For I have no hope that a child will turn out well who loves imitation
 merely for the purpose of raising a laugh. He who is really gifted will
 also above all else be good. For the rest, I regard slowness of
 intellect as preferable to actual badness. But a good boy will be quite
 unlike the dullard and the sloth. My ideal pupil will absorb instruction with ease and will even ask some
 questions; but he will follow rather than anticipate his teacher.
 Precocious intellects rarely produce sound fruit. By the precocious I mean those who perform small tasks with ease and,
 thus emboldened, proceed to display all their little accomplishments without being asked: but their accomplishments are
 only of the most obvious kind: they string words together and trot them
 out boldly and undeterred by the slightest sense of modesty. Their
 actual achievement is small, but what they can do they perform with
 ease.