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No mockery in the world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping on it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.
Charlotte Brontė, in Villette, one of the saddest books I have ever read; said to better than Jane Eyre by George Eliot and Virgina Woolf.
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