Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment. The true state of every nation is the state of common life. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation. The caprices of voluntary agents laugh at calculation. It is not always that there is a strong reason for a great event.
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.
If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas. They operate unseen and unregarded, as change of air makes us sick or healthy, though we breathe it without attention, and only know the particles that impregnate it by their salutary or malignant effects. He that lives in torpid insensibility, wants nothing of a carcase but putrefaction. An event which spreads distraction over half the commercial world, assembles the trading companies in councils and committees, and shakes the nerves of a thousand stockjobbers, is read by the landlord and the farmer with frigid indifference. But to hope happiness and immortality is equally vain.