Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud — We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light.

Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace, Secret joys and secret smiles, Little pretty infant wiles.

We call “happiness” a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.

The experience of this sweet life.

Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down.
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover over my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.

Joy tends to involve some transcendence of self. It’s when the skin barrier between you and some other person or entity fades away and you feel fused together. Joy is present when mother and baby are gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes, when a hiker is overwhelmed by beauty in the woods and feels at one with nature, when a gaggle of friends are dancing deliriously in unison. Joy often involves self-forgetting.

The second childhood of a saint is the early infancy of a happy immortality, as we believe.

Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.

Childhood whose very happiness is love.

Both were so young, and one so innocent,
That bathing pass'd for nothing; Juan seem'd
To her, as 'twere, the kind of being sent,
Of whom these two years she had nightly dream'd, A something to be loved, a creature meant
To be her happiness, and whom she deem'd
To render happy; all who joy would win
Must share it,––Happiness was born a twin.

“Joy is not based on circumstances. You can experience a deep, abiding joy no matter what you have to be happy or unhappy about in your world. Joyful people radiate something deeper, something based in their heart and will. Others sense this joy and feel uplifted. I realized that’s what the phrase Scatter Joy is all about—reflecting that deep and abiding joy to the world. “

I wish you joy. To spend life's fleeting days mid joy that never meets an evil hour is to be blessed beyond compare.

Joy is an outward sign of inward faith in the promises of God.

Glad and joyous and sweet is the Blissful lovely Cheer of our Lord to our souls.