Everything in life shows that earthly happiness is destined to be frustrated or recognised as an illusion.
 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819). copy citation

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Author Arthur Schopenhauer
Source The World as Will and Representation
Topic happiness illusion
Date 1819
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40868/40868-h/40868-h.html

Context

“Then let one consider what as a rule are the satisfactions of any kind that a man obtains. For the most part nothing more than the bare maintenance of this existence itself, extorted day by day with unceasing trouble and constant care in the conflict with want, and with death in prospect. Everything in life shows that earthly happiness is destined to be frustrated or recognised as an illusion. The grounds of this lie deep in the nature of things. Accordingly the life of most men is troubled and short. Those who are comparatively happy are so, for the most part, only apparently, or else, like men of long life, they are the rare exceptions, a possibility of which there had to be,—as decoy-birds.” source