Old age has its compensations. More than ever I see each day as a gift from God. It is also a time to reflect back on God's goodness over the years and an opportunity to assure others that God truly is faithful to His promises.

Many people plan financially for retirement—but not spiritually and emotionally.

God wants us to work (whether at home or on the job, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to retire. The Levites (who assisted in Israel's worship) were required to retire at fifty.

First poems! They must be written on casual scraps of faded paper, interspersed here and there with withered flowers, or a lock of blond hair, or a discolored piece of ribbon, and the trace of a tear must still be visible in several places ... But first poems that are printed, in livid black and white, on dreadfully smooth paper are poems that have lost the finest points of their sweet, virginal charm, and now arouse a ghastly feeling of distaste in the author.

I've had songs that were spread out over a number of years, and I've written some in ten minutes, and everything in between.

No matter how good of a ball player you were, you can't keep going forever. You're not going to be able to hit .300 when you're 60. You still look around and you think, 'This is weird. Have I missed something?' Well, yeah, you have.

Of how much real happiness we cheat our souls by preferring a trifle to God! We have a general intention of living religion; but we intend to begin tomorrow or next year. The present moment we prefer giving to the world.

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon.

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; Improve each moment as it flies!

I'm not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.

Times lose no time; nor do they roll idly by; through our senses they work strange operations on the mind. Behold, they went and came day by day, and by coming and going, introduced into my mind other imaginations and other remembrances; and little by little patched me up again with my old kind of delights, unto which that my sorrow gave way.

Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest. For of two things which have alike ceased to be, the one is not better, the other worse—the one greater, the other less.