Of the things that charmed us once, things that we happen on again, is it not true to say that by their very presence they bring back to us, with the same, or perhaps still more, dreamlike and quivering delight, the mysterious magic of an earlier day? For what are the small black shadows dappling the ground in the shining pathway of the sun, like water-plants on a river, the early unfolding leaves of lilac drooping their sweet and delicate heads through the railings of suburban gardens, the huge old fruit trees come suddenly to blossom on the far side of a wall, like the apparition of a fresh intoxicating beauty aureoled in light and dazzling grace--what are all these things if not witnesses of childhood's Springtime, fragments from the memories of our earliest emotions which Nature woke in us, which have lost nothing of their power, which suddenly open our hearts to the coming of the same delicious bliss, letting us escape from the tyranny of the years and give ourselves over wholly to Nature's magic, to the mysterious transformation of the seasons which bathe the things and incidents around us in a life that is greater than them, which we recognise from having once already seen them in the long distance of past years, which is no more part of our childhood than it is of our old age, but seems, for a moment, to show us the world in which we live, not as a mediocre thing that soon for us will end, a place of human and familiar life, but as a world eternal in itself, and young eternally, a place of mystery rich with incredible promises?

from Jean Santeuil
Marcel Proust

excuse the long quote!