A person's willingness to conform to arbitrary parameters is not a good criterion for selecting talent or allocating rewards.
I am overrun, infested with a menagerie of desires.
Sleep tries to seduce me by promising a more reasonable tomorrow.
We can choose to allow our experiences to hold us back, and to not allow us to become great or achieve greatness in this life. Or we can allow our experiences to push us forward, to make us grateful for every day we have and to be all the more thankful for those who are around us.
It's not what happens to us that defines us. It's what we choose to do with what happens to us that defines us.
Work is the only only only remedy for life: for happiness, for interest, for stability, for security. Hard, willed work. Oh work!
O I know they make war because they want peace; they hate so that they may live; and they destroy the present to make the world safe for the future. When have they not done and said they did it for that?
To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person.
I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese - and there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them except for one unchanging, certain fact: the best, most skillful pilot has the most experience.
This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about the family on returning. That doesn't happen anymore-the days of revelation about my parents, at least, are over. . . its time to move on. I think we'd all appreciate that.
Anyway, members of the Inquisitorial Squad do have the power to dock points so, Granger, I'll have five from you for being rude about our new Headmistress. Macmillan, five for contradicting me. Five because I don't like you, Potter. Weasley, your shirt's untucked, so I'll have another five for that. Oh yeah, I forgot, you're a Mudblood, Granger, so ten off for that.