The Quest of Happiness (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Quest of Happiness<br><br>In the "Journal Intime," - that Thomas Kempis of our century, - we are told that "the unfinished is nothing." Was not this the explanation of Amiel's ineffective life Did he not glance too disdainfully over the lower world, forsooth because it was "unfinished" Did he not sit, a too scornful guest, at the bountiful table of the actual, leaving its viands untouched and its wines untasted, dreaming always of a nectar and ambrosia which only the gods on Olympus may taste<br><br>According to the dictum of the gentle Swiss pessimist we ought to reject Durer's famous crayon sketches, Coleridge's weird "Christabel," and Buckle's magnificent fragment, "The History of Civilization." Nor would modern lovers of fiction be permitted to relax their minds over Stevenson's "Weir of Hermiston," or Pater's "Gaston de la Tour."<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.