Laudator Temporis Acti

Man never hath one day to himself of entire peace from the things of the world, but either something troubles him, or nothing satisfies him, or his very fulness swells him and makes him breathe short upon his bed. Men's joys are troublesome; and besides that the fear of losing them takes away the present pleasure, (and a man hath need of another felicity to preserve this,) they are also wavering and full of trepidation, not only from their inconstant nature, but from their weak foundation: they arise from vanity, and they dwell upon ice, and they converse with the wind, and they have the wings of a bird, and are serious but as the resolutions of a child, commenced by chance, and managed by folly, and proceeded by inadvertency, and end in vanity and forgetfulness. So that, as Livius Drusus said^a of himself, he never had any play-days or days of quiet when he was a boy; for he was troublesome and busy, a restless and unquiet man—the same may every man observe to be true of himself; he is always restless and uneasy, he dwells upon the waters, and leans upon thorns, and lays his head upon a sharp stone.

^aUni sibi nec puero unquam ferias contigisse...Seditiosus et foro gravis. [Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae 6.1-2]