No great man lives in vain. The history of the wor...

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

Every age has its own poetry in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.

I suppose when they reach a certain age some men are afraid to grow up. It seems the older the men get, the younger their new wives get.