“Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay, but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.”

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)
Source: Bartleby the Scrivener

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Do you have more details about the quote "Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay, but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is no…" by Herman Melville?

Herman Melville144

American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet 1818–1891

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“This vice [Pride] does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the miseries of others.”
Haec non suis commodis prosperitatem, sed ex alienis metitur incommodis.

Thomas More book Utopia

Haec non suis commodis prosperitatem, sed ex alienis metitur incommodis.
http://books.google.com/books?id=6REuAAAAMAAJ&q=%22haec+non+suis+commodis+prosperitatem+sed+ex+alienis+metitur+incommodis%22&pg=PA306#v=onepage
Alternate translation: [Pride] measures her prosperity not by her own goods but by others' wants.
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Scene IV, A Mountain; Sunrise. Compare: "The surest plan to make a man / Is to think him so", J. R. Lowell, Biglow Papers, II, ii. St. 9
Festus (1839)