My colleague Peter just produced this excellent bon mot:
C++ shares with Lisp the property that you shouldn't be allowed to use it until you've used it for two years.
(He says he can't remember having seen it elsewhere, although of course people do occasionally forget that sort of thing. Whoever said it first, though, it's very good :-)
One thing I'm convinced of having coded in C++ for a decade or so: it's a terrible, terrible language to teach at universities, at least until one's seen some proper languages and learned the underlying principles.
The number of ways C++ has of tripping up the unwary is truly mindboggling.