Deep joy is a serene and sober emotion, rarely evinced in open merriment. [ Mme. Roland ]

Joy is more divine than sorrow; for joy is bread, and sorrow is medicine. [ Beecher ]

There should be such gladness and joy in life that all may partake of it. [ Lilian Whiting ]

It is not the victory that makes the joy of noble hearts, but the combat. [ Montalembert ]

And scenes, long past, of joy and pain, Came wildering over his aged brain. [ Scott ]

Live in perpetual sunshine; in fact, be sunshine; be the very spirit of joy. [ Christian D. Larson ]

The heart that is to be filled to the brim with holy joy must be held still. [ Bovee ]

The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy. [ William Shakespeare ]

True gladness doth not always speak; joy bred and born but in the tongue is weak. [ Ben Jonson ]

Woman is the Sunday of man: not his repose only, but his joy; the salt of his life. [ Michelet ]

Year chases year, decay pursues decay; still drops some joy from withering life away. [ Dr. Johnson ]

The tear of joy is a pearl of the first water; the mourning tear, only of the second. [ Jean Paul ]

The kiss you take is paid by that you give: The joy is mutual, and I'm still in debt. [ Lord Lansdowne ]

One drop of hatred left in the cup of joy turns the most blissful draught into poison. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

One year of joy, another of comfort, the rest of content, make the married life happy. [ Proverb ]

In this world, full often our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast. [ Beecher ]

How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy. [ Bible ]

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing ]

Of all the joys that brighten suffering earth, what joy is welcomed like a new-born child? [ Mrs. Norton ]

We should distinguish between laughter inspired by joy, and that which arises from mockery. [ Goldsmith ]

The joy of heaven will begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven, and do its duties. [ Theodore Parker ]

Who partakes in another's joys is a more humane character than he who partakes in his griefs. [ Lavater ]

When the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven. [ Shelley ]

Joy is a flame which association alone can keep alive, and which goes out unless communicated. [ Lamartine ]

No joy in nature is so sublimely affecting as the joy of a mother at the good fortune of a child. [ Manilius ]

Be work by day, guests at eve, weeks of toil, festive days of joy, the magic spell for thy future. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Joy is the ray of sunshine that brightens and opens those two beautiful flowers, Confidence and Hope. [ E. Souvestre ]

Trouble is a thing that will come without our call; but true joy will not spring up without ourselves. [ Bp. Patrick ]

There are in the human heart two cups, one for joy and one for sorrow, which empty themselves alternately. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]

The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed. [ Joubert ]

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy, and the dividing of our grief. [ Cicero ]

There is no beautifier of complexion or form or behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us. [ Emerson ]

Be sure to preserve an unruffled mind in adversity, as well as one restrained from immoderate joy in prosperity. [ Horace ]

One should sympathize with the joy, the beauty, the color of life - the less said about life's sores the better. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

Poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind, or left alone in its own magic hermitage. [ Sterling ]

Truth illuminates and gives joy; and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held. [ Matthew Arnold ]

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasures takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

One of the most effectual ways of pleasing and of making one's self loved is to be cheerful: joy softens more hearts than tears. [ Mme. de Sartory ]

They who minister to their neighbors exercise one of the normal human functions, and enter thereby into the joy of a larger life. [ George Hodges ]

No tongue can tell the joy of a pious mother, when her child is converted or turned from the way of folly to that of true wisdom. [ Mrs. Willard ]

There are moments of intense joy and grief, which every one has, at least, once in his life, that illuminate his character at once. [ Lavater ]

If time inflicts on thee many a wound, many a joy brings it too in its course; and one short hour of bliss outweighs a year of pains. [ Geibel ]

Perfect purity, fullness of joy, everlasting freedom, perfect rest, health and fruition, complete security, substantial and eternal good. [ Hannah More ]

The very first discovery of beauty strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties. [ Addison ]

Little joys refresh us constantly, like house-bread, and never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then satiety. [ Richter ]

You will find rest unto your souls when first you take on you the yoke of Christ, but joy only when you have borne it as long as He wills. [ John Ruskin ]

Music is the medicine of an afflicted mind, a sweet sad measure is the balm of a wounded spirit; and joy is heightened by exultant strains. [ Henry Giles ]

Give me but these, - a spirit tempest-tried, a brow unshrinking, and a soul of flame; the joy of conscious worth, its courage and its pride. [ R. T. Conrad ]

Sweet flower, thou tellest how hearts as pure and tender as thy leaf, as low and humble as thy stem, will surely know the joy that peace imparts. [ Percival ]

Everything comes and goes. Today in joy, tomorrow in sorrow. We advance, we retreat, we struggle; then, the eternal and profound silence of death! [ Victor Hugo ]

Great joy, especially after a sudden change and revolution of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue. [ Fielding ]

There are such things as a man shall remember with joy upon his death-bed; such as shall cheer and warm his heart even in that last and bitter agony. [ South ]

So far from genius discarding law, rather is it the supreme joy of genius to reenact the eternal and unwritten law in the chamber of its own intellect. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. It were almost to be wished that all true and faithful friends should expire on the same day. [ Fenelon ]

