“These young guys are playing checkers. I'm out there playing chess.”
        “And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the checkered shade.
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday.”
    
    
    
    
        
        
        
            
            
        
        
        
        
        
        Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 94
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John Milton 190
English epic poet 1608–1674Related quotes
                                        
                                        <span class="plainlinks"> Foreword, 'Tales of Transformation: English Translation of Tagore's Chitrangada and Chandalika', Lopamudra Banerjee, (2018). https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DQPD8F4/</span> 
From Prose
                                    
“Eternity is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.”
                                        
                                        Quoted by Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 4 (Fragment 52), as translated in Reality (1994), by Carl Avren Levenson and Jonathan Westphal, p. 10 
Variants: 
History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world. 
As quoted in Contemporary Literature in Translation (1976), p. 21 
A lifetime is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child. 
As quoted in The Beginning of All Wisdom: Timeless Advice from the Ancient Greeks (2003) by Steven Stavropoulos, p. 95 
Time is a game played beautifully by children. 
As quoted in Fragments (2001) translated by Brooks Haxton 
Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child. 
As quoted in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (1979) translated by Charles H. Kahn
                                    
Life-Music, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
                                
                                    “Come forth I charge thee, arise,
Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes!”
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
                                        
                                        Ode to Memory (1830) 
Context: Come forth I charge thee, arise,
Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes!
Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines
Unto mine inner eye,
Divinest Memory!
                                    
                                
                                    “Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.”
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
" The Gardener's Daughter http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/englishidyls/gardenersdaughter.html", l. 139-140 (1842)
“Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth.”
In "Samples from Almost Illegible Notebooks", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)