An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation.

Books are to be called for and supplied on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half-sleep, but in the highest sense an exercise, a gymnastic struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself.

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems

The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are.

Youth, large, lusty, loving -- Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?

The real war will never get in the books.