“Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.”

It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.

Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.

Study depends on the goodwill of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.

Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.

Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.

We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.

It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.

Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.

Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.

Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.

He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.

Fear of the future is worse than one’s present fortune.

The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.

That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.

Conscience is a thousand witnesses.

Kids, Madison Avenue is lying to you. Your parents are lying to you. The president is lying to you.

They don’t want to know. Maybe they realize that their yuppie parents who protested Vietnam have turned on their ideals and are now struggling to buy a Lexus or whatever.

A self made man is a rarity and hated by the parasites that floated to fame thought their parents, relatives and contacts.

We basically had dinner every night while watching the news, and then we’d discuss it with our parents.

I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was. I was growing up middle-class in a time when growing up middle-class in America meant there would be jobs for my parents.

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes.

Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.

Much like a wobbly toddler or an unhinged politician, one immediately looks for someone else to blame. God. Your parents. Ex-girlfriends. Undocumented immigrants. Marvin in Human Resources. China.