The following Samuel Johnson quotation, from The Lives of the Poets, is the epigraph to Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris:
It has been observed in all ages, that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given just occasion to envy in those who look to them from a lower station; whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those, whose eminence drew upon them a universal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were generally more observed, and have in reality been only more conspicuous than those of others, not more frequent, or more severe.
Samuel Johnson | Happiness and Envy