Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 31.4 (Patrologia Latina, vol. XXXVIII, col. 194; tr. Edmund Hill):

Is there anyone, after all, who doesn't cry here, along this bad road, seeing that the very infant begins with crying? Certainly when the infant is born it is tumbled out of the cramped confines of the womb into the wide open spaces of this world, it proceeds from darkness into light. And yet as it comes from the dark into the light it is able to cry, it isn't able to laugh. This life is such that when you are enjoying it here, be afraid it may all be deceptive. When you are crying here, pray for release. Trouble passes, trouble comes. People laugh, people cry. Even what people laugh about is a matter for crying. But one man cries over his losses, another cries about his affliction because he has been dumped in jail, another cries because he has lost one of his dear ones who has died.

Quis enim non hic plorat in via ista mala, quando ipse infans inde incipit? Utique infans, quando nascitur, de angustiis uteri in huius mundi latitudinem funditur, de tenebris procedit ad lucem. Et tamen de tenebris veniens ad lucem, plorare potest, ridere non potest. Est enim vita ista, ut quando gaudetur hic, time ne fallat. Quando hic ploratur, roga ut evadas. Et transit tribulatio, et venit tribulatio. Et rident homines, et plorant homines. Et quod rident homines, plorandum est. Sed plorat alius damnum suum, plorat alius pressuram suam quia in carcere est constitutus, plorat alius quod amiserit mortuum aliquem carissimorum suorum.