32. Before you criticize your parents for their failures and mistakes, ask yourself: “Will I really do that much better with my own children?” The job is tougher than it looks, and mistakes are inevitable!

18. Your life is before you. Be careful of the choices you make now that you could regret later. This regret is the subject of an old poem whose author has been forgotten. I hope you’ll never have reason to apply it to yourself. Across the fields of yesterday, He sometimes comes to me A little lad just back from play— The boy I used to be. He looks at me so wistfully When once he’s crept within; It is as if he hoped to see The man I might have been.

Ask yourself what you will care about when everything is on the line.

Resist the temptation to see yourself as a victim.

Whenever you begin to conclude, "I can't win," and "What's the use?" you've set yourself up for failure. Your pessimism becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.