We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones.
Source: Letter, 2 Mar 1842, to Lucy Brown, sister-in-law of essayist and philospher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
-- Henry David Thoreau, (Jul 12 1817-1862), US essayist, poet, naturalist; He is best known for his description of life at Walden Pond, Walden, 1854 and his essay Civil Disobedience, 1849.