"He had lived always in the future, and the present always, always had slipped through his fingers.  His ideals?  He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, maried, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect?  It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."

~Somerset Maugham from "Of Human Bondage"