Forever seeking, never found,
In this wide varied scene;
Sole object of unceasing search,
While in this low terrene.
Yet vain the search, if in the heart
Some lurking passion dwell;
For this will hang with cypress wreath
Retirement's secret cell.
In vain the outward scene is calm,
In vain the world we fly;
If thou, in pure religion's garb,
Thy friendly aid deny.

Of all my seeking this is all my gain:
No agony of any mortal brain
Shall wrest the secret of the life of man;
The Search has taught me that the Search is vain.

And if you find everything as soon as you look for it, you find it in vain, you look for it in vain.

Men, it is in vain that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your intelligence can only bring you to realize that it is not within yourselves that you will find either truth or good.

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves.

A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere.

Men are in a restless pursuit after satisfaction in earthly things. They will exhaust themselves in the deceitful delights of sin, and, finding them all to be vanity and emptiness, they will become very perplexed and disappointed. But they will continue their fruitless search. Though wearied, they still stagger forward under the influence of spiritual madness, and though there is no result to be reached except that of everlasting disappointment, yet they press forward. They have no forethought for their eternal state; the present hour absorbs them. They turn to another and another of earth's broken cisterns, hoping to find water where not a drop was ever discovered yet.

My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such perfect joy therein I find
That it excels all other bliss
That world affords or grows by kind.
Though much I want which most men have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs

And if all that is meaningless, I want to be cured
Of a craving for something I cannot find And of the shame of never finding it.