joy

See Also: CONTENTMENT, HAPPINESS, PLEASURE

1. Agitated with delight as a waving sea —Arabian Nights
2. Exhilaration spread through his breast like some pleasurable form of heartburn —Nadine Gordimer
3. A joyous feeling … shot up, like the grass in spring —Ivan Turgenev
4. (Heart is) as full of sunshine as a hay field —Josh Billings
5. Bliss … as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle —Katherine Mansfield

   The simile sets the mood for one of Mansfield’s best known stories, Bliss.

6. Ecstacy warm and rich as wine —Harvey Swados
7. Elated … like a lion tamer who has at last found the whip crack which will subdue the most ferocious of his big cats —John Mortimer
8. Enjoy life like a young porpoise —George Santayana
9. Gorged with joy like a pigeon too fat to fly —Marge Piercy
10. Great joys, like griefs, are silent —Shackerley Marmion
11. Gurgle like a meadowlark —W. P. Kinsella
12. Heart … soared like a geyser —William Peden
13. Her heart became as light as a bubble —Antonia White
14. Joy careens and smashes through them like a speeding car out of control —Irving Feldman
15. Joy … felt it rumbling within him like a subterranean river —André Malraux
16. Joyful as carollers —David Leavitt
17. Joy is like the ague [malaria]; one good day between two bad ones —Danish proverb
18. Joy leaping within me … like a trout in a brook —George Garrett
19. Joy rises in me like a summer morn —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
20. Joys are bubble-like; what makes them bursts them too —P. J. Bailey
21. Joy, simple as the wildflowers —George Garrett
22. Joys … like angel visits, short and bright —John Norris

    The angel visit comparison has been as effectively linked to goodness and fame.

23. Joys met by chance … flow for us fresh and strong, like new wine when it gushes from the press —André Gide
24. The joys we’ve missed in youth are like … lost umbrellas; we musn’t spend the rest of life wondering where they are —Henry James
25. (He is) jubilant as a flag unfurled —Dorothy Parker
26. Men without joy seem like corpses —Kaethe Kolwitz
27. My heart lifted like a wave —Norman Mailer
28. Our joys are about me like a net —Iris Murdoch
29. Rose and fell, like a floating swimmer, on easygoing great waves of voluptuous joy —Christina Stead
30. A strong exhilaration ran through her like the fumes of wine —Ben Ames Williams
31. The sun in my heart comes up like a Javanese orange —Dylan Thomas
32. Their joys … ran into each other like water paints mingling to form delicate new colors —Sumner Locke Elliott
33. Triumphant as if I’d just hurled a shutout —W. P. Kinsella

    The term shutout was particularly appropriate in Kinsella’s baseball novel, Shoeless Joe. Baseball expressions do, however, work well within other contexts.

34. A wonderful feeling enveloped him, as if light were being shaken about him —John Cheever