How little has situation to do with happiness. The happy individual uses their intelligence to realise things could be worse and therefore is grateful and happy. The unhappy individual does the opposite!

I am tired to death! tired of every thing! I would give the universe for a disposition less difficult to please. Yet, after all, what is there to give pleasure? When one has seen one thing, one has seen every thing.

The mind is but too naturally prone to pleasure, but too easily yielded to dissipation

When young people are too rigidly sequestered from [the world], their lively and romantic imaginations paint it to them as a paradise of which they have been beguiled; but when they are shown it properly, and in due time, they see it such as it really is, equally shared by pain and pleasure, hope and disappointment.

A little alarm now and then keeps life from stagnation.

... it's vastly more irksome to give up one's own way, than to hear a few impertinent remarks.

In England, I was quite struck to see how forward the girls are made--a child of 10 years old, will chat and keep you company, while her parents are busy or out etc.--with the ease of a woman of 26. But then, how does this education go on?--Not at all: it absolutely stops short.