Shelley on homesickness: ‘All that I see in Italy — and from my tower window I now see the magnificent peaks of the Apennine half enclosing the plain — is nothing — it dwindles to smoke in the mind, when I think of some familiar forms of scenery little perhaps in themselves over which old remembrances have thrown a delightful colour. How we prize what we despised when present! So the ghosts of our dead associations rise & haunt us in revenge for our having let them starve, & abandoned them to perish.’

@yokaihainen reminded me of this line in Griboedov’s play "Woe from wit": "и дым отечества нам сладок и приятен" - “the smoke of the homeland is sweet to us and pleasant”