Words of Wisdom

So I don't know why I suddenly remembered this walking in the rain last night -- maybe it was on account of my new manic study-diet of coffee and cigarrettes -- but when I left for my life as a Yale undergraduate over three years ago now, my father said to me, "Promise you'll eat at a restaurant with a table cloth once a week." Good advice, I think, not that I've followed it with any consistency. Here's some other good fatherly advice:

"Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend. And this above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." (Polonius, I.iii)