Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American writer

American Notebooks (3 Nov 1851)

In Passages from the American Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. S. Hawthorne (1868). Full text.