thought provoking

[DocW]

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbors, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
-- Samuel Butler

Today's opportunities erase yesterday's failures.
-- Gene Brown

For his anger lasts only a brief moment, and his good favor restores one's life. One may experience sorrow during the night, but joy arrives in the morning.
-- Psalms 30:5

[DocW]

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
-- Source Unknown

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don't go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won't laugh at you.
-- Jim Rohn

Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
-- Scott Adams

[DocW]

Few men are of one plain, decided color; most are mixed, shaded or blended; and vary as much from different situations, as changeable silks do from different lights.
-- Philip Dormer Stanhope

One thing about the school of experience is that it will repeat the lesson if you flunk the first time.
-- Anonymous

[DocW]

Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.
-- Ambrose Bierce

It must be the aim of education to teach the citizen that he must first of all rule himself.
-- Winthrop A. Aldrich

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.
-- Forest Whitaker

[DocW]

To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship
-- Wendell Phillips

If nobody dropped out of eighth grade, who would hire the college graduates?
-- Source Unknown

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly
-- Henri L. Bergson

[DocW]

The Qur'an says backbiting is like eating flesh of a dead brother. It is a grave sin, a kabirah, not an ordinary one. Backbiting is a sin just as consuming wine, eating pork, stealing or robbing are sins. Rather, it is more severe. To drink wine or to consume pork is to violate rights of Allah and the sin pertains to the self of the perpetrator and has no relation with rights of fellow men. Hence, if Allah will enable the sinner at anytime and he repents to Him then He will forgive the sin.


The sin of backbiting, however, pertains to fellow human beings. The principle in such cases is that the sin is not forgiven unless the owner of the rights forgives it. The sinner may make repentance and seek forgiveness for thousands of times, offer salah and fasting, but the sin of backbiting will not be forgiven. Allah has said, "I will forgive you My rights. But, if you damage My slave physically or his property, or his honor; or you violate his rights then until he pardons you or you repay him his rights, I will not forgive you." The case of rights of fellow men is very serious but we have considered it very ordinary and minor. Backbiting is also among rights of fellow men. [Spiritual Discourses by Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani]



Food for thought:
Faith means, no worrying. Faith is passionate intuition. Every tomorrow has two handles -- we can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. He who has faith has an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well, even though to the world it may appear to come out badly.

[DocW]

Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately-many people will help you unintentionally.
-- Santha Rama Rau

[Hawkeye]

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ***, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

[DocW]

Man is a complex being; he makes the deserts bloom and lakes die.
-- Gil Stern

Zeal without knowledge is like expedition to a man in the dark.
-- John Newton

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.
-- Emile Zola

[DocW]

Power has only one duty --to secure the social welfare of the People.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

Why do we want to test people for drugs and alcohol? Why don't we test them from stupidity, illiteracy and avarice? The place would be better.
-- Source Unknown

[DocW]

The first principle of ethical power is Purpose. By purpose, I don't mean your objective or intention-something toward which you are always striving. Purpose is something bigger. It is the picture you have of yourself-the kind of person you want to be or the kind of life you want to lead.
-- Ken Blanchard

Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion-picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word ''collectible'' as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
-- Fran Lebowitz

[DocW]

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation. 'I can forgive but I cannot forget', is only one way of saying, "I will not forgive." Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note, torn into two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one. The weak can never forgive -- forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Mrs Iffat Hasan

[DocW]

For present joys are more to flesh and blood than a dull prospect of a distant good.
-- John Dryden

I slip from workaholic to bum real easy.
-- Matthew Broderick

Creditors have better memories than debtors.
-- Benjamin Franklin


To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it.
-- Bunker Hunt

[DocW]

The quantity of books in a person's library, is often a cloud of witnesses to the ignorance of the owner.
-- Count Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna

Don't wait for people to be friendly, show them how.
-- Source Unknown

Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.
-- Confucius

[DocW]

“Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold from the mines.” - A. Owen

Power Of One

One Tree Can Start A Forest .
One Bird Can Herald Spring
One Flower Can Make A Garden.
One Tune Can Compose A Song.

One Smile Begins A Friendship.
One Hand Clasp Lifts A Soul.
One Star Can Guide A Ship At Sea...
One Sunbeam Lights A Room.

One Candle Wipes Out Darkness.
One Laugh Can Conquer Gloom.
One Word Starts A Prayer.
One Hope Raises Our Spirits.

One Step Starts A Journey.
One Touch Can Show You Care.
One Vote Can Change A Nation.
One Life Can Make A Difference.

One Heart Can Know What’s True.
You See, It’s All Up to You!!!!!