There is something pleasing and salutary in someone’s having had ill-luck in his first love, when he has come to know its pain but still kept true to his love, still kept faith in this first love; there is something nice about it when, in the course of years, he sometimes now recalls it quite vividly, and although his soul has been sound enough to, so to speak, take leave of that kind of life in order to dedicate itself to something higher, there is something pleasing about his then remembering it sadly as something that may have fallen short of perfection but was very beautiful none the less.

Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
Søren Kierkegaard