Daily Gyaan

It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be rationed.

-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
[Attributed to Lenin in the Webb's Soviet Communism]

If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.

-- Professor Irwin Corey

This is the story of someone who found it...

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum,
Bring out the coffin... let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle, moaning overhead,
Scribbling on the sky the message: He is Dead.
Put crepe bows 'round the necks of public doves,
Let traffic policemen wear black, cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East, my West.
My working week and my Sunday rest.
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one.
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour out the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

From "Four Weddings and a Funeral"

The proprieter of a highly successful optical shop was instructing his son as to how to charge a customer.

"Son," he said, "after you've fitted the glasses, and he asks what the charge will be, you say, 'The charge is $10.' Then pause and wait to see if he flinches.

"If the customer doesn't flinch, then you say, 'for the frames. The lenses will be another $10.' Then you pause again, this time only slightly, and watch for the flinch. If the customer doesn't flinch this time, you say firmly, 'Each.' "

A young man employed at a very modest salary at a bank began dressing flashily and bought a new car. Finally, the personnel manager asked him, "How is it that you, who are making $750 a week, can spend what must certainly be $1500 or more a week?"

"Why, it's simple," the clerk replied, unabashed, "There are some 2000 employees here, and every payday I raffle off my paycheck at one dollar a ticket."

A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100.00.
The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the donkey died last night."

Kenny replied: "Well then, just give me my money back."

The farmer said: "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."

Kenny said: "OK then, just unload the donkey."

The farmer asked: "What ya gonna do with him?"

Kenny: "I'm going to raffle him off."

( Note: To raffle is to sell a thing by lottery - draw lots - to a group of people each paying the same amount for a ticket)



Farmer: "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"

Kenny: "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead."



A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?"

Kenny: "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $898.00."

Farmer: "Didn't anyone complain?"

Kenny: "Just the guy who won. So I gave him back his two dollars."


Kenny grew up and eventually became the chairman of Enron.

The Earth File

And that's the world in a nutshell, an appropriate receptacle.

-- Stan Dunn

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost
everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment
or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only
what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best
way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are
already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
-- Steve Jobs

"A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire

The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.

-- Phillip Lopate

"The pharmacist just insulted me," the woman sobbed to her husband. Upset, he jumped into his car and sped to the store to defend his wife.

"Listen to my side!" the pharmacist pleaded.

"First, my alarm didn't go off and I overslept. Rushing out, I locked both my house and car keys inside and had to break a window to get them. Then I got a flat tire. When I finally got behind the counter, there was a long line and the phone was ringing. After bending to pick up a roll of nickels, I cracked my head on a drawer and fell backward, shattering the perfume case. Meanwhile, the phone was still ringing. I picked up, and your wife asked me how to use a rectal thermometer. I swear, all I did was tell her." 

Walking down the street, a shopper saw an unusual procession approaching the cemetary. A solitary woman was walking with a fierce looking dog behind two hearses. Behind her, another 200 women followed in single file.

The shopper was so curious that she went up to the woman with the dog and said, "I'm very sorry for yoru loss and I know this is a bad time to disturb you, but I have never seen a funeral like this. Whose is it?"

"My husband's," replied the woman.

"What happened?"

"My dog attacked him."

"So who's in the second hearse?"

"My mother-in-law. She was trying to help him when the dog turned on her."

A poignant, thoughtful moment passed between the two women.

"Can I borrow the dog?"

"Join the queue." 

The best present a man give a woman is his undivided attention.

-- Usher

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

- Howard Aiken

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

-- Thomas Szasz

The wise are few.

nepenthe

1. A drug mentioned in the Odyssey as a remedy for grief.
2. Something that induces forgetfulness of sorrow or eases pain.
[The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition]

1 a : a potion or drug used by the ancients to give forgetfulness of pain and sorrow and held by some to have been opium or hashish
b : something capable of causing oblivion of grief or suffering
2 : a plant yielding nepenthe

example: only in occasional visits to the movies and lending libraries, in idle chatter and consoling gossip and scandal, and in the more unendurable cases to drink, can they find nepenthe— G.J.Nathan
[Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary]

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
- Don Marquis

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
- Steven Wright

Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
- Larry Kersten

I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy.
- Bern Williams

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
- Douglas Adams

A perfect method for adding drama to life is to wait until the deadline looms large.
- Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at the moment.
- Robert Benchley

If it weren't for the last minute, I wouldn't get anything done.