Even out of a cloudless heaven the flaming thunderbolt may strike; therefore in thy days of joy have a fear of the spiteful neighbourhood of misfortune. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Our souls, piercing through the impurity of flesh, behold the highest heaven, and thence bring knowledge to contemplate the ever-during glory and termless joy. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

Which of us that is thirty years old has not had his Pompeii? Deep under ashes lie life, youth, the careless sports, the pleasures and passions, the darling joy. [ William M. Thackeray ]

Grief sharpens the understanding and strengthens the soul, whereas joy seldom troubles itself about the former, and makes the latter either effeminate or frivolous. [ F. Schubert ]

Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence the expression of its yearning tenderness. [ Bovee ]

I value the education of the intellect not for its present joy alone, but for the greater growth it gives, the enlargement of the cup to take in more and higher joys. [ Parker ]

The good pilot knows the whereabouts of every sunken rock in the harbor; how much of joy there would be in the world if all men knew the sunken rocks in the harbor of life. [ Catherine A. Atmould ]

The very society of joy redoubles it; so that, whilst it lights upon my friend it rebounds upon myself, and the brighter his candle burns the more easily will it light mine. [ South ]

Woman has a smile for every joy, a tear for every sorrow, a consolation for every grief, an excuse for every fault, a prayer for every misfortune, and encouragement for every hope. [ Sainte-Foix ]

Here below is not the land of happiness: I know it now; it is only the land of toil, and every joy which comes to us is only to strengthen us for some greater labor that is to succeed. [ Fichte ]

He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers. [ Emerson ]

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away. [ Beecher ]

Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints. [ Pascal ]

Light is, in reality, more awful than darkness; modesty more majestic than strength; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of Antaeus or the thunder-clouds of Aetna. [ John Ruskin ]

Honest men esteem and value nothing so much in this world as a real friend. Such a one is as it were another self, to whom we impart our most secret thoughts, who partakes of our joy, and comforts us in our affliction; add to this, that his company is an everlasting pleasure to us. [ Pilpay ]

Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may but be talked of. [ Pascal ]

Other parts of the body assist the speaker, but these speak themselves. By them we ask, we promise, we invoke, we dismiss, we threaten, we entreat, we deprecate; we express fear, joy, grief, our doubts, our assent, our penitence; we show moderation, profusion; we mark number and time. [ Quintilian ]

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterwards rewarded by joy. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise - the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The silent power of books is a great power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them which those alone can know who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they may yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations. [ Henry Giles ]

If one could look a while through the chinks of heaven's door, and see the beauty and bliss of paradise; if he could but lay his ear to heaven, and hear the ravishing music of those seraphic spirits, and the anthems of praise which they sing, how would his soul be exhilarated and transported with joy. [ Watson ]

Joy wholly from without, is false, precarious, and short. From without it may be gathered; but, like gathered flowers, though fair, and sweet for a season, it must soon wither, and become offensive. Joy from within is like smelling the rose on the tree; it is more sweet and fair, it is lasting; and, I must add, immortal. [ Young ]

The joy resulting from the diffusion of blessings to all around us is the purest and sublimest that can ever enter the human mind, and can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. Next to the consolations of divine grace, it is the most sovereign balm to the miseries of life, both in him who is the object of it, and in him who exercises it. [ Bishop Porteus ]

The powers of music are felt or known by all men, and are allowed to work strangely upon the mind and the body, the passions and the blood; to raise joy and grief; to give pleasure and pain; to cure diseases, and the mortal sting of the tarantula; to give motions to the feet as well as the heart; to compose disturbed thoughts; to assist and heighten devotion itself. [ Sir W. Temple ]

The refining influence is the study of art, which is the science of beauty; and I find that every man values every scrap of knowledge in art, every observation of his own in it, every hint he has caught from another. For the laws of beauty are the beauty of beauty, and give the mind the same or a higher joy than the sight of it gives the senses. The study of art is of high value to the growth of the intellect. [ Emerson ]

The little I have seen of the world teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends. I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellowman with Him from whose hand it came. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Why has the beneficent Creator scattered over the face of the earth such a profusion of beautiful flowers? Why is it that every landscape has its appropriate flowers, every nation its national flowers, every rural home its home flowers? Why do flowers enter and shed their perfume over every scene of life, from the cradle to the grave? Why are flowers made to utter all voices of joy and sorrow in all varying scenes? It is that flowers have in themselves a real and natural significance; they have a positive relation to man; they correspond to actual emotions; they have their mission - a mission of love and mercy; they have their language, and from the remotest ages this language has found its interpreters. [ Henrietta Dumont ]

Mother! How many delightful associations cluster around that word! The innocent smiles of infancy, the gambols of boyhood, and the happiest hours of riper years! When my heart aches and my limbs are weary travelling the thorny path of life, I sit down on some mossy stone, and closing my eyes on real scenes, send my spirit back to the days of early life; I feel afresh my infant joys and sorrows, till my spirit recovers its tone, and is willing to pursue its journey. But in all these reminiscences my mother rises; if I seat myself upon my cushion, it is at her side; if I sing, it is to her ear; if I walk the walls or the meadows, my little hand is in my mother's, and my little feet keep company with hers; when my heart bounds with its best joy, it is because at the performance of some task, or the recitation of some verses, I receive a present from her hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps. [ Bishop Thomson ]

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]