Rousseau on Happiness

Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his novel Julie or The New Heloise: 

“As long as we desire, we can do without happiness: we expect to achieve it.

If happiness fails to come, hope persists, and the charm of illusion lasts as long as the passion that causes it.

So this condition is sufficient in itself, and the anxiety it inflicts is a sort of enjoyment that compensates for reality …

Woe to him who has nothing left to desire…

We enjoy less what we obtain than what we hope for, and we are happy only before being happy.”  (Part 6, Letter VII)