The true self has no age

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

How can what he said to me be true?
If I don't succeed, what will I do?
Turn around, go back to Concord?
Leave New York behind
Unconquered? No!
How dare he make me doubt
The way I feel?
Doubt that each thrilling page
Is who i am?

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts  are dust and ashes, and forgot.