We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment: the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.
The happy man is he who distinguishes the boundary between desire and delight, and stands firmly on the higher ground,he who knows that pleasure is not only not possession, but is often to be lost, and always to be endangered by it.
There is a greater difference both in the stages of life and in the seasons of the year than in the conditions of men: yet the healthy pass through the seasons, from the clement to the unclement, not only unreluctant but rejoicingly, knowing that the worst will soon finish, and the best begin anew; and we are desirous of pushing forward into every stage of life, excepting that only which ought reasonably to allure us most, as opening to us the Via sacra, along which we move in triumph to our eternal country. We labour to get through a crowd. Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, in everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us.
I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a Book which, to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.