Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishments.

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right.

Most women in my family start to get sick and start dying in their 40s, and I am going to be very happy to become 50 and 60. I love getting older.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.

When all is said and done, more is said than done.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

I was a Marine for 41 years, and it wasn’t long enough. We enjoy putting on that uniform.

I’m getting a wrinkle above my eyebrow because I just can’t stop lifting it, and I love that you know.

Medicines are only fit for old people.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

Sometimes I wish my first word was ‚quote,‘ so that on my death bed, my last words could be ‚end quote.‘

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

The United States never lost a war or won a conference.

I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I’m still quite robust.

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

I don’t have the best track record with quotes.

We know that in tough times, cynicism is just another way to give up, and in the military, we consider cynicism or giving up simply as forms of cowardice.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.