Carl Friedrich Gauss Quote

It is beyond doubt that the happiness which love can bestow on its chosen souls is the highest that can fall to mortal's lot. But when I imagine myself in the place of the man who, after twenty happy years, now in one moment loses his all, I am moved almost to say that he is the wretchedest of mortals, and that it is better never to have known such happy days. So it is on this miserable earth: 'the purest joy finds its grave in the abyss of time'. What are we without the hope of a better future?

As quoted in Kneller, Karl Alois, Kettle, Thomas Michael, 1911."Christianity and the leaders of modern science; a contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century", Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 44-45

Christianity and the leaders of modern science; a contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century