Thus he labors, and loudly they jeer at him; — That is, when they remember he still exists. <p> Who. you ask, is this fellow? — What matter names? He… - James Branch Cabell

The comedy is always the same. In the first act the hero imagines a place where happiness exists. In the second he strives towards that goal. In the third he comes up short or what amounts to the same thing he achieves his goal only to find that happiness lies a little further down the road.

But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating
conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.

I must, here again, in mere honesty, I must distinguish. I mean that I think you know, as well as I do, love is not a gift which any man can give nor any person hope long to retain. Ah, no, madame! we shrug, we smilingly allow romanticists their catchwords: meanwhile it remains the veriest axiom, among realists like you and me, that love too is but a loan.