IITM Information Brochure

-- was cleaning up the now useless piles of paper when i came across my information brochure that I had got when my admission to IITM had been confirmed. It was a welcome book informing us about the various facilities, clubs and all the oppotunities we would find there. In that book of no use to me now, I found this poem/excerpt from Shakespeare's Hamlet. These were the words of advice that Polonius gives his son Leartes as the latter leaves home --

And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg’d comrade.  Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!

-- I kept the book back in the closet --