Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway - Sydney J. Harris

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare. And it is desperately unfair to the boy. He cannot live his parents' life over again for them. He cannot make up for their own lacks, their own unfulfillments. He cannot carry their torch — only his own.

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.