Measure Your Success by the Degree of Joy You Experience - Shari Arison

We need joy as we need air. We need love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou’s words turn emotional needs into elemental ones, placing joy beside air, love beside water, and human connection beside the earth itself. By doing so, she refuses to treat happiness, affection, and communit...

Work is not a punishment for man; it is his reward and his strength, his glory and his pleasure. — George Sand

George Sand

George Sand’s statement begins by overturning a familiar complaint: that work is merely a burden imposed on human life. Instead, she recasts labor as something affirmative, even dignifying.

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa’s saying begins with a striking metaphor: joy is not merely a private feeling, but an instrument that reaches outward. By calling it a “net of love,” she suggests that joy gathers people in without force, p...

Adults can benefit from play as much as children. Go ahead and dance with your dog or build something just for fun. — Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz

Katz

At first glance, Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz’s quote sounds almost disarmingly simple, yet it challenges a common adult assumption: that play belongs mainly to childhood.

There is no true joy in a life lived closed up in the little shell of the self. — The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama

At its core, the Dalai Lama’s statement argues that a life centered only on personal comfort, status, or protection becomes emotionally cramped. The image of a ‘little shell’ suggests not strength but confinement: when p...

Whenever you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Jean Shinoda Bolen

Jean Shinoda Bolen’s words begin with a gentle but radical premise: joy is not a luxury to be postponed, but something worthy of deliberate space in our lives. Rather than treating soul-nourishing experiences as accident...