Happiness vs Joy - Difference and Comparison

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From Diffen

	Happiness	Joy
Meaning:	Happiness is an emotion in which one experiences feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense pleasure.	Joy is the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation.
Causes:	Luck, fortune, other self pleasures	casued by over all contentment, soul satisfying incidents
Emotion:	Pleases a person	Warms ones heart
Time frame:	Momentary	Long lasting
Example:	Winning a lottery will make one happy	Giving birth to a child will bring joy.

Both Joy and Happiness are emotions where a person has feelings of contentment or satisfaction. But both these feelings may differ from each other based on the reasons causing the feeling and the nature of the feeling.

1 Meaning
2 Causes
3 Time
4 Emotion
5 Example
6 Opposites
7 References

[edit] Meaning

Joy is

the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation: She felt the joy of seeing her son's success.
a source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; something or someone greatly valued or appreciated: Her prose style is a pure joy.
the expression or display of glad feeling; festive gaiety.
a state of happiness or felicity.

Happiness is

the quality or state of being happy.
good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.

[edit] Causes

Hapiness may be caused by luck, good fortune or other person centric pleasures. Joy is caused by over all elation about a vivid levels of emotions. Joy may not be about self and be about others contentment also. Happiness is about the self's pleasure. Happiness may dwell on materialistic, wordly pleasure while Joy is derived from soul satisfying, emotional well being. While happiness comes from outside things, joy is about inner self. To quote an example here: If one wins a lottery of $10,000, they would be very happy but if that person works hard and sets up his business and earns $10,000, he would feel Joy. Though the ultimate benefit is the same but the cause being different makes the final emotion different.

[edit] Time

Happiness may be momentary and may not lost for a long time. This is because happiness is caused by reasons that may not influence long term contenment. Joy, on the other hand is more related to the inner self and may last for a longer period of time. When one feels happy, then he's happy for sometime over that subject, but one is overjoyed by something then that feeling lasts to content him for sometime. An example to clarify this can be: A person eats a good meal at a restaurant and likes it, he is happy about it. But he well forget about it later.
But when one makes that meal themselves for the first time and likes it, then it is joyous. This joyful feeling will be remembered by that person for a long time.

[edit] Emotion

Joy warms a person's heart while happiness merely pleases. This is also because of the difference in the reasons behind the two feelings. Happiness brings pleasure but Joy brings true contment to one's heart.

[edit] Example

Winning a lottery brings Happiness to a person. Giving birth to a child will bring joy to a person.

[edit] Opposites

One way to understand the difference between joy and happiness is to look at the opposites of the two feelings. The opposite of joy is fear while the opposite of happiness is unhappiness and misery.