Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.
To confer duration is not always in our power. We must snatch the present moment, and employ it well, without too much solicitude for the future, and content ourselves with reflecting that our part is performed. We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure. To be happy at home is the ultimate end of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate.