Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 25.3 (Patrologia Latina, vol. XXXVIII, col. 168; tr. Edmund Hill):

Not only did our elders complain about their days, their grandparents too complained about their days. People have never been pleased with the days they lived in. But the days of the ancestors please their descendants, and they too were pleased with days they hadn't experienced—and that's precisely why they thought them pleasant. It's what's present that is sharply felt. I don't mean it comes nearer, but it touches the heart every day. Practically every year when we feel the cold we say "It's never been so cold." "It's never been so hot."

Et maiores nostri planxerunt dies suos, et avi eorum planxerunt dies suos. Nullis hominibus dies placuerunt quos vivendo egerunt. Sed posteris placent dies maiorum: et illis iterum illi dies placebant, quos ipsi non sentiebant, et ideo placebant. Quod enim praesens est, acrem habet sensum. Non dico, propius admovetur, sed cor tangit quotidie. Omni anno plerumque dicimus quando frigus sentimus: Numquam fecit tale frigus. Numquam fecit tales aestus.

Cf. Seneca, De Beneficiis 1.10.1 (tr. John W. Basore):

The complaint our ancestors made, the complaint we make, the complaint our posterity will make, is that morality is overturned, that wickedness holds sway, and that human affairs and every sin are tending toward the worse. Yet these things remain and will continue to remain in the same position, with only a slight movement now in this direction, now in that, like that of the waves, which a rising tide carries far inland, and a receding tide restrains within the limits of the shoreline.

hoc maiores nostri questi sunt, hoc nos querimur, hoc posteri nostri querentur: eversos mores, regnare nequitiam, in deterius res humanas et omne nefas labi. at ista eodem stant loco stabuntque, paulum dumtaxat ultra aut citra mota, ut fluctus, quos aestus accedens longius extulit, recedens interiore litorum vestigio tenuit.