Laudator Temporis Acti

Hermann Usener, Epicurea (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1887), p. 287 (fragment 437): Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 11.38 (tr. Thomas P. Scheck):

This is why the thought of Epicurus is foolish, who claims that the recalling of former goods mitigates present evils.

unde stulta Epicuri sententia est, qui asserit recordatione praeteritorum bonorum mala praesentia mitigari.

Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 18.65 (tr. Thomas P. Scheck):

For when we are beset by distresses, we do not experience in our spirit the former pleasures in accordance with the error of Epicurus.

eo quod in angustiis constituti nequaquam uoluptatibus pristinis iuxta errorem Epicuri animo perfruantur.

References to a more modern edition of Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah:

• Marc Adriaen, ed., Jerome, Commentariorum in Esaiam Libri I-XI (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963 = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina LXXXIII), p. 448
• Marc Adriaen, ed., Jerome, Commentariorum in Esaiam Libri XII-XVIII (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963 = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina LXXXIII A), p. 760

Augustine, Sermon 348.3, in Patrologia Latina vol. XXXIX, col. 1528 (tr. Edmund Hill):

Yes, and these too boast of being utterly brave, and say that they are afraid of absolutely nothing. That's because they consider that God doesn't care a snap of the fingers for human affairs, and think that there is no life to come later on, once this one is finished with. And if any adversity overtakes them in this life, they think they are fortified against it in this way, that while they cannot hold onto the pleasures of the body in the body itself, they can, all the same, think about them with the mind, and by gratifying themselves with such thoughts can preserve the bliss of bodily pleasure even against the assaults of bodily pain. Isn't love casting out fear with them too? But it's the love of the most sordid pleasure, or rather the love of the most shameful unsubstantially; because when the irruption of pain has excluded pleasure itself from the members of the body, it will remain in the mind through the deceptive and unsubstantial image of itself. And this unsubstantiality is loved so intensely, that when the unsubstantial man embraces it with all the energy of his heart, even the sharpest pain is soothed.

nam et hi fortissimos se iactant et nihil omnino timere se dicunt, quia nec quidquam deum res humanas curare arbitrantur et consumpta ista uita nullam postea credunt futuram, et si quid eis aduersitatis in hac ipsa contingit, eo se munitos existimant, quia corporis uoluptatem, cum eam in ipso corpore tenere non possunt, possunt tamen animo cogitare et ea cogitatione sese oblectando corporalis uoluptatis beatitudinem etiam contra corporalis doloris impetum custodire. numquid non et apud istos dilectio foras mittit timorem? sed dilectio sordidissimae uoluptatis, immo dilectio turpissimae uanitatis. nam cum ipsam uoluptatem de membris corporis irruens dolor excluserit, per falsam eius imaginem in animo uanitas remanebit. quae uanitas tantum amatur, ut cum eam uanus homo totis uiribus cordis amplectitur, etiam doloris saeuitia mitigetur.

I don't see this fragment in Graziano Arrighetti, ed., Epicuro, Opere (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1960).

Fabio Tutrone, Healing Grief: A Commentary on Seneca's Consolatio ad Marciam (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), p. 93 (on 5.4):

The pleasant recollection of the past is a traditional Epicurean technique of achieving contentment (Epic. Ep. Men. 122; Sent. Vat. 35, 55, 75; frs. 213, 436, 437 Usener), whose practical usefulness is overtly acknowledged by Seneca at Ben. 3.4.