Whoever commits to paper what he suffers becomes a melancholy author: but he becomes a serious author when he tells us what he suffered and why he now reposes in joy.
Joy is the wild card of life; it supersedes every other formula for success. If you can find a way to create joy, you can rise beyond all external factors. If you can play at whatever you are doing, you are the master of your life.
In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.
From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.
Shakespeare is one of the reasons I've stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words... I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.
Each human being has the right to seek out joy, joy being understood as something which makes one content - not necessarily that which makes others content.
There is little that separates humans from other sentient beings - we all feel joy, we all deeply crave to be alive and to live freely, and we all share this planet together.
Within the framework of the Buddhist Path, reflecting on suffering has tremendous importance because -realizing the nature of suffering, you will develop greater resolve to put an end to the causes of suffering and the unwholesome deeds which lead to suffering. And it will increase your enthusiasm for engaging in the wholesome actions and deeds which lead to happiness and joy.
Did my infancy succeed another age of mine that dies before it? Was it that which I spent within my mother's womb?... And what before that life again, O God of my joy, was I anywhere or in any body?