Abilene had gone from boomtown to Bible Belt, from whorehouses to schoolmarms, without any of the intervening phases.

Campuses are bubbles, artificial environments that insulate students from the life of the competitive marketplace. The more exact truth is that our campuses offer students the privileges of liberty without the corresponding responsibilities.

It takes a well-spent lifetime, and perhaps more, to crystalize in us that for which we exist.

I take account of my life and find that I have lived a lot and learned very little.

Universities, he (William Dershowitz) says, have been absorbed into the commercial ethos. Instead of being intervals of freedom, they are breeding grounds for advancement. Students are too busy jumping through the next hurdle in the...

The faces of your young people in general are not interesting—I don’t mean the children, but the young men and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder...

The child who gets lost in a book can emerge from the experience a changeling.

Mansions were forming like jewels in my bloodstream.

How do you teach a classroom of Sybils who are breaking apart and reforming right in front of you?

One of the mitigating benefits of children is that they make a Lego habit more respectable.

Sentimentality is so apt to creep in if we write at length about children as seen by their elders. And the reality of childhood, as we all experienced it, creeps out. For we all remember...

King was a transformed person. Evil was no longer a theory.

if you do not share the universities’ values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore,...

Character is the main object of education.

When I push the button on my laptop, it should start up. If it doesn’t, it can’t blame its nonexistent emotions. It should respond immediately and appropriately because that’s what it has been created to...

The quality self-confidence is not bad in youth. We rather like to see it, for it indicates usually the possession or the motive power which makes a man aggressive and enterprising. He works more vigorously...

When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business – that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives and that we have a right...

Lily appeared, wearing her nightclothes, in the doorway. She gave an impatient sigh. ‘This is certainly a very LONG private conversation,’ she said. ‘And there are certain people waiting for their comfort object.’Lily,’ her mother...

Facebook is the perfect place to try on different identities until she finds one that sticks.

So it was a crossroads summer, when the universe seemed to stand perilously still like an egg wobbling on a precipice, a regular rite of passage summer that saw us traverse the hazardous divide between...

The military was providing him (George H.W. Bush) with an education that was not available at Andover or Yale.

He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age. But to him who is of an opposite disposition, youth and age are equally a burden.

Like everyone I slipped into adulthood like a delinquent through the back door.

It’s a complex song, and it’s fascinating to watch the creative process as they went back and forth and finally created it over a few months. Lennon was always my favorite Beatle. [ He laughs...

The same principles that make up a good story also make up a good life.

Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are free from the grasp, not of one mad master only, but of many.

The altar must be built in one place so that the fire may come down in another place.

Courage was not something one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could withdraw only so much before it was necessary to stop, to take the time to make...

Just out of high school, you didn’t realize you were creating drama for the sake of drama.

Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self.

As soon as (Teddy Roosevelt) received an assignment for a paper or project, he would set to work, never leaving anything to the last minute. Prepared so far ahead “freed his mind” from worry and...

Not every story started off big enough to notice.

Adams had gone to Harvard, Jefferson to William and Mary. Washington had gone to war.

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

The Yale graduate who had refused to read outside the course curriculum (the future Pres. Taft) suddenly found himself inspired.

Paraphrasing Plato’s Republic: “Only people who have allowed themselves to be reformed by reality have it in themselves to reform their polis for the better.

It took him (Washington) more than a year to gain control over his own aggressive instincts.

You ironically have to have a very strong ego structure to let go of your ego. You need to struggle with the rules more than a bit before you throw them out. You only internalize...

In childhood, the inexplicableness of the world is still vivid and fresh, and sometimes hits with terrifying force.

I hated the flashcards and I hated the multiplication tables, but I did enjoy the fact that my dad took time out of his schedule to help me in the areas in which I needed...

Clinton had displayed his lifelong tendency to make enemies of all his superiors, who never seemed to appreciate his advice as much as he thought it deserved.

Every missed rite of passage leads to a new rigidification of the personality.