Yes, it is the brightness, not the darkness, that we see when we look back. The sunshine casts no shadows on the past. The road that we have traversed stretches very fair behind us. We see not the sharp stones. We dwell but on the roses by the wayside, and the strong briers that stung us are, to our distant eyes, but gentle tendrils waving in the wind. God be thanked that it is so — ­that the ever-lengthening chain of memory has only pleasant links, and that the bitterness and sorrow of to-day are smiled at on the morrow.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Memory” (1886)
    (Source)

First published in Home Chimes (1885-09-26).