Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; Bliss is the same in subject or in king.

False happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.