# Quote — Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky

> Am I happy? There are moments when I am overwhelmed by a sense of my success and ease. I become aware that thousands of things which had formerly been forbidden fruit to me are at my command now. I distinctly recall that crushing sense of being debarred from everything, and then I feel as though the whole world were mine. One day I paused in front of an old East Side restaurant that I had often passed in my days of need and despair. The feeling of desolation and envy with which I used to peek in its windows came back to me. It gave me pangs of self-pity for my past and a thrilling sense of my present power. The prices that had once been prohibitive seemed so wretchedly low now. ...
>
> And yet in all such instances I feel a peculiar yearning for the very days when the doors of that restaurant were closed to me and when the Canal Street merchant was a magnate of commerce in my estimation. Somehow, encounters of this kind leave me dejected. The gloomiest past is dearer than the brightest present. In my case there seems to be a special reason for feeling this way. My sense of triumph is coupled with a brooding sense of emptiness and insignificance, of my lack of anything like a great, deep interest.

- Author: [Abraham Cahan](https://www.leafyquotes.com/abraham-cahan.md)
- Book: [The Rise of David Levinsky](https://www.leafyquotes.com/abraham-cahan/the-rise-of-david-levinsky.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Cahan#The_Rise_of_David_Levinsky_(1917)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/abraham-cahan/the-rise-of-david-levinsky/am-i-happy

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