Procrastination is the art of waiting.

Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait - The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don't count.
- Robert Anthony

Tomorrow says the lazy
(Icelandic Proverb)

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
- W. Somerset Maugham

The Department for the Dispersal of Culture

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

-- Dorothy Parker

"Can I lead a good Christian life in New York City on $100 a week?" a young man once asked a noted minister.

"My boy," was the reply, "that's the only kind of life you can lead."

The Angels in America Department

Turn the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

-- Frank Lloyd Wright

The Over the Big Top Department

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

-- Carl Sagan

Generating the Gap Department

In Youth we want to change the world; in old age we want to change youth.

-- Bob Brown

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

-- Saki

The Lord prefers common looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them.

-- Abraham Lincoln

The Accidental Research Department

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

-- Franklin P. Adams

"Why is it." asked a Frenchman of a Swiss, "that you Swiss always fight for money, while we French only fight for honour?"

"I suppose," said the Swiss, "that each fights for what he most lacks."

The Cuckoo's Nest Department

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer?

-- George Price

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

-- Fran Lebowitz

peccavi (pe-KAH-vee) noun

An admission of guilt or sin.

[From Latin peccavi (I have sinned), from peccare (to err).]

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither.

--Mark Twain

Only the Lonely Department

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.

-- Dag Hammarskjold

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

-- Eric Hoffer

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.

-- Edward R. Murrow

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave

-- Mohandas Gandhi 

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Anaïs Nin

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung

Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
Richard Bach, Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

All people want is someone to listen.
Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only Weblog

Friends are these people who ask you how you are and wait for an answer.

A friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else.
Len Wein

Friendship isn't a big thing; It is a million of little things.

The road to a friend's house is never long.
Danish proverb

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
Czech Proverb

When someone allows you to bear his burdens, you have found deep friendship.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog

There are people in the world who are here to save you when you need savin', cover your ass when it needs coverin', and are always there when you need someone to lean on.
Vivi from “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”

It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter.
Marlene Dietrich

Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Friendship is like peeing in your pants.
Everyone can see that it's there...
but only you can feel the true warmth.

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
Henry Ford

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to--letting a person be what he really is.
Jim Morrison

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
Henri Nouwen



Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? I thought I was the only one."
C.S. Lewis

Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you.
Madame de Tencin

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity

There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.
Rebecca West

Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
Georgia O'Keeffe

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
George Washington

Purchase not friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give, such will cease to love.
Thomas Fuller

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.
Samuel Johnson

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.
Socrates

We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie

There isn’t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren’t really living without it.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog

Hold a true friend with both of your hands.
Friedrich Nietzsche



Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend.
Saadi

In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.
John Churton Collins

Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success — yours or his.
Franklin P. Jones

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
Oscar Wilde

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
Japanese Proverb

The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
Homer

I realized that the Impossible stands for three things: the ghoul, the phoenix, and the loyal friend.
Safi el-Din el-Hilli

To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.

In giving advice seek to help, not to please, your friend.
Solon

It is a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.
Benjamin Franklin

A true friend stabs you in the front.
Oscar Wilde

A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.
Arthur Brisbane, The Book of Today

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.
Mark Twain

I saw Bob Dylan getting criticized in Australia by this guy who was saying, "Your new songs aren't as relevant as your old songs." And Dylan just said, "Well, I'm out here writing new songs - what are you doing?"

-- Tom Petty

Involvement with people is always a very delicate thing — it requires real maturity to become involved and not get all messed up.

-- Bernard Cooke

Dehradun 

The higher reaches of Mussorie 

The town of Mussorie is perched on the side of a hill. 

Life is just one damned thing after another.

-- Elbert Hubbard

Please spare me for a moment!