“Melancholy is a the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.”

—Henri Frederic Amiel, quoted by Eric G. Wilson in Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, 2008.