Pleasure is but labour to those who do not know also that labour in its turn is pleasure.
Happy! As a mollusc is happy so long as the sea sweeps prey into its jaws; what does the mollusc care how many lives have been shipwrecked so long as the tide wafts it worms? She has killed her conscience, Viva; there is no murder more awful. It is to slay what touch of God we have in us!
Have I been cruel, my child? Your fever of discontent needed a sharp cure. Life lies before you, Viva, and you alone can mould it for yourself. Sin and anguish fill nine-tenths of the world: to one soul that basks in light, a thousand perish in darkness; I dare not let you go on longer in your dangerous belief that the world is one wide paradise, and that the high-road of its joys is the path of reckless selfishness. Can you not think that there are lots worse than that of a guiltless child who is well loved and well guarded, and has all her future still before her?
It rests with you to live your life nobly or vilely. We have not our choice to be rich or poor, to be happy or unhappy, to be in health or in sickness; but we have our choice to be worthy or worthless. No antagonist can kill our soul in us; that can perish only from its own suicide. Ever remember that.
But they are hollow inside, you still urge? fie, for shame! What a plea that is! Have you the face to make it? If you have, let me bargain with you.