I thought this was an especially interesting point:
"Every great man that I have known has had a certain time and place in their life that they use as a reference point; a time when things worked as they were supposed to and great things were accomplished."
Me too. I instantly knew what that time period was for me.
This concept immediately reminded me of an excerpt from the outstanding book "Rules for Aging" which talks about this and its potential dark side:
"A long happy life last five minutes. One would think that this rule would go without stating, but many people actually believe that a long life of uninterrupted happiness is a real possibility. And they act on this belief! They change families, careers, the structure of their faces, countries, everything, for no more substantial reason than they recall five minutes of uninterrupted happiness in the past, and now they wish to re-create the moment in perpetuity. They even convince themselves that the five-minute period they recall was really five years and giddily substitute the exception (bliss) for the rule (confusion, doubt, misery, fear, confusion, and confusion). Happiness is wonderful, but if you have had more than five consecutive minutes of it, it means you weren't thinking."
That book isn't really about aging, it's more about practical down-to-earth wisdom. I read it for the first time when I was in my early 20's, and it's very amusing and pure gold.
"Every great man that I have known has had a certain time and place in their life that they use as a reference point; a time when things worked as they were supposed to and great things were accomplished."