Proverbs 16-31, Ecclesiastes 1-12

Proverb 6 includes the "pride goes before the fall" concept.

17: "the Lord tries hearts"

19: "It is not fitting for a slave to rule over princes."  (Besides Joseph, right? Or Moses, for that matter?)

I have a rant about the "spare the rod spoil the child" advice that is reiterated repeatedly, based on a suggestion that children are apparently inherently evil.  I'll suffice to say that only a really bad parent would have a child like that.  A child is only as bad as you allow them to be.  If you have to discipline them severely, chances are you ought to be severely disciplined yourself.

24: "A wise man is mightier than a strong man" (or in other words, the pen is mightier than the sword).

26: "I'm only joking!"

The later proverbs are a little more proverbial, as it were.  They also uniformly prefer poor people to rich people.

29: "Where there is no prophecy the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law."  This may indicate what the Old Testament thought prophets were really doing, which is to say they were like judges in the time of kings, which is to say they weren't predicting the future so much as interpreting the present by way of bringing the focus back to the faith.

30 is "of Agur" while 31 is "of Lemuel" (the latter name, for those literary types keeping score, is also Gulliver's first name from the famous Jonathan Swift novel).  The former includes the line, "What is his name, and what is his son's name?" in relation to speaking about God.

Ecclesiastes is officially my favorite book of the Bible so far, just so you know.  It's a work of true wisdom reflected in weary experience.  It's more like Book of Job than Proverbs.

"For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."

Chapter 3 is the famous "for everything there is a season...a time to etc." passage.  "He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."

If you want to actually read only one book of the Bible, I highly recommend Ecclesiastes.