“The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents.”

“In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends. … But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.”

“It is my ambition that parents can send their children to school with the prospects that they are as interested and excited to learn on their last day of school as they were on the very first.”

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

“I’ve never heard of a man being so eager to confess to the parent of a girl he’s just ruined”

“Icarus, Icarus, though the end is piteous,
Yet forever, yea, forever we shall see thee rising thus,
See the first supernal glory, not the ruin hideous.”

“The fabric of our prosperity is so artificial, we have raised such a vast edifice of industry and manufacture and wealth within so narrow an area, that the progress of a hostile army through our country would shatter our prosperity with a ruin which centuries would not repair. (Hear, hear.) In proportion to the danger must be our precaution. (Cheers.) We have to protect ourselves.”

“A man spends the first year of his life learning that he ends at his own skin, and the rest of his life learning that he doesn't.”

“There will always be something to ruin our lives. It all depends on what or which finds us first. You’re always ripe and ready to be taken.”

“At the end of the day, it would be wise to learn how to cooperate with others; so as not to put yourself first most of the time.”