When an individual is miserable, what does it most of all behoove him to do?  To complain of this man or of that, of this thing or of that?  To fill the world and the street with lamentation, objurgation?  Not so at all; the reverse of so.  All moralists advise him not to complain of any person or of anything, but of himself only.  He is to know of a truth that being miserable he has been unwise.  Had he faithfully followed Nature and her Laws, Nature, ever true to her Laws, would have yielded fruit and increase and felicity to him; but he has followed other than Nature’s Laws, and now Nature, her patience with him being ended, leaves him desolate; answers with very emphatic significance to him, "No, not by this road, my son; by another road shalt thou attain well-being.  This, thou perceivest, is the road to ill-being; quit this!"  So do all moralists advise, that the man penitently say to himself first of all, Behold I was not wise enough; I quitted the laws of Fact,  which are also called the Laws of God, and l mistook for them the Laws of Sham and Semblance, which are called the Devil’s Laws; therefore am I Here!

Thomas Carlyle's "Past and Present"

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