Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a certain sort of person of which I was a typical specimen: the mental contortionist, able to rise to almost every challenge placed before him, except the challenge of real self-knowledge.

The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger. It is his glory to overlook an offense.

I release all feelings of worry and guilt. Throughout life, the two most futile emotions are guilt for what has been done and worry about what might be done.

It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising

Odd words floated back to them over the hundreds of heads. "Nobility of spirit"..."intellectual contribution"..."greatness of heart"...It did not mean very much. It had little to do with Dumbledore as Harry had known him. He suddenly remembered Dumbledore's idea of a few words, "nitwit," "oddment," "blubber," and "tweak," and again had to suppress a grin.