"Is it by the will of the Lord that mankind cannot be happy, but must ever be longing for the things..."

“Is it by the will of the Lord that mankind cannot be happy, but must ever be longing for the things which they have not, and which, maybe, are nowhere to be found? The beasts and the birds are at ease on this earth. May it not, then, be good enough for the human beings whom God has set within it: the peasants who complain of their hard lot, the great lords, who do never get enough, and the young priests who sigh for paradise, in the green woods? Might not man - might not, after all, one man out of them all - be in such understanding with the Lord as to say: I have solved the riddle of this our life. I have made the earth my own, and I am happy with her?”

- Isak Dinesen, The Fish, Winter’s Tales, 1942