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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: "For the hope of happiness," said he, "is so strongly impressed
that the longest experience is not able to efface it. Of the
present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess
the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance,
imagination paints it as desirable. But the time will surely come
when desire will no longer be our torment and no man shall be
wretched but by his own fault.
"This," said a philosopher who had heard him with tokens of great
impatience, "is the present condition of a wise man. The time is
already come when none are wretched but by their own fault.
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness which Nature
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