Any transitory marks of distinction, or ideal honors, produce future regret, and often poignant grief. The beauty of the ball is little flattered, twenty years afterward, by that praise and admiration which is past and forgotten, any more than the collegian, who gained every literary prize, which vainly taught him to expect admiration, applause, and respect through life.
Imprudence is so often the cause of misfortunes, that the Cardinal Richelieu used to say, that imprudence and misfortune were synonymous.
Memory is productive of more misery than happiness. Misfortune leaves unpleasing vestiges, whilst the remembrance of pleasures past creates regret.
Fortune, like the fickle female, despises the object of her power. She slights the very sighs that she creates; and whilst the suppliant is disregarded, she courts the hand which rejects her. Relentless and obdurate to her most passionate admirers, what she refuses to love, she often lavishes on indifference.