Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory - but so are those of the ballet, or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living.
Serving throughout the world is a great missionary force going about doing good. Missionaries teach truth. They dispel darkness. They spread joy. They bring precious souls to Christ.
The ambitious will always be first in the crowd; he presseth forward, he looketh not behind him. More anguish is it to his mind to see one before him, than joy to leave thousands at a distance
O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.
Ah gentle pair, ye little think how nigh Your change approaches, when all these delights Will vanish and deliver ye to woe, More woe, the more your taste is now of joy.
Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.
The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life... three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty all belonging to the oldest festal joys.
Man's freedom is never in being saved from troubles, but it is the freedom to take trouble for his own good, to make the trouble an element in his joy.