Happiness...

I will probably use this in a future publication, so you will be able to say you read it first!  Gleaned from the Peterborough Archives (D14 p9), it's not really an aphorism and I was looking for a piece to extract from it.  I gave up, so here it is in its entirety.

"As we grow into life we leave our better life behind us   like the image of a beauty seen in a looking glass      happiness only disseminates happiness while she is present & when she is gone we retain no impression of her enjoyments   but a blank of cold imaginings & real dissapointments     unless we are determined to shape our conduct by her approval   & then she is ever with us   [no]t her picture but her perfection   not in shadow but reality -- read this over & profit by it"

The picture is a little known portrait of Clare from 1855.