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.