Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation. It depends not nearly so much on the things to which one ascribes it as on the ability and tendency of the soul to transform its outer condition into its inner destination, to seize its own particular circumstances with a sort of yearning desire and to cling to it… The deeper and more humane the psychic constitution, the more easily does melancholy well up in it and suffuse it… What is usually called happiness, therefore, or peace, is mostly only a living on those levels which never touch upon the depths of humanity. The happiness which is truly desirable can only be the culmination of that profound mood when we feel true inner being in its intimate connection with all that is great in the world, so that all sensation of opposition and strife disappears. And this can be true only of brief moments. But whoever is surrounded by the element of pain, grief, and melancholy in its unclouded purity, he feels at home in it and feels a sense of well-being. For, unnoticed, there increase in him the powers of inward humanity. He embraces nature more intimately, penetrates it more powerfully, and in moderation and renunciation leads a rich and infinite life which he would exchange for no other… Everything profound by its very nature has feelings of grief and pain at its core. But ordinary people do not sense it. They rise up in arrogance against trouble and grief instead of seeking them out to be their faithful companions. (Wilhelm von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963, pp. 310-11)