The deep leaden keel of unhappiness

Now that I seem to have attained a temporary calm, I understand how valuable unhappiness can be; melancholy and remorse form the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality; we run aground sooner than the flat-bottomed pleasure-lovers, but we venture out in weather that would sink them, and we choose our direction. What distinguishes true civilisations from their mass-fabricated substitutes except that tap-root to the Unconscious, the sense of original sin?

Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (Hamish Hamilton, 1945) p. 86