Honorable Beginnings

Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people's expectations.  We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would.

-- Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601 - 1658), Spanish Jesuit author regarded as one of the most accomplished prose stylists of the Baroque era, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647), Maxim 19 (p. 12)