Few of us, however, realize the wonderful privilege of living, or the
blessings we inherit; the glories and beauties of the Universe, which is
our own if we choose to have it so; the extent to which we can make
ourselves what we wish to be; or the power we possess of securing peace,
of triumphing over pain and sorrow.

Dante pointed to the neglect of opportunities as a serious fault:

"Man can do violence
To himself and his own blessings, and for this
He, in the second round, must aye deplore,
With unavailing penitence, his crime.
Whoe'er deprives himself of life and light
In reckless lavishment his talent wastes,
And sorrows then when he should dwell in joy."

Ruskin has expressed this with special allusion to the marvellous beauty
of this glorious world, too often taken as a matter of course, and
remembered, if at all, almost without gratitude. "Holy men," he complains,
"in the recommending of the love of God to us, refer but seldom to those
things in which it is most abundantly and immediately shown; though they
insist much on His giving of bread, and raiment, and health (which He
gives to all inferior creatures): they require us not to thank Him for
that glory of His works which He has permitted us alone to perceive: they
tell us often to meditate in the closet, but they send us not, like Isaac,
into the fields at even: they dwell on the duty of self denial, but they
exhibit not the duty of delight:" and yet, as he justly says elsewhere,
"each of us, as we travel the way of life, has the choice, according to
our working, of turning all the voices of Nature into one song of
rejoicing; or of withering and quenching her sympathy into a fearful