never has come, be aware that wisdom is the one thing alone that happiness neither can sadden nor weary?  Those thinkers have learned to love wisdom with a far more intimate love whose lives have been happy, than those whose lives have been sad.  The wisdom forced into growth by misfortune is different far from the wisdom that ripens beneath happiness.  The first, where it seeks to console, must whisper of happiness; the other tells of itself.  He who is sad is taught by his wisdom that happiness yet may be his; he who is happy is taught by his wisdom that he may become wiser still.  The discovery of happiness may well be the great aim of wisdom; and we needs must be happy ourselves before we can know that wisdom itself contains all.

57.  There are some who are wholly unable to support the burden of joy.  There is a courage of happiness as well as a courage of sorrow.  It may even be true that permanent happiness calls for more strength in man than permanent sorrow; for the heart wherein wisdom is not delights more in the expectation of that which it has not yet, than in the full possession of all it has ever desired.  He in whom happiness dwells is amazed at the heart that finds aliment only in fear or in hope, and that cannot be nourished on what it possesses, though it possess all it ever desired.

We often see men who are strong and morally prudent whom happiness yet overcomes.  Not finding therein all they sought, they do not defend it, or cling to it, with the energy needful in life.  We must have already acquired some not inconsiderable wisdom to be undismayed at perceiving that happiness too has its sorrow, and to be not induced by this sorrow to think that ours cannot be the veritable happiness.  The most precious gift that happiness brings is the knowledge that springs up within us that it is not a thing of mere ecstasy, but a thing that bids us reflect.  It becomes far less rare, far less inaccessible, from the moment we know that its greatest achievement is to give to the soul that is able to prize it an increase of consciousness, which the soul could elsewhere never have found.  To know what happiness means is of far more importance to the soul of man than to enjoy it.  To be able long to love happiness great wisdom needs must be ours; but a wisdom still greater for us to perceive, as we lie in the bosom of cloudless joy, that the fixed and stable part of that joy is found in the force which, deep down in our consciousness, could render us happy still though misfortune wrapped us around.  Do not believe you are happy till you have been led by your happiness up to the heights whence itself disappears from your gaze, but leaving you still, unimpaired, the desire to live.