" I am not afraid,” she said; which seemed quite presumptuous enough.
“You are not afraid of suffering?”
“Yes, I am afraid of suffering. But I am not afraid of ghosts. And I think people suffer too easily,” she added.
“I don’t believe you do,” said Ralph, looking at her with his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t think that’s a fault,” she answered. “It is not absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not made for that.”
“You were not, certainly.”
“I am not speaking of myself.” And she turned away a little.
“No, it isn’t a fault,” said her cousin. “It’s a merit to be strong.”
“Only, if you don’t suffer, they call you hard,” Isabel remarked. They passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into which they had returned from the gallery, and paused in the hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Ralph presented his companion with her bed-room candle, which he had taken from a niche. “Never mind what they call you,” he said. “When you do suffer, they call you an idiot. The great point is to be as happy as possible. "

― Henry James , The Portrait of a Lady