God, who in mercy and wisdom governs the world, would never have suffered so many sadnesses, and have sent them, especially, to the most virtuous and the wisest men, but that He intends they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of virtue, the exercise of wisdom, the trial of patience, the venturing for a crown, and the gate of glory." [2116] And again:--"No man is more miserable than he that hath no adversity.
That man is not tried, whether he be good or bad; and God never crowns those virtues which are only FACULTIES and DISPOSITIONS; but every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward." [2117] Prosperity and success of themselves do not confer happiness; indeed, it not unfrequently happens that the least successful in life have the greatest share of true joy in it.

No man could have been more successful than Goethe--possessed of splendid health, honour, power, and sufficiency of this world's goods--and yet he confessed that he had not, in the course of his life, enjoyed five weeks of genuine pleasure.
So the Caliph Abdalrahman, in surveying his successful reign of fifty years, found that he had enjoyed only fourteen days of pure and genuine happiness.

[2118] After this, might it not be said that the pursuit of mere happiness is an illusion?
Life, all sunshine without shade, all happiness without sorrow, all pleasure without pain, were not life at all--at least not human life.
Take the lot of the happiest--it is a tangled yarn.

It is made up of sorrows and joys; and the joys are all the sweeter because of the sorrows; bereavements and blessings, one following another, making us sad and blessed by turns.

Even death itself makes life more loving; it binds us more closely together while here.