Ada Dashi’s Reviews > The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia > Status Update

Thus parents and children, for the greatest part, live on to love less and less: and, if those whom nature has thus closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and consolation?

My condition has indeed the appearance of happiness, but appearances are delusive

Their mirth was without images, their laughter without motive; their pleasures were gross and sensual, in which the mind had no part; their conduct was at once wild and mean; they laughed at order and at law, but the frown of power dejected, and the eye of wisdom abashed them.