Moral Letters Vol III

1.

You need never believe that anyone who depends upon happiness is happy!

It is a fragile support—this delight in adventitious things; the joy which entered from without will some day depart.

But that joy which springs wholly from oneself is leal and sound; it increases and attends us to the last; while all other things which provoke the admiration of the crowd are but temporary Goods.

You may reply: “What do you mean?

Cannot such things serve both for utility and for delight?” Of course.

But only if they depend on us, and not we on them.