Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

The exercise of benevolence is joy to loving hearts: the more pain it costs, the more joy it is. Kind actions make us happy, and in such joy we find communion with the great heart of Jesus.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

Anyone who’s looked into a newborn’s innocent eyes should realize how incredible it is to be blessed with a new life.

There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.

First and foremost comes my family and my life with Brad. We have so much joy in raising our children and teaching them about the world that nothing really compares to that.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

There is no delight in owning anything unshared.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them – neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.

The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

For whatever trauma came with service in tough circumstances, we should take what we learned – take our post-traumatic growth – and, like past generations coming home, bring our sharpened strengths to bear, bring our attitude of gratitude to bear.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. But the grand problem, the most important problem, is to rejeuvenate women. To make women look young. Then their outlook changes. They feel more joyous.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

Test a servant while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and a wife in misfortune.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

To Marines, love of liberty is not an empty phrase… Rather, it’s displayed by blood, sweat, and tears for the fallen.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

WikiLeaks is a service to the population. Assange should get an award for – presidential medal of honor.

Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God’s Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen.

One thing I just want to say to the military families – while you might not wear a uniform, I know – we all know, the nation knows – that you serve and sacrifice right alongside of your loved ones. And we are so grateful and proud of all of you for your service to this nation.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

I don’t have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what’s appropriate or attractive.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

We give speeches and pin ribbons onto uniforms, etch names into walls. And all that is fine, but too often, all those tributes, all those words aren’t always backed up by action. And that felt like such a stark contrast to me, because, as we all know, our military is all about action.

Our love, our gratitude, our admiration for our men and women in uniform, our veterans and their families – all of that is bigger than any one party or any one election.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.

Joy is prayer; joy is strength: joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.