Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains losses and disappointments but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

I'm torn about late parenting. I believe people should spend their twenties living and having fun and not having any regrets later. I also think people in their thirties generally make better parents but so many of my friends are having trouble - myself included - as fathers get older.

While not impossible it is especially challenging for teenage parents to develop bonds with their children. A high percent of them were themselves children of teenage parents and have never experienced appropriate parenting.

Don't reward bad behavior. It is one of the first rules of parenting. During the financial cataclysm of 2008 we said it differently. When we bailed out banks that had created their own misfortune we called it a 'moral hazard ' because the bailout absolved the bank's bad acts and created an incentive for it to make the same bad loans again.

We're living in a time when parenting is not at all mirroring the way I was parented. For me I just followed my parents around on their errands when they were busy on the phone I was quiet. It's a different kettle of fish these days: They run the house and you listen to their music and you go to their appointments.

No matter how calmly you try to referee parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.

It's a great mistake I think to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.

Parents should not smoke in order to discourage their kids from smoking. A child is more likely to smoke when they have been raised in the environment of a smoker.

I have three daughters so I can't be as tough as I want to be. When you have kids - especially daughters - they know how to work you. They're a lot smarter than we are that's for sure. But I'll be more tough on their boyfriends.

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit of reverence.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.

The fans know what's happened to me over the past couple of years. I lost my family. I pretty much got devastated financially and the fans know that I've had some hard times - and that's the nature of loyal fans. They want to see the people that they love and believe in get back on their feet.

Since those who believe they need a hero/celebrity outnumber the actual heroes/celebrities people feel safe and comfortably justified in numbers committing egregious crimes in the name of the greater social ego. Ironically diminishing their own true hero-celebrity nature in the process.

The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.

Women by their nature are not exceptional chess players: they are not great fighters.

People have always wanted to be recognized and that's human nature. But people used to want to be recognized for their accomplishments and now they simply want to be visible.

I can tell you for sure: people who are at their peak right now will not sustain that. You can't. It's against the law of nature.

A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows it flowers wilts and dies scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.

The artist is the confidant of nature flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